Quincy to pay Yakama Nation in civil settlement

QUINCY — The city of Quincy will make a $400,000 payment to the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation for fisheries restoration along the Columbia River. The payment is part of the settlement of a civil lawsuit brought against the city by the organization Columbia Riverkeeper. Tom Elliot, Yakama Nation fisheries manager, said the money will be used to pay part of the cost of riverbank restoration. 

“The plans are to plant native riparian trees and shrubs, primarily cottonwoods and willows, to help redress historic and ongoing loss of riparian forest because of river regulations,” Elliott said in a press release  

Quincy City Administrator Pat Haley said the lawsuit originated in a mistake at the city’s industrial wastewater treatment facility. The city has a separate facility for its domestic and most commercial customers; companies that use water for food processing have their own system. That’s the system that discharged the water that was the basis of the lawsuit, Haley said. That system was operated by a contractor who has since been replaced, he said. 

City officials reported the violation to the Washington Department of Ecology. 

“We self-reported,” Haley said. 

The city and DOE agreed on a plan to keep it from happening again, Haley said. The city terminated its contract with the company running the facility and hired Jacobs, a Texas company with offices in Spokane and Yakima, to operate it. 

Columbia Riverkeeper filed a civil suit in federal court in late 2024. The two sides came to an agreement in late October.  

“We never went to court,” Haley said. 

“The consent decree is a settlement of disputed facts and law. It not an admission or adjudication regarding any allegations by Riverkeeper in the notice letter, or in the complaint filed in this case, or of any fact or conclusion of law related to these allegations, nor evidence of any wrongdoing or misconduct on the part of Quincy,” according to the consent decree. 

The city also agreed to upgrade the industrial wastewater treatment system, including a list of specific projects. Repairs and upgrades to the system were already underway, Haley said.  

“We’ve got a good number of them already done,” he said. 

The agreement gives the city three years to finish upgrades; Haley said Quincy is on track to be finished within that time frame.