The bill that would address flooding in the Chehalis River Basin and a host of other water issues around the state hasn’t moved since January, and with the legislative session coming into its final month, the bill’s proponents may be left high and dry.
“The holdup is trying to solidify a source of funding that would be supported by a majority in the Senate,” said one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Jim Honeyford, R-Sunnyside. “Everybody likes the policy but they just don't want to pay for it.”
Senate Bill 5628 would create water storage in the eastern part of the state, build flood prevention infrastructure in the west and address polluted stormwater runoff statewide. It’s been sitting in the Senate Ways and Means Committee, but the bill’s critics have taken issue with it’s funding mechanisms.
Originally, it called for a tiered fee system on land parcels ranging between $35 for to $90 residential and undeveloped land parcels, and between $125 and $500 for non-residential parcels.
In light of criticism over that plan from farming and real estate organizations and others, the bill’s sponsors switched the funding source to a flat $35 per-parcel fee, but that is still facing opposition.
“I don’t know if we’ll see it out. Unless it gets additional support, I don’t think so,” Sen. Brian Hatfield, D-Raymond, said.
Honeyford’s district is in the Yakima Valley. The bill would provide money for water retention infrastructure in his community.
Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, isn’t as pessimistic as Honeyford about the bill’s fate, but he said with transportation and education being such big issues during this session, getting a large bill like this to move through the Senate has been difficult.
“A bill of this size involves folks from all around the state and finding a funding source to generate what we need to pay for a bill of this size is tough,” he said. “It may take more than one year to get it done. We continue to work on it.”
Even though the flood bill faces an uncertain future, there are still efforts in the works to bring some flood mitigation money to the area.
The transportation package recently passed by the Senate proposed about $79 million of flood mitigation money in Lewis County. Late last year, Gov. Jay Inslee recommended allocating $30 million over the 2015-17 biennium for flood projects in the Chehalis River Basin as part of his proposed budget.
The amount was short of the $50 million recommended by the Chehalis River Basin work group, but Braun said he’s trying to get that number up closer to $50 million as the work group originally recommended.
“I’m happy the governor funded part of it; we’d like to do a little better than that,” Braun said.
Rep. Richard DeBolt, R-Chehalis, didn’t return calls for comment on the legislation. He initially proposed the idea of bundling statewide water issues into a single bill prior to the start of the session.
