Washington Senate Passes Bill for River
By Chris Mulick, Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, Wash.
Feb. 15–OLYMPIA — The state Senate unanimously sent a new Columbia River management plan to Gov. Chris Gregoire on Tuesday, less than 15 hours after the House approved it by an equally impressive margin.
“Amazing,” Gregoire said in an interview shortly after the Senate vote.
Applause went up after House Bill 2860 was approved 48-0 in the Senate on Tuesday, right on the heels of a 94-4 House vote Monday night.
The measure, which Gregoire may sign as soon as this week, makes up the first of a two-bill package that relies on building new water storage projects, conservation and voluntary regional agreements to supply new water withdrawals and make it easier to move water.
A separate bill likely to be introduced with the Senate’s budget proposal today is to provide $200 million over 10 years to build new reservoirs and pay for conservation and efficiency projects.
That bill must be approved to enact the new management plan, though there is no indication it won’t enjoy broad support as well.
The farm and environmental lobbies were speaking warmly about the package Tuesday. And Gregoire, who detected that lawmakers needed to build better relationships when they began the push last spring, called it a “new day of trust.”
Republicans and Democrats spoke glowingly of the plan on the Senate floor.
“This truly is a good day for Eastern Washington,” said Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt, R-Walla Walla. “This has been years in coming.”
“In all my years in politics this have been the single most challenging and single most rewarding thing I’ve worked on,” said Sen. Erik Poulsen, chairman of the Senate Water, Energy and Environment Committee, noting he has come to appreciate how important water is to Eastern Washington. “I bet you never thought a liberal Seattle Democrat would figure it out, but I did.”
The effort to draw up a guide to new Columbia River withdrawals began in 2001 as former Gov. Gary Locke’s Columbia River Initiative. Gregoire picked up the effort after Locke left office and has been most insistent lawmakers keep talking even as others were raising questions about whether a bill was needed.
A notable breakthrough came last month when Republicans proposed a plan that, rather than focusing on withdrawals from existing flows, only applies to water that would be stored behind new water storage projects.
Two of every three buckets would be made available for water users and one would be put instream for fish for the state-funded portion of those projects.
The plan also calls for voluntary regional agreements that generally would rely on new conservation projects to offset new water withdrawals elsewhere.
The framework for an agreement came together late last week and after some wavering was solidified when Gregoire and legislative negotiators agreed to the funding package.
Even so, no one would have predicted such strong votes.
“I didn’t think we would have the margins like that,” said Jay Manning, director of the state Department of Ecology. “As recently as a week ago this was too close to call.”
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