⛏ A Mine, a Closed School, and a County "Locked in a Box" - Skamania BOCC June '26

Enjoy the audio edition on Buzzsprout, or look for "Open Gorge" wherever you get your podcasts.

🏛 June 2026 Municipal Round-Up: Skamania County Commissioners

Agencies Covered: Skamania County Board of County Commissioners (five meetings: June 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30)

The Bottom Line: The county rewrote its rules for rebuilding after wildfires and other disasters, adopted a road program shaped by December's storms, and spent much of the month arguing, with the Forest Service, with the state, and with an environmental group, about the same underlying problem: a county that is about 78 percent federally owned, and 88 percent tax-exempt overall, can't pay its bills on tourism alone.

The Vibe: Patient but increasingly blunt. The commissioners praised partners freely, then told the Forest Service its timber program is "out of balance," told a mining opponent the county is "locked in a box," and told each other it may be time to talk about fees on visitors.

🔎 What Changed

Title 22 was adopted (residents burned out by disaster now get up to ten years to rebuild, not one). The Six-Year Transportation Improvement Program was amended to chase roughly $5 million in grants for storm-damaged roads. The Salmon Falls Bridge's 65-year-old paperwork problem got a fix. Julie Hester joined the Homeless Housing Council.

⚠ What Escalated

The Wind River Highway closure is hitting Carson businesses hard. The timber-revenue fight with the Forest Service sharpened into specific demands. A Canadian company is again pursuing exploratory drilling toward an open-pit mine in the Green River Valley. And a state drafting error cost the Stevenson-Carson School District a large share of its federal timber money.

🧭 What's Next

Budget season opens with a "hold the line" instruction around July 13. Title III public-safety awards get a public hearing in July. The Storedahl quarry comment period closes July 30. A second boat-launch summit lands in late July or early August.

Skamania County Board of Commissioners

🏚 Disaster Rebuilds: Ten Years Instead of One

The board held a public hearing June 16 and finished the job June 23 by adopting Ordinance 2026-02, which folds the Columbia River Gorge Commission's updated National Scenic Area management plan into county code (Title 22).

• Residents whose homes are destroyed by fire or another natural disaster now have up to ten years to apply to rebuild, instead of one.
• Replacement-size limits are now tiered: smaller destroyed homes can rebuild meaningfully larger, while the largest homes get modest increases.
• Homeowners can live in an RV on their own parcel while rebuilding.
• Established special uses, such as a bed and breakfast, no longer expire while the owner rebuilds.

This is the local-code finish line of a story we've followed for a year, hitting a turning point with the Commission's January vote adopting the disaster-recovery amendment. County planning staff called the one-year application window their single biggest complaint under the old rules, and said the county's comments were reflected in the final plan. Staff's one gripe, offered at the hearing: a new wall-height provision is confusing in practice, since "how are we supposed to determine the height of the wall" of a house that burned to the ground. Nobody testified; the change drew no opposition.

🚧 Roads: A Storm-Shaped Road Program, and Carson Pays the Price of a Detour

On June 9 the board adopted Resolutions 2026-15 and 2026-16, amending the Six-Year Transportation Improvement Program and the 2026 construction program after a hearing that drew no testimony.

• The amendment is estimated to expend $5,003,900 in grant funds, $82,000 in local road funds, and $10,000 in miscellaneous funds.
• Nearly every new project traces to the December 2025 storms (our January coverage of the winter damage): slide repairs on Washougal River Road, Canyon Creek Road, Cook Underwood Road, and Old Detour Road, plus a Big Buck Creek bridge fix, tracked through FEMA and state emergency-relief funding.
• The Washougal River Road project itself shrank to milepost 12.37–13.00 after 30 percent design found active landslide terrain; the consultant contract with Wallis Engineering grew to $527,440.30 to cover the redesign, survey monuments, and archaeological work near the recorded Salmon Falls Site.
• The county's 2025 bridge report says about 69 percent of county bridges are in good condition, about 23 percent carry load restrictions, and Butler Eddy Bridge remains fully closed awaiting replacement money.
• On June 30 the board adopted Resolution 2026-18, using the county's decades of maintenance (under RCW 36.75.070) and a 2000 survey to finally clean up the missing title record for the Salmon Falls Bridge and its connecting roads, with quit-claim easements to be signed by two adjoining owners rather than going to court.

