Office of the Chehalis Basin begins public outreach campaign

The Office of the Chehalis Basin hosted an informational webinar on Wednesday, May 7, to talk about its work in the basin and plans for upcoming projects.

Eighty-one people attended the webinar that introduced residents to a basinwide plan for addressing flooding and restoring salmon habitat called the Chehalis Basin Strategy.

As part of the event, speakers also talked about the planning effort by the Chehalis Basin Board to evaluate long-term projects in the upper basin to be added to the basinwide strategy.

Some of the projects under consideration include the installation of a flow-through dam near Pe Ell, construction and improvement of levees in and around Centralia and Chehalis and potential modification of the Skookumchuck Dam, along with other smaller projects.

In June, the board will decide which of the projects it wants to study in more depth over the next several months before they make an official decision early next year on which projects they will move forward with as part of the Chehalis Basin Strategy.

After the presentation, chair of the Chehalis Basin Board and Grays Harbor County Commissioner Vickie Raines, Office of the Chehalis Basin Director Jeff Zenk and the office’s principal planner, Nat Kale, took questions from the audience addressing issues such as federal funding and local interests.

The online event marks the beginning of a period of public outreach for the Office of the Chehalis Basin as it organizes public meetings, holds tabling hours at local events, makes visits to local organizations such as city councils and school boards and accepts comments and questions on its website. Ahead of the event, the office sent out approximately 70,000 invitations by mail to basin residents inviting them to attend and also publicized the meeting through its online newsletter.

The Chehalis Basin Strategy is an overarching plan, created and updated by the Chehalis Basin Board, for addressing disastrous flooding and salmon habitat restoration in the Chehalis River Basin designed to address concerns from all over the basin and be used by the many local jurisdictions within the basin.

To that end, the Chehalis Basin Board includes seven voting members who represent local interest groups.

The members include two county commissioners from counties in the basin, a local farmer and member of the Washington Dairy Federation, representatives from both the Quinault Indian Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Basin and two members appointed by the governor’s office for their experience with floods either in the local area or statewide.

While the Chehalis Basin Board provides oversight and direction by local stakeholders, the Office of the Chehalis Basin, which is a part of the Washington State Department of Ecology, is responsible for making the board's plans a reality.

Ahead of that decision, the Office of the Chehalis Basin outreach campaign is intended to solicit comments and questions from as many basin residents as possible and compile that information for Chehalis Basin Board members to consider ahead of the final decision on long-term projects.

To receive updates from the Office of the Chehalis Basin, those interested can sign up for the organization's newsletter at https://tinyurl.com/52mwh5zc or visit the office’s website at https://officeofchehalisbasin.com.