Salmon board meets for first time in county

Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2005

By Chris Thew
Omak Chronicle staff

    Okanogan County, WA -  After seven years and numerous meetings in Wenatchee, East Wenatchee or Chelan, the Upper Columbia Salmon Recovery Board held its first regular meeting in Okanogan County Sept. 29 in Okanogan.
     Issues on the minds of Okanogan County residents attending the meeting were trying to rework parts of the proposed upper Columbia salmon recovery plan and deadlines released by board staff calling for all text to be finalized by Oct. 20.
     Recovery board members have said that the week of Oct. 10 comments submitted on the salmon recovery plan will be incorporated into the comments section.
     According to a suggested time line, text will be finalized the following week. Compact disc and hard copies would be printed and available at a stakeholder forum meeting Oct. 26 and the completed product would be delivered to Gov. Christine Gregoire Nov. 22.
     The recovery board was given the task to write a plan with the ultimate goal of delisting fish listed under the federal Endangered Species Act — steelhead and spring Chinook — and delisting bull trout, a threatened species, in Okanogan, Chelan and Douglas counties.
     The Okanogan County Steering Committee has still not received word from the board if its changes will be applied to the document or attached as comment, according to steering committee chairwoman Darlene Hajny.
     The recovery board decided at the Sept. 29 meeting that the executive summary would be accompanied by a condensed and easier-to-understand “Reader’s Digest” version.
     Members of the county steering committee present said a condensed and corrected version should be used and the original should become extinct.
     The steering committee has been trying to re-write portions of the plan, including the executive summary. One complaint that steering committee members have raised is that the document in whole — and many parts — is too long.
     The new addition will add several pages to a document already exceeding 800 pages.
     Rep. Joel Kretz, R-Wauconda, said he wonders if the board ever wanted a plan created by local people.
     “If they aren’t going to change anything in the executive summary, how are they going to change the plan?” Kretz asked after the meeting. “If they’re that resistant to changes in the executive summary, I think we just wasted our whole summer putting in comments.”
     A bulk of the meeting focused mainly on the next phase in the plan’s life — implementation.
     Bill Towey, the recovery baord representative for the Colville Confederated Tribes, presented draft information on the implementation team. The team would be made up of a science team, county implementers, federal and state agencies, and open seats for stakeholders.
     The team would draft reports and presentations for reports, submit progress reports every three years and host annual public meetings each September in East Wenatchee and Chelan — but not Okanogan County, according to the draft plan.
     “Fifty percent of the projects will be in Okanogan County,” Kretz said. “They were real gracious and accommodating . . . but did absolutely nothing. It’s all for show.”
     Kretz said he is not happy with the proposed structure for implementation. He said he thinks people elected and accountable to the public should be making the decisions and not the people involved in what he called the salmon recovery industry.
     “If a private entity treated the public like the salmon recovery industry has, they would be indicted for fraud and extortion,” Kretz said. “How can you have people involved with the creation of the plan, on the committee for implementation and then standing in line cashing checks out of it? I want people accountable to the public.”
     Another sticking point for many people at the meeting in Okanogan was a press release approved by the board explaining the direction of future stakeholder meetings.
     The release claimed that a “broad representative group of stakeholders reviewed their comments on the plan and comment period process . . .”
     Kretz said he felt the phrase should have read, “narrow and slanted group of stakeholders.”
     The board is asking a large group of stakeholders to attend the four-meeting forum. The meetings, the first three held in Brewster and the fourth in Chelan, put representatives from federal and state agencies with representatives from citizens groups.
     Kathy Johnson, a member of the Okanogan County Steering Committee, asked how the board could expect the public to be able to take off work and drive to a meeting in Brewster or Chelan, with gasoline averaging just under $3, when most people attending the meetings are being paid to be there.
     Board members said a fund had been set up that could be used to pay for gas. According to the board, the fund contains $40.
     “In a lot of respects our hands are tied. It’s running over the citizens in this county,” Hajny said. “I’m afraid the end result is going to be unacceptable to people in the county and should not be acceptable to the county.”