Wa. Legislature HB2514 status Watershed Management
Line by line, interest groups pick apart bill to regulate water use

By JAMES BURKE
The Associated Press

02/10/98 2:01 AM Eastern

OLYMPIA (AP) -- Line by line, interest groups are picking apart a water-rights bill that lawmakers hope eventually will satisfy everyone involved.

It's not an easy task, and the search for compromise has been slow.

Leaders from both parties in the House and Senate, along with Ecology Director Tom Fitzsimmons, spent months drafting a bill that tried to meet the needs of diverse constituents.

Then public hearings began and everyone, it seemed, found something to criticize.

Cities said the bill gave counties too much power. Cattle ranchers said the same about Indian tribes. Tribal leaders expressed concern that local governments could undermine their authority as sovereign nations.

After all that, the bill was on "life support," said Rep. Kelli
Linville, D-Bellingham, a key negotiator.

The measure, House Bill 2514, was still breathing enough on its own last week to move out of the House Agriculture and Ecology Committee. Most of the work trying to hammer out the details will occur in the House, leaving senators with a basic "thumbs-up or thumbs-down approach," Linville said.

"Hopefully, it will be thumbs up," she said. "Otherwise, it will have been a lot of hours put in for not much benefit."

Negotiators have put in quite a few more hours recently, including a couple of 9-hour sessions last Sunday and Monday. They continue to inspect the bill's language "a line at a time, sometimes a word at a time," said Fitzsimmons, who noted that the talks were cordial and productive.

"I'm confident we'll find language acceptable to everyone," he said.

Lawmakers have argued for most of the decade about who gets how much water, what quality levels should be maintained and how much habitat to provide for salmon.

The issue has become more urgent as the federal government prepares to put some salmon species on the endangered list, and the state has to meet provisions of the federal Clean Water Act.

The goal of HB2514 -- only one of dozens of water-related bills
introduced this year -- is to get beyond a piecemeal approach and foster widespread collaboration among cities and counties, Indian tribes, agribusiness owners and utilities.

As Agriculture Secretary Jim Jesernig said, "There's been watershed planning for 10 years, but no uniformity in how it's done."

This year's bill tries to rectify that. It would emphasize the front end of the planning process by focusing on local governments. Planning units could form in certain geographic areas to set stream levels and improve water quality and salmon habitat.

That doesn't sit well with everyone -- especially tribal leaders who contend that they should have to negotiate only with state and federal governments.

"The bill puts the tribes in a position where their position could be outvoted at the local level," said Steve Robinson, policy analyst for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. "That is against federal law. The only way the tribes can relinquish their water rights is if they choose to do so."

Not so, said Rep. Gary Chandler, R-Moses Lake. Robinson criticizes the chairman of the House Agriculture and Ecology Committee for knowing little about tribal rights. Chandler argues that tribes are self-governing but not fully sovereign because they rely in part on the federal government.

"He's trying," Robinson said of Chandler. "He told me he thinks he finally gets it. Unfortunately, he's wrong."

Chandler said he supports tribal rights and means no disrespect -- but that lawmakers have to honor everyone's needs.

"The tribes think it's belittling for them to sit at the same table with local government," he said. "They think they should only sit at the table with the state....I don't know if we can get around that. We're trying."

Another sticking point has been the role of the Ecology Department, which has had final authority over setting "in-stream flows" to protect salmon habitat.

This year's bill would encourage consensus among the various local interests. If agreement is reached, Ecology would adopt that setting. If not, Ecology would move forward to set stream levels in consultation with the various groups, Fitzsimmons said.

"It really is a substantive, although subtle, difference," he said. "The difference is that we're assuming a joint management responsibility. There's this balance struck where locals feel like they do have a meaningful role in the process."