The TIP is where storm damage becomes fundable projects; the county engineer told the board that several sites were added mostly so staff time on FEMA negotiations can be tracked and reimbursed. Meanwhile the Wind River Highway slide project is squeezing Carson: the EDC reported most businesses down roughly 30 percent and one wine shop closed outright. Public Works Director David Waymire has pushed the federal contractor for better signage and hoped to reopen the uphill lane for the July 4 weekend, but WSDOT refused a turn lane at the SR 14 intersection that he had requested months before the closure, saying only that the approval process takes time. Public Works said it would not hand project management to Western Federal Lands again.

🌲 Timber: "I Want the Floor to Be 50 Percent"

The timber fight ran through two meetings: a long, pointed Forest Service exchange on June 16, and a commissioner's June 30 report-out of a separate follow-up meeting with the Gifford Pinchot.

• Commissioners pressed the Gifford Pinchot to make traditional timber sales, the kind that send revenue to county schools and roads, at least half its program, with 75 percent as the goal. One commissioner put it plainly: "I've been beating this drum since I've been here... I want 75 percent. I want the floor to be 50 percent. We're not there."
• Forest Service figures shared June 30 (presented at the meeting, not yet independently confirmed): recent years planned about 32 million board feet; 2026 is at 36 million; the stated target reaches 68 million by 2030, alongside a forest-wide thinning program of roughly 3,600 acres a year for two to three decades.
• The commissioners' leverage argument: the National Scenic Area Act says the Gifford Pinchot and Mount Hood forests are supposed to offset what the Scenic Area removed from county tax rolls, the same tax-base math behind May's confrontation with Friends of the Columbia Gorge, and stewardship or Good Neighbor Authority sales, whatever their forest-health value, send little money to schools.
• The stakes got a face this month: the district has now closed its second school (we covered the first closure and the $1.85 million budget cut in February), and EDC Director Kevin Waters, who also serves in the state Legislature, told the board a state drafting error stripped roughly 30 percent of Secure Rural Schools timber money from about 200 districts statewide, costing Stevenson-Carson roughly a quarter million dollars (figures pending written confirmation). Waters says a corrective bill is already drafted with the state superintendent and DNR.
• From a chance airplane seat next to U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, Waters brought home a strategy: push Congress to recombine SRS with the PILT program so both renew automatically, undoing a split that dates to about 2012.

This is the deepest current in our Skamania coverage, running from last September's "timber tensions" through December's budget adopted under timber fears. It connects school closures, the hiring outlook, and the county's refusal to budget SRS at all ("if we get it, we get it," as the budget discussion put it; DNR's state timber sales were described as what has been saving the budget). The Forest Supervisor didn't dispute the goal and offered to connect Skamania with a California county that built a master stewardship agreement program from scratch, a possible long-term structural fix both sides seemed genuinely curious about.

⛏ Green River Valley: A Mine Pitch Meets a Cornered County

Making its first appearance in our coverage: Cascade Forest Conservancy, the Vancouver-based nonprofit formerly known as the Gifford Pinchot Task Force, briefed the board June 30 that a Canadian company has again approached the BLM and Forest Service about exploratory drilling toward a possible open-pit mine in the Green River Valley, in the county's remote northwest corner against the Mount St. Helens monument.

• CFC has defeated drilling permits in court twice (2014 and 2021, both on NEPA grounds) and helped win the Green River a 2023 Outstanding Resource Water designation.
• Executive Director Molly Whitney asked the county for two things: a public statement that this is, in her words, "the wrong place for an open-pit mine," and support for a transparent public-comment process on any new permits.
• The commissioners made no commitment. One pushed back hard, calling the county "92 percent controlled by the USDA" between the Scenic Area and the Gifford Pinchot (a regulatory-reach claim; federal ownership is about 78 percent). With a second school recently closed, and an average home price near $580,000 requiring roughly a $60-an-hour wage, the commissioner's summary was blunt: "Skamania County is locked in a box with very few options."
• CFC's answer to the economics: the local Forest Service's own read, relayed to the board, is that the county would likely receive no direct receipts from a mine anyway.

The exchange was less about copper than about who gets to veto economic activity in a county where the veto players rarely bear the cost. It's worth noting this isn't the only way the conversation can go: in other regions conservation groups actively defend or replace a county's lost tax base (New York pays full local property taxes on its Adirondack forest preserve, and "community forest" models keep protected land producing revenue) rather than treating a rural county's fiscal worry as rhetorical. Both sides kept it civil and left the door open; Whitney's closing offer was "I'm always here for the hard conversations."

