Columbia water bill passes

OLYMPIA – Continuing its two-day rush through the Statehouse, a bill intended to free up vast quantities of new water in some of the most parched areas of the state swept unanimously through the state Senate on Tuesday.

House Bill 2860 – which until recently looked like it would die quietly along with hundreds of other legislative proposals this year – now goes to the governor to be signed into law within the next few days. Assuming that budget writers agree, it would steer $210 million into research, conservation and water storage projects along the Columbia and Snake rivers.

“It’s one of the best things that’s ever happened for our side of the state,” said Senate Majority Lisa Brown, D-Spokane. “It’s a huge, forward-looking commitment.”

“Literally for 30 years we’ve had litigation in lieu of consultation and consensus,” said Sen. Phil Rockefeller, D-Bainbridge Island. “Today, we have consensus.”

That consensus, however, didn’t extend to some environmentalists, who fear that the water storage projects will flood dwindling habitat and cause problems for fish and the river system.

“It’s a dam bill,” said Rachael Paschal Osborn, an environmental attorney in Spokane. “They may want to deny it, but that’s what it’s about. You’re not going to authorize $200 million in bonding authority if your intent isn’t to build structures.”

“It’s Valentine’s Day. I’m not feeling a whole lot of love for my elected officials at the moment,” said Shirley Nixon, an attorney with the Center for Environmental Law and Policy in Seattle.

Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, said the water storage areas wouldn’t be traditional monolithic river dams. Most would consist of filling existing reservoirs away from the river, he said.

“If they could just get off this simplistic mindset of what dams were 90 years ago,” he said. “These projects are no impediment to fish.”

The proposal was negotiated over two weeks by half a dozen interest groups in closed meetings in Olympia. Among the participants: the Washington Environmental Council, the state farm bureau, American Rivers, irrigators on the Columbia and Snake rivers, the state Department of Ecology and the Washington Water Policy Alliance. The state Senate never held a hearing on the bill.

“It’s very curious to me that there would be such a bandwagon of gee-isn’t-this-wonderful without exploring it more,” Nixon said. “This is planning by wishful thinking.”

Large reservoirs in baking-hot Eastern Washington summers would lose a lot of water to evaporation and ground seepage, she said. And putting warm water back into the rivers isn’t necessarily helping fish.

“Very late in the game, people are asking ‘What’s going on?’ ” Osborn said. “The reason they’re rushing the bill through is so that these kind of questions don’t get asked. This is huge, and nobody knew about it.”

The bill requires the state Department of Ecology to find ways to conserve water or places to store it before it runs down the river system to the sea in rainy months. Of the “new water” that results, at least one-third would remain in streams for fish. Up to two-thirds could go to agriculture, municipal water supplies, industry or other uses.

Among the storage possibilities: walling off large natural depressions in Eastern Washington and filling them with water or filling valleys with water pumped from the Columbia.

Much of the water would be used in central and southeastern Washington, but proponents say some of that storage could be built in the state’s northeastern region.

“We’ve got some of the best storage areas, as I see it, by damming up canyons,” said Sen. Bob Morton, R-Orient. “We’ve got the prime area to be explored for possible pool sites.”

Gov. Chris Gregoire, who a year ago set up a legislative task force to study Eastern Washington’s growing water woes, pushed for the bill over the weekend. Morton said he asked for $300 million. He and the governor settled on $200 million.

“The last five days, she’s pushed hard” to make the bill happen, Morton said.

The Spokane and Colville tribes both support the bill, their water attorneys said Tuesday, as long as tribal water rights are respected. They also want to mitigate any inundation of cultural sites, like rock paintings or graves.

“We had very little say at the time Grand Coulee Dam was put in,” said Steve Suagee, an attorney for the Colvilles.

One of the negotiators, American Rivers’ Rob Masonis, called the bill a good compromise. As for new dams, he said, the bill requires a hard look at the costs, benefits and alternatives before new storage is built.

“The demise of many Washington rivers has been the construction of large dams,” he said. “We don’t want to see new dams constructed that will further damage our river systems and waste taxpayer money.”

The bill, he said, doesn’t take dams “off the table, but it ensures that any decisions to build new storage are based on sound information and are fact-based, not driven by special interests.”