Oct. 17, 2002: Reach committee may face demise

Reach committee may face demise

This story was published Oct. 17, 2002

By Mike Lee
Herald staff writer

Inaction by top-level U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service administrators is threatening to capsize the citizens advisory committee formed to help write a management plan for the Hanford Reach National Monument.

The 13-member committee, created as a political compromise for the once-fractious monument, will disband Jan. 11 if it's not reauthorized by the Secretary of the Interior, who also must reappoint committee members in January.

Three months is enough time for the agency to act. However, concerns surfaced Wednesday that agency headquarters is moving so slowly on even the most mundane matters that the committee is in jeopardy.

Washington, D.C., bureaucrats, for example, have failed to approve moving alternate committee members into vacated primary seats, an action requested in May by the agency's Reach office manager Greg Hughes.

"Fish and Wildlife ... has a lot of credibility on the line," said Adam Fyall, who handles Reach issues for Benton County. "If this (committee) goes away, people will say they really weren't committed to it."

After years of tug-of-war for control of the Reach, the 200,000-acre monument was created by an executive order of President Clinton in June 2000. Along with it came a citizens committee to guide federal decisions.

Despite decades of differences between some members, the committee quickly became something of an institution relied on by Fish and Wildlife's Richland office and interest groups who want consideration in the management plan.

Even the counties have participated fully despite their long-running objections to federal control of the Reach. And environmentalists latched onto it as a way to balance competing interests.

Committee Chairman Jim Watts reminded members about the sunset clause during a committee meeting in Richland on Wednesday.

"We are moving rather rapidly through the initial stages and finally coming down to a work product," he said, before announcing his concerns about agency slowdowns.

The specter of short-circuiting a process that has gained such substantial public support - not to mention public time and money - raised immediate alarms.

"We represent local input," said Michele Gerber, Hanford historian. "We need to keep this process close to home. This is our river. These are our cultural resources, our history."

In her committee post, she's queried more than two dozen state and regional historians about what should be in the monument plan. "I will keep doing that as long as we are in business," she said.

It's hard to tell what's holding up the process in Washington, D.C., be it the politics of undoing the work of a prior administration, bureaucratic overload or a shift of resources to national security and foreign wars.

Watts speculates that agency leaders are unsure of themselves because the service operates few, if any, similar committees. It took about seven months to appoint Reach committee members and almost another year - including a federal budget holdup - before the committee got beyond housekeeping tasks.

"I don't want to be looking at another year and a half until we get moving again," Watts said. "The continuity of the committee is important when we are just getting to the start of ... something important."

The committee is expected to start addressing monument management goals in early December.

Monument manager Hughes has pushed hard for public involvement and is anxious to have his advisory committee reauthorized for two more years. He said he submitted official committee documents to the regional office in Portland last week.

"We are hoping it goes through the process smoothly," he said.

But he admitted doubts. "My biggest concern is that I am probably naive about how long it takes to get done," Hughes said.

Even if the committee dissolves, the public still will have opportunities to influence the plan during official public comment periods. "I am not going to let this end the public process," Hughes said.