Governments Try To Settle Differences With Indians Colville Tribes’ Moratorium On Development Sparks Dispute

Representatives of eight governments that claim jurisdiction within the Colville Indian Reservation agreed Thursday to try to patch up a crumbling agreement that so far has failed to replace confrontation with cooperation.

Most seemed to agree that the chances for cooperation were improved by some blunt confrontation at their meeting here Thursday. They scheduled another meeting June 5.

That will be after Ferry County’s scheduled withdrawal from the consortium in late April.

“We’re opening up a line of communication right now, so we’ll see what happens,” Ferry County Commissioner Dennis Snook said after the meeting.

Snook and fellow Commissioner Jim Hall voted Feb. 24 to pull out of the agreement in 60 days. Commissioner Gary Kohler, who represents the portion of Ferry County within the reservation, expressed hope that Hall and Snook will change their minds.

The vote to withdraw from the 4-year-old agreement came after Colville Confederated Tribes unilaterally imposed a development moratorium on all waterfront property in the reservation. The commissioners said the moratorium was the “final straw” among several tribal actions they believed violated the cooperative agreement.

Okanogan County commissioners also protested the tribal moratorium, but stopped short of abandoning the agreement.

Tribal Councilman Deb Louie said the moratorium had to be imposed hastily to prevent subdivisions tribal members proposed to build before the tribe can finish developing a shoreline management plan.

Planning Director Virgil “Smoker” Marchand said tribal officials “didn’t think much about the recoil” because the moratorium was aimed at tribal members. He promised to keep other governments better informed in the future.

Tribal Councilman Richard Swan blamed the dispute on failure of consortium members to adopt a uniform set of land-use regulations as called for in the cooperative agreement. If that doesn’t happen, he said, “then you might as well do what Ferry County did and throw the agreement in the garbage.”

Swan said he is ready to go to court to determine which government may regulate land use on the reservation if the cooperative agreement collapses. “That’s not a threat, that’s a promise,” he said.

Finding common ground has been difficult in Ferry County because the tribal government has zoning while the county has almost no land-use controls.

Tribal leaders said they have been frustrated by the county’s failure in the past to consult the tribal government before granting building permits for non-Indians who own land within the reservation.

Just as Ferry County commissioners are responding to pressure from non-Indian constituents who say they shouldn’t be subject to tribal regulations, tribal Councilman Richard Swan said his constituents insist on protecting their environment.

A similar conflict became apparent when Ferry and Okanogan commissioners complained about tribal opposition to the proposed Battle Mountain Gold Mine in northern Okanogan County.

Tribal Councilman Mike Marchand said Indian and non-Indian residents of the two counties have much in common, but they may have to agree to disagree on the mine.

“We just think it goes against our culture and things that are important to us,” Marchand said, noting tribal members have hunting and fishing rights in the area, which used to be part of the reservation.

, DataTimes