Lake Roosevelt issue baffles sportsmen

Five months after a contentious public meeting in Davenport, state and local governments are still trying to get answers from Rep. Cathy McMorris and Sen. Maria Cantwell.

Hunters and anglers also seek answers, since the questions involve Lake Roosevelt’s Spokane River Arm, one of the region’s premium public playgrounds for hunting, fishing and water recreation.

Here’s the beginning of concerns, ranging from law enforcement to water rights, sent to McMorris last week by Lincoln County commissioners.

“Lincoln County does not understand how a bill that would transfer nearly half of our northern border to an independent sovereign nation could get through the U.S. House of Representatives without direct consultation with the affected local government and without public hearings having been held in the local area with our residents.”

At issue is legislation that would transfer jurisdiction of Lake Roosevelt’s Spokane River Arm from federal, state and local governments to the Spokane Tribe.

In 1994, the Colville Tribe was compensated for reservation property inundated after the 1940 completion of Grand Coulee Dam. In 2003, McMorris and Cantwell took on the honorable task of working out an agreement that would finally compensate the Spokane Tribe.

When the deal was going sour for lack of federal funds to fully compensate the tribe, McMorris and Cantwell apparently added to the bills a new “Section 9” that would sweeten the settlement by transferring jurisdiction of the water and land up to the high water mark on both sides of the river from the Bureau of Recreation and National Park Service to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Spokane Tribe.

Neither the Lincoln County Commission nor the state Department of Wildlife was consulted despite their considerable history and interests in the issue.

The meeting in Davenport with local citizens, government officials and McMorris and Cantwell aides was held after McMorris’ HR 1797 had been fast-tracked through the House.

Cantwell’s companion bill, SB881, is still under consideration in the Senate. Although Cantwell still thinks this is a sweet deal, the fact that it hasn’t moved out of committee allows at least the chance for input from the vast majority of citizens and agencies left out in the beginning.

Howard Funke, a Coeur d’Alene attorney who represents the Spokane Tribe, said news reports on the legislation resulted in misinformation.

“Nobody is going to be denied access to Lake Roosevelt or the Spokane River because of this legislation,” he said Wednesday. “The Spokane Tribe has a tremendous investment in the fisheries as well as their marina and casino.”

On the other hand, he said the legislation would clear up disputed judgments in court decisions handed down in 1994 and 2001 that have given the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife reason to enforce hunting and fishing regulations onto the land portion of the Spokane Indian Reservation to an elevation of 1,320 feet.

High pool at Lake Roosevelt is 1,290 feet and the tribal boundary is under the lake at the original shore of the Spokane River before Grand Coulee was built.

“The state has been trying to assert its authority inside the reservation and that was going to lead to breaches of peace and gunfire,” Funke said. “The legislation would preclude that by putting land back into trust. State fish and game officers are pushing the envelope on jurisdiction, not the tribe.

“The tribe is trying to get the state off their reservation.”

Tom Davis, the Fish and Wildlife Department’s legislative liaison, said the jurisdictional issues are the agency’s main concern.

“What happens to non-tribal members fishing on the lake?” he asked, recalling that it was an angler, Joe Cassidy of Davenport, who made the sacrifice of getting arrested by tribal police and taking the U.S. Government to court to decide whether anglers need a state or tribal license in those waters.

“Which will apply to non-tribal sportsmen, state law or tribal law, or will it be muddled as it has in the past?” Davis said. “Will Fish and Wildlife officers continue to have access to the land to enforce laws?

McMorris and Cantwell staffers say these and other issues can be addressed in the “memorandum of understanding” that would be written after the Senate legislation is passed.

But Fish and Wildlife officials as well as Lincoln County commissioners say the legislation does not put them at the table when the MOU is hammered out among the federal agencies and the tribe.

“If we could rewrite history, we’d prefer these issues were addressed in the bill,” Davis said. “Once the bill is passed and you sit at table to write an MOU, then all of a sudden you’re in a collaborative process that has to be agreed to by everyone. … The department values our working relationships with the individual tribes. They do a tremendous amount for the fishery, but this would put us in an awkward working relationship.”