Grant County questions initiative

EPHRATA - The Grant County commissioners questioned public involvement in an initiative to protect arid lands in Washington.

The commissioners discussed the initiative with Chuck Warner, the arid lands director for Washington with The Nature Conservancy. The conservancy, a non-profit group, is organizing the initiative bringing together various federal, state, tribal and non-governmental organizations and other groups with the aim of protecting arid lands in Washington.

The arid land includes shrub steppe or dry grassland and comprises about 150 million acres in Eastern Washington, Warner said. The project started about a year and a half ago with the conservancy finishing its work in the Moses Coulee and Beezley Hills program.

"I started talking to the agency people about what they thought were the needs in the area and the threats and challenges, and, over and over, they was there was as many people as there are on that list doing some form of conversation of the arid lands ... but no two of those would know what the third one is doing," he said. "So there's a lot of duplication of effort. There's a lot of wasted money."

About 60 participants from 40 different organizations met in October in Wenatchee to brainstorm strategies, Warner said.

"There are a couple of different ways people participate. There is the core group of fanatics, if you would, that are willing to come to meetings regularly and sit through the 'not fun' stuff of coming up with vision statements," he said. "Then there are a lot of folks who just like to engage for special issues."

Commissioner Carolann Swartz asked if private citizens were involved in brainstorming strategies. Warner answered there was, but not as many as they would like.

"Well, let's face it. The government people that are involved in this are paid to be there," Swartz said. "So anybody that is running a business out there is taking time off from their business to go and participate."

Warner said they recognized the challenge of getting public input early on, so they reached out to the cattlemen's association and the wheat growers association. They worked with Desautel Hege Communications, a Spokane-based marketing and public relations firm, to conduct a survey and one-on-one interviews.

"This is not representational, because we don't know where it went to and we're assuming that somewhere close to 5,000 people had the opportunity to respond to (the survey,)" he said. "On average the response rate is somewhere between 2 and 5 percent. We got less than 100 people responding to it, so that's a very small sample size."

Warner said he was surprised with the results showing the arid lands were important to the people responding.

The participants believed arid lands provide a range of benefits and are a top priority, according to initial results. The interviewees also noted a need for conservation and management to prevent risk to the land.

Commissioner Richard Stevens asked how much of the land involved is privately-owned, and Warner replied most of it.

"I hope I haven't given the impression that what we intend to do is tell the private land owners what to do," Warner said. "We just need their support in protecting those native lands."

Warner said the initiative is aimed at protecting the remaining arid lands, and it could affect agricultural land.

"The two occur in a very complex matrix," he said. "So it's difficult for any change to occur on one piece there without it affecting another. One of the farmers we had early on said that he's real concerned about conservation of the shrub steppe because he has land adjacent to it and if that shrub step is developed or sold off then his farm has problems using herbicides or pesticides, creating dust."

Swartz said the lack of public involvement really concerned her, and without it the result wouldn't be valid.

"So there really should be a major effort in getting private people involved," she said. "We need to lay it out that this is what we're really trying to do in plain enough language for them so they feel they're really part of it."

Public involvement will be part of the picture, Warner said, adding they are reaching out to farmers and ranchers, developers and industry. He is willing to work with anyone who will talk with groups.

Stevens said he was worried government agencies would develop policies based on the initiative without having any public input, and once the policies were in place it w