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Methow Valley News October 21, 1999 Endangered Species Coverage Publisher's Comment ~ by Lee Hicks MOA: Set a date to finish it or else...? Still no deal. The proposed memorandum of agreement on fish and water issues in the Methow Valley will be re-written once again in a renewal process that rivals the long journey of salmon from their birth waters to the ocean and back. Last Thursday (Oct. 14), county and state officials met with NMFS to discuss a draft that resulted from collaboration between the county, the state Department of Ecology, state Fish and Wildlife and the Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office. The result: back to the keyboard to churn out another version for yet another meeting set for the first week of November in a journey that began in June. At last week’s meeting, the county and state agencies again made their case for a "voluntary" effort toward water conservation to aid recovery of endangered fish—and in effect a penalty for not volunteering. NMFS once more questioned the voluntary approach, apparently holding to the idea that no conservation of water is good enough if it doesn’t save fish—even though the agency has admitted it doesn’t know how much water is needed to accomplish that goal. Maybe the most disconcerting thing about last week’s session is the sense that the mountain is growing while the tunnel is being built. Will we ever get to the other end? At some point, all the negotiating agencies need to agree on a "drop dead" date to finish the MOA. If they can’t, declare an impasse and look at an alternate approach that might even save some fish instead of waste paper and hours of meeting and travel time. Opinion | Sports |
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