[Skamania] 📦 A County Locked In A Box - Skamania BOCC June '26

The Skamania County Board of Commissioners rewrote the rules for rebuilding after a wildfire, giving burned-out families ten years instead of one. In this episode of Open Gorge, we walk through a busy June for the Skamania County Commissioners: a five-million-dollar storm road program, a mining company circling the Green River Valley, a sharpening fight with the Forest Service over timber money, and the first real talk of visitor fees as tourism strains the county.

In This Episode

• Title 22 is adopted: up to ten years to rebuild after a disaster, bigger footprints for small homes, RVs allowed on-site during a rebuild
• A road program reshaped by December's storms, and how the Wind River Highway detour is hurting Carson businesses
• The timber-revenue fight: "I want the floor to be fifty percent," a second school closure, and a state error that cost the schools
• Cascade Forest Conservancy's mine warning, and a county that says it's "locked in a box"
• Budget season opens with a "hold the line" message and a new finance system going live
• Tourism pressure turns toward fees; a shake-up at the Homeless Housing Council; Title III requests from six agencies
• Two retirements, and a July 30 deadline to comment on the Storedahl quarry

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch, with links to a year of past coverage, at skamaniadispatch.com
• Skamania County agendas, minutes, and meeting audio: www.skamaniacounty.org
• Comment on the Storedahl & Sons Quarry Draft EIS by July 30 (on the county website, at the library, or printed on request)
• Written comment to the Board: emerson@co.skamania.wa.us, by noon the day before a meeting
• Next meetings: Tuesdays, July 7, 14, 21, and 28, 9:30 AM, at the courthouse in Stevenson and by Zoom

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there, and welcome back to Open Gorge Podcast. I'm grateful to be back with you from vacation this week with our Scamania dispatch update. Today we're catching up on a busy June for the Scamania County Commissioners. Five meetings and a lot of ground. So let's take a walk through it together. We'll start with the one that touches home the most, if your house burns down. So huge update for those folks who are living in the national scenic area. For years, families who lost a home to wildfire in the gorge had just one year to file to rebuild. One year in the middle of the worst thing that ever happens to somebody. This month that changed. The commissioners adopted what is called the Title XXII update, and now you have up to 10 years to rebuild. And that's not the only thing that got easier. If you had a smaller home, you can rebuild a little bigger now. You can park an RV on your own land and live in it while you rebuild. So if you ran something like a bed and breakfast, that use also doesn't expire when you're putting the place back together. Been a long time coming. We've followed this update for about a year, from fire survivors pleading with the Gorge Commission to the vote this past January. County planners said that old one year deadline was the single biggest complaint that they had heard. Now it's fixed, and nobody spoke against it. So we're really grateful to see these changes incorporated in Tiscomania County's own code and practice. Now, moving to the roads. December storms are still shaping this county. On June 9th, the board adopted a road plan that chases about $5 million in grants, mostly to fix slides and washouts from that winter. Washugal River Road, Canyon Creek, Cook Underwood, and the old detour. A lot of paperwork exists just so the county can track this time and get paid back by FEMA. But here's the human cost of one road fix. Up in Carson, the Wind River Highway Slide Project means a long detour, and Public Works Director David Weymeyer says local businesses are hurting. Most are down about 30%. One little wine shop closed for good. The county asked the state for a turn lane to ease things months before the closure even started, and the state said no. Weymeyer's takeaway was blunt. Public Works won't hand a project like that to the federal contractor again. Alright, so now it's time to talk about timber, because it's the deepest current running under everything else in this county. Scamania is 92% federal land, a figure you've probably heard on this podcast before. You can't tax federal land, so for generations, timber sales on those national forests paid for local schools and roads. Now those sales have shrunk, and the commissioners are pushing back hard. One commissioner told the Forest Service, and I'm quoting, quote, I want 75%. I want the floor to be 50%. We're not there, unquote. So why does this matter so much right now? Because the Stevenson Carson School District just closed its second school, and the county's economic development director, Kevin Waters, who also serves in the state legislature, told the board that a drafting error in Olympia stripped roughly 30% of the school's federal timber money, costing the local district somewhere around a quarter million dollars. He says a fix is already drafted for next session. Here's a small human moment inside a big policy fight. Waters happened to sit next to U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley on a flight home from Washington, and Merkley gave him a strategy. Push Congress to tie two-year funding programs back together so they renew automatically instead of lapsing every few years. Sometimes that's how rural advocacy actually works, a seat assignment on a plane. Now staying with the theme of federal land and county money, let's talk about a mine. A group called the Cascade Forest Conservancy came to the board on June 30th. They warned that a Canadian company is again seeking permits to explore an open pit mine in the Green River Valley, way up in the remote northwest corner of the county next to Mount St. Helens. This group has beaten these drilling permits in court twice, and they asked the commissioners to say publicly that this is the wrong place for a mine. But the commissioners didn't say yes, one push back hard. With most of the county locked up in federal land, a second school closed, and the average price of a home near $580,000, he said Scamania County is, quote, locked in a box with very few options, unquote. And that tension is worth sitting with for a second, because in other places this conversation goes differently. In New York's Adirondacks, the state actually pays full local property taxes on its protected forest. So conservation there adds to the tax base instead of shrinking it. It doesn't have to be a fight then between a healthy forest and a solvent county. There are models where it's both. We put some of those models in the written piece if you want to dig in. Let's shift to the budget quickly because it sets up the rest of the year. The county is opening its 2027 budget with a simple message to departments. Hold the line. There's a brand new finance system going wive, which is why, if you notice, the June 23rd meeting had no bills to pay at all. The old system was already switched off. And notably, the county isn't even counting on that federal school money anymore. As one official put it, we get it. A few more things worth your time. On tourism, for the first time, the board is really talking about fees, not because they like taxes, they sure don't. The crowds are real. Kayak events at Stabler have grown from a few dozen people to a few hundred. We can traffic on Highway 14 is brutal. One Stevenson resident said it took over an hour just to get through the Cascade Locks area. One commissioner summed it up. At some point, we're going to get overrun, they said. On housing, there's a shakeup coming up at the Homeless Housing Council. Community Health Director Tamara Sissel, who served on it since 2010, said plainly, we need to do a shakeup. They want clear rules, better data, and a shelter that frankly looks better cared for. On wildfire dollars, six agencies made their pitch for Title III money, the Sheriff, two EMS districts, two fire districts, and the Underwood Conservation District, which does those free home wildfire assessments, I definitely recommend checking them out. Those awards get decided at a hearing in July. And two long-serving folks retired this month, Tana Berkmeyer, after more than 20 years with the Sheriff's Office, and Barbara Ayers, the County's Emergency Management and 911 Coordinator. We wish them both well. So what's next for you? If the store draw quarry concerns you one way or the other, your window to comment closes July 30th. You can find the document on the county website, at the library, or ask for a printed copy. Commissioners meet Tuesdays in July, next one coming up on the 14th, 21st, and 28th. And that Title III funding hearing is coming later in the month. But the full written version, with links to a whole year of our past reporting on the timber fight, the boat launches, and the shelter, hand it over to SkmaniaDispatch.com. You've been listening to a production of OpenGorge.org, home of Skmania Dispatch on the Click of Taddler. We believe that informed communities are stronger communities. To support our work and stay up to date on everything happening in the gorge, head over to SkmaniaDispatch.com to sign up for our newsletters. You can also find us on Facebook at Facebook.comslash opengorge. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on today's episode. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll talk to you next time.