Chehalis River Alliance Statement on the Chehalis Basin Board’s Budget
The Chehalis River Alliance (Alliance) recognizes the recent efforts of the Chehalis Basin Board (Board) to revise and successfully adopt a more equitable budget for implementation of Chehalis Basin Strategy efforts over the coming biennium. The Quinault Indian Nation and Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis led the way in calling for increased transparency in the budget process and holding the Board accountable to make an investment towards meeting Governor Inslee’s request “to define a process and timeline for developing and evaluating a basin-wide non-dam alternative to reducing flood damage and to use the best scientific evaluation of options to preserve and restore salmon runs and protect the basin’s human communities.”
The Alliance is grateful for the leadership from the Quinault Indian Nation and Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis, who invoked the strength and tenacity to stand united in voicing their dissent- calling for significant revisions to what was originally a tremendously biased and proposed dam-centric budget. We appreciate the Quinault Indian Nation’s request in late May for more detail about the budget, which helped to provide transparency in the budget process. We acknowledge the Chehalis Tribe’s strength in offering a non-vote, not stopping the budget, but instead drawing attention to the areas in the budget that did meet the needs and expectations of the community or the environment. Indigenous voices give strength and representation to those without a seat at the Board table- including the many species we are collectively working to preserve and protect.
Ultimately, the final budget addressed most concerns identified by the Tribes and other dissenting voices. However, as was indicative during the approval process, there are still some concerns with the adopted budget included below.
The budget as originally proposed included numerous line items that were pre-decisional- focusing on the proposed dam as the only flood damage reduction option. This signals that even though the environmental analyses have yet to be concluded, the Board has pre-determined that the proposed dam is their preferred alternative.
Actions implemented as a part of the Chehalis Basin Strategy warrant comprehensive environmental review, the outcome of which should be used to make unbiased decisions about which actions should and should not be implemented. The public expects a transparent and non-biased process that they will hold the Board accountable to.
The concern of funding pre-decision actions was identified and addressed by the Quinault Indian Nation, which resulted in the decision by the Board to defer a portion of the proposed spending for the proposed dam until completion of the environmental review processes. This provides the Board with flexibility to allocate those now unobligated funds later in the biennium based on the most up-to-date and accurate information.
Another significant failure of the initial budget was the lack of a significant investment in the development of a basin-wide flood damage reduction strategy. The development of such a strategy requires significant investment, not at all dissimilar to the investments already made to explore the proposed dam alternative. This should be a robust effort that utilizes the best available and most up to date science to enable comparative analysis of a suite of flood damage reduction actions against the proposed dam. We expect the process to build from the local actions planning efforts that took place this previous winter along with the additional development of detailed flood mapping, risk and economic analyses coupled with local land use planning efforts. If executed properly, this will result in a comprehensive strategy of flood reduction actions providing an opportunity of comparison across actions.
If the Board is truly looking to fulfill the intent of the Strategy - to reduce flood damage for Basin residents and to protect and restore aquatic species habitat - they will put a genuine effort into the development of this basin-wide flood damage reduction strategy. Based upon the disingenuous comments from some Board members at the last meeting, we are left wondering if the Board is sincere in exploring alternatives or simply placating dissenting voices. Residents of Washington State and the Basin deserve better.