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Mehow Valley News December 2, 1999 Endangered Species Coverage Publisher's Comment ~ by Lee Hicks Too late to reconsider flows? A political buzzword of the past few years may be appropriate to what is happening in the Methow basin. We appear to have a "disconnect" on endangered fish and water issues. A recent example came in a statement by William Stelle, regional administrator of National Marine Fisheries Service. Stelle said that having a memorandum of agreement on fish issues prior to this spring’s irrigation season might have headed off some of the current conflict. However, NMFS had in effect forced irrigation water to be shut off on federal land even before the subject of an MOA was raised by the agency and the governor’s salmon recovery team. NMFS has given little credit to the effort by Okanogan County and the state Department of Ecology to create a comprehensive watershed plan, enabled by state legislation, that would address fish and water issues in the Methow basin. The federal agency has insisted on streamflows as the key strategy to aid fish. NMFS is now said to be listening more closely to irrigators who divert on Forest Service land. The agency has considered new information on streamflows for its biological opinions on the "Section 7" ditches. The matter of streamflows will continue to be debated. Many residents who labored on various water study committees question whether setting strict flows will measurably improve conditions of endangered fish. That’s also the view of some biologists. At this point, it appears unlikely that NMFS will back down on streamflows as part of the plan to aid endangered fish. But, maybe we haven’t gone too far downstream to recognize that the nature of the problem needs to be better defined before focusing on narrow solutions. Opinion | Sports |
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