Royal-ly concerned over dams

ROYAL CITY — Royal City residents turned out Wednesday evening to make their strong feelings known against possible storage reservoirs in their area.

About 300 people filled the Red Rock Elementary gymnasium for an informational meeting hosted by the Columbia Basin Development League.

They were in attendance to hear more about the possible plan to locate dams for off-channel water at Sand Hollow or Crab Creek in the Royal Slope area. The storage would catch water at peak run-off from the Columbia River, and put water back in at times when water is low. Those sites are two of four presently being examined.

League Executive Secretary Alice Parker explained the meeting was to ease residents' concerns about being under 200 feet of water by 2011.

"My goal for the meeting is to explain to them why this is even being talked about, where we are today and what we need to do for the future," she said. "One of the things I've really tried to put to bed is, they've said, 'You're just going to sacrifice the Royal City people to save the Odessa people.' That's not correct."

Putting a dam in would take out productive land and people would be displaced, Parker allowed, but she hoped they would leave the meeting understanding they would be compensated.

"I'm worried about them taking my home away from me," said Bernice Hecker, a 35-year area resident, prior to the meeting. "I don't know where we'd go if they kick us out."

Jonathan and Kendra Burke had their three daughters — Reese, 5, Sydney, 3 and Jesse, 2 — in tow.

"We want to know what the reason for putting it in is, most of all, and what exactly they're going to do with the water," Jonathan said before the meeting. "We've heard stories one way or the other, none of it makes any sense at all, to take land away here to farm land elsewhere."

Representatives of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the various area irrigation districts and the state Department of Ecology provided background on the history of the project and tried to explain the issues and politics which need to be considered.

Emotions were evident in the gymnasium, as audience members took to a microphone to ask questions, including what sort of compensation would be offered to impacted businesses which would lose customers, or to land owners facing a banking community reluctant to offer long-term loans to those in areas potentially impacted by the new reservoirs.

When audience member Derek Allred asked for people to stand if they were in the impacted areas and raise their hand if they were against the dams, the majority of the crowd stood, and most raised their hands.

Throughout the session, speakers stressed nothing has been set in stone yet. Congress and the state Legislature must approve a feasibility study before moving on.

Parker expressed disappointment over the fact some audience members used their microphone time to make comments rather than ask questions, but allowed it provided an opportunity for many to vent their frustrations.

"It's a long ways down the road yet," she said. "We have to get approval from Congress to even do a feasibility study, which will be required before any dam sites are selected, and we also have to have the state Legislature approve it. So it's a long ways down the road before anything will ever happen."

In the meantime, Parker said, additional ideas and options are being explored.

"Maybe we won't even have to have a storage site," she said.

Bureau Planning Programs Manager Norbert Ries was pleased the audience listened to the speakers and came up with tough questions.

"They're speaking from their emotions, their heart, their feelings," he said. "We expected that, but hopefully, they left with some new knowledge that will hopefully reduce some of their fears."

Ries hopes the audience lets the process continue until an appraisal study comes out, due in March or April of this year, the step before the feasibility study.

"Then if they have strong feelings either way, whether the selected site is in their backyard, not in their backyard, they make conscious decisions of what they should do next," he said. "There's a couple hurdles we have to get through their elected officials will decide upon."

Royal City resident Therese Schrom said her concerns were still present after the meeting ended.

"It's still a possibility, it still leaves us as we try to improve our property (wondering), what extra hurdles are we going to face because of the process going along parallel?" she said.

Norma Booher said she missed an initial meeting and didn't learn very much at another, but she felt she learned more at the meeting Wednesday.

"They kind of relieved my mind a little bit on some of this stuff, because I know at my age I might not even be alive by the time it goes in, although I hope to live to be 100," she said. "I'm not going to worry about it too much because like they said, it's in the planning stages right now. They don't even have all the information they need, they haven't done any appraisals of the ground or anything. It's going to take time. I realize they have a lot to find out before they can go any further."

During the question-and-answer session, Leslie Fanning promised the speakers a high level of interest from the community.

"We live in this little town and it may not look like much to you guys driving by, but the quality of life here is very good," she said. "Even if we don't make a lot of money, it's a wonderful place to raise families, so we are going to really be interested. You're going to see this kind of a crowd every single time … And we'll dig up the information to show you why this isn't going to work."