Stakeholders in the Walla Walla River Basin are asking for public input on a strategic plan to guide water resource decisions for the next 30 years in the Walla Walla Basin.
Comments will be accepted through May 24. Visit ubne.ws/waterplan to participate.
The plan identifies strategies that could bring new water supplies, restore floodplains, reduce flood risks, improve habitat and meet water quality goals for threatened fish, according to the Washington Department of Ecology.
Ecology, the Walla Walla Watershed Management Partnership, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and other Walla Walla Water 2050 Strategic Plan Advisory Committee partners formed work groups and a committee to draft the plan over the past 18 months.
It focuses on five areas: floodplains, critical species, habitat and water quality; water supply, streamflows and groundwater; land use and flood control; quality of life; and monitoring and metering.
“There are two major advantages of this plan. One is it is bi-state, so it covers the whole basin, and two, it’s integrated, so we’re looking at everything that is happening regarding water in the basin,” said Judith Johnson, chairperson of the Walla Walla Watershed Management Partnership.
Ecology, the Oregon Water Resources Department and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation have been working on an agreement for how water is shared across the border, she said.
This will be one of the strategies intended to be implemented by a new organization set up in 2023.
“As we are completing the plan, we will also be developing an organizational structure that will carry on from where the partnership left off so there will be an organization to work together to implement the plan and preferably, it will be a bi-state organization,” Johnson said.
According to the drafted plan, the partnership started in 2009 as a pilot program for local decision-making and flexibility in water management.
In 2019, the state Legislature extended the pilot through June 30, 2021, and tasked the group with developing a plan in collaboration with Ecology.
Johnson said the plan aims to accomplish an adequate water supply for all needs in the Basin for the next 30 years.
She said a lot of discussion and integration has gone into the plan regarding monitoring and metering water levels to measure the progress of the strategies and overall plan.
“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” she said.
One of the plan’s goals is to have enough in-stream flows to recover endangered fish — moving toward abundance, not just to viability — to restore one of the first foods, fish, to the tribal communities, allow recreational fishing and ensure an adequate and safe water supply for surrounding cities.
Chris Marks, a CTUIR representative on the committee, said this process would bring together a lot of work going on in the basin for two decades with millions of dollars in investment. Working on the strategies of this plan, the group aims to protect investments made on the Walla Walla River, such as fish hatcheries.
Flow study
Johnson said the Walla Walla River Bi-State Flow Study, an ongoing study of four years, looks for ways to store water through either a reservoir or pump exchange. The study’s results will be integrated into the final 2050 plan.
Marks said the Reservation’s biggest priority strategy in this plan is identifying an alternative water supply. Either a reservoir, for storing water for summertime use, or a pump exchange, for irrigators to get their designated water through a pipeline out of the Columbia River so water in the Walla Walla River would stay in stream and flow into the Columbia River.
“We’re looking to restore flows significantly on the Walla Walla River, really trying to get agriculture diversions in the summer off of the river and using some alternative water supply and leaving the river alone and leaving that water in stream for fish to support the tribes first foods and our related treaty reserved rights to fish and hunt and gather in that basin.”
Treaty rights
Marks said in the Treaty of 1855, the tribes were trying to protect their way of life and how they interacted with the landscape and the first foods, such as fish, deer, roots and berries, and their promises to those foods to take care of them forever in exchange for those foods taking care of the tribal people.
The treaty identifies reserved rights to hunt and fish and gather in common with the residents on unclaimed lands, he said.
“The issue here is that for 100 years, 150 years of development in the west, those treaty obligations and commitments were completely ignored,” Marks said.
With no water in the river for fish, there is no fishing right that can be exercised per the treaty and there is no habitat for fisheries to survive and thrive, he said.
Through litigation in the Supreme Court in the early 1900s, he said, they identified that treaty rights have inherent other rights within them such as water rights.
“We’ve accomplished a lot in that Basin, but we have some really big complex issues that we haven’t been able to move forward very much … I think that’s the biggest overarching thing that we see this Walla Walla (Water) 2050 process doing is pulling all of those things together and being the vehicle to take them to the next step to take them from the planning process to the implementation process,” he said.
Floodplain
One of the strategies listed in the plan is to reconnect the floodplain and restore channel complexity Basin-wide to reduce flood risk and improve habitat.
“The plan seeks to balance the restoration of healthy floodplains with adequate flood control to protect communities and the region’s economy from damaging flood events,” according to the draft.
Marks said areas of the floodplain could be used more to improve the floodplain functions, for example, flood risk management.
“Anywhere that we have passage barriers, anywhere we can potentially give the river as much of its floodplain back as possible, those are huge priorities for the tribes as well,” he said.
“We have a lot of other areas that we can restore ecological functions that a lot of our built infrastructure intends to perform the same action if we don’t build in the floodplain.”
Climate change
Climate change resiliency is also laid out in the plan, according to Ecology.
Johnson said her feedback for the drafted plan would be to add more information about how specifically the particular strategies mitigate climate change and how climate change will affect the plan.
Marks said the impacts of climate change would affect every one of the goals and objectives in the plan, so it must be considered in everything they do.
He said this effort needs to be a community-supported plan, which means they need to hear from the full community.
By Chloe LeValley of the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin.
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