Signing of Columbia River Water Management Legislation (As Written)

February 16, 2006

Governor Gregoire: First, I need to apologize that Simon & Garfunkel could not be here this afternoon to perform, �Bridge over Troubled Waters."

Thankfully, the waters don�t appear so troubled anymore.

When I said in my State of the State address last month that we need to see ourselves through history�s lens�I was thinking of days like today. Days when we make whole the promise of public service by overcoming our differences and thinking decades and even generations ahead.

Twenty-five years we�ve worked to unstop this logjam. Twenty-five years of stalemate.

That�s why the last few days have been a joy�the House and Senate passed this bill without delay and with near-universal support. But sometimes you have to slow down to go fast.

A year ago, I asked these legislators standing here today to help us slow down and take a critical look at water management needs on the Columbia River.

These Democrats and Republicans not only listened to their constituents, they heard what people had to say�up and down the river and from both sides of the mountains.

Environmentalists, tribal governments, farmers and fish managers, cities and towns�they all did their homework and their voices were heard by the members of the Task Force during the course of their work.

The Task Force was charged with unscrambling the egg, and unscramble they did!

Historian Richard White famously called the Columbia River an �organic machine,� recognizing it as both a rippling source of life and an instrument for humankind.

As Westerners, this bill enshrines our relationship with an extraordinary waterway by protecting human needs while preserving the salmon runs and natural heritage of the Columbia.

What we have here is a bill that will provide water from the Columbia River in a manner that benefits our economy and our environment. It is a plan that supports a billion-dollar agricultural industry and growing cities and towns. It will implement solutions for the declining Odessa aquifer and those who rely on it for their livelihoods. It will end the economic chaos caused when water rights are interrupted in low-flow years.

And this bill looks to the future. New storage and conservation measures will provide a water supply that sustains our eastside economy for the next generation of Washingtonians: For farming, for growing communities, and for our endangered salmon.

It puts us in a position where we will be able to provide more water to users and still put the required amount of water back into streams for fish and other wildlife.

It creates a new account to pay for new water storage projects and to improve existing water storage.

It implements water conservation projects in the Columbia River main stem.

It requires that two-thirds of the funding be spent on storage and one-third on water conservation, and it requires that the water from projects funded through the new account be used in this way� two-thirds of it goes to users and one third is retained to benefit stream flows.

So, hats off to our partners: Our Task Force members, the Department of Ecology and the Department of Fish and Wildlife, our federal partners and, most importantly, those stakeholders who often found themselves at odds, but who maintain the same values for a prosperous and healthy Washington.


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