We’re fortunate that spring rains and snowpack this year have kept streams from dropping to the record low levels we saw during last year’s drought.

But the reality is that stream flows still aren’t where they could be if our community came together to get desperately-needed infrastructure built, not only to keep more water in our streams for fish, but also to protect entire communities from the risk of a flooding disaster like we experienced less than a year ago.

Community collaboration can achieve these improvements, and simultaneously deliver certainty for water rights, with far less time and expense than the antiquated, conflict-driven and divisive model the Washington State Department of Ecology has falsely promoted as the best and only approach.