💰 Budget Season Opens: "Hold the Line," and a Finance-System High-Wire Act

• The county's new Tyler ERP finance system went live with financials the first week of July; accounts payable in the old system shut off in mid-June, which is why the June 23 meeting had no vouchers at all.
• Payroll stays on the old spreadsheets for one more budget cycle; HR will build the 2027 salary schedule with a roughly 3 percent placeholder.
• The auditor's call-for-budget letter goes out around July 13. The board's guidance: status quo, hold the line, and departments must budget big known costs (software, building projects) in advance instead of asking mid-year.
• The board scheduled a public hearing for Resolution 2026-19, the year's first supplemental budget; the finance office hopes to keep it to three supplementals for the year.
• On June 9 the board created a Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney classification, a retention promotion for a ten-year deputy who had maxed out his pay scale, with a possible supplemental request to follow.

We documented the squeeze itself in our special report on inflation in Skamania County, and watched the board adopt the 2026 budget with a 1 percent levy increase in December. What's new is the posture: not budgeting SRS at all, treating DNR timber sales as the lifeline, and pre-positioning departments for a lean 2027 before the first budget sheet is filed.

🏕 Tourism Pressure: From Complaints Toward Fees

• The long-promised boat-launch stakeholder meeting happened June 17. The consensus surprised no one who has followed the permit-fee overhaul in December or the spring guide-access fights at Drano Lake: the problem is overuse, traffic, and parking by everyone, not guides versus recreational anglers. A second session comes in late July or early August, before fall fisheries.
• The county is refusing commercial permits for stand-up paddleboard and kayak outfitters at its launches because state RCO grant terms dedicate those facilities to motorized watercraft.
• A neighboring county commissioner pitched a regional idea: a 1 percent hotel-motel tax increase dedicated to emergency services. Skamania's board was cool to any new tax but kept circling the theme, kayak events at Stabler growing from dozens to several hundred participants, I-84 construction pushing weekend traffic onto SR 14, and one Stevenson resident who reported taking over an hour to get through the Cascade Locks area. One commissioner's summary: "at some point we're going to get overrun."
• Also on the table: Waters' stalled bill, from his legislative seat, to let small counties spend existing lodging-tax money on search and rescue, which commissioners preferred to any new tax, noting the county already leaves lodging-tax dollars unallocated every year. It's the same cost-of-rescue logic behind the $1,000 reckless-rescue fine that public pushback paused in late May.
• The Columbia Gorge Museum reports visitation down about 50 percent; a commissioner suggested relocating the Dog Mountain Shuttle stop to the museum lot, a possible landing spot for a shuttle whose funding has been in limbo since January.

Our coverage has tracked boat-launch congestion since spring as it grew from a "guide situation" into a "user situation." June is the first month the conversation consistently reached for revenue and enforcement tools rather than signage and warnings. Watch this one through budget season.

🏘 Homeless Housing: A Shake-Up, and a Shelter That Needs Support

• The board accepted Jennifer Pauletto's resignation from the Homeless Housing Council on June 16 (she is also departing as WAGAP's executive director) and appointed Julie Hester on June 23.
• Community Health Director Tamara Cissell and Commissioner Farris both want the council restructured: clearer bylaws, membership rules that survive staff transitions, and shelter metrics more useful than "bed nights," a statistic the board complained can count the same bed twice in a day. Cissell, who has sat on the council since 2010, said plainly: "we need to do a shakeup."
• The shelter itself drew criticism: a non-running van sat out front for weeks, garbage overflowed, and the yard went unmowed. The county's lease with WAGAP dates to 2012 and staff want it refreshed with the incoming director.
• Summer heat response is thin: WAGAP's cooling kits (backpacks with water, cooling towels, small fans, and sunscreen) were still unordered as of June 24, with roughly 50 kits planned across two counties. Community Health is convening work on after-hours cooling access: kiosks, churches, community halls, and volunteer drivers for homebound seniors.

This board's frustration has been building on the record since March's look at the county's aging shelters and April's collision of food-security hurdles and shelter concerns. June turned frustration into a work plan: rewrite the rules, enforce the five-year-plan deliverable the county pays WAGAP to produce (the plan due in 2024 took all of 2025), and make the contract relationship legible again.

🚒 Title III: Six Agencies Make Their Case

On June 23 the county's Title III partners presented ahead of a July award hearing (no money moved yet; requested amounts below are from the meeting recording):

• Sheriff's Office: $74,270.40, citing 23 emergency responses on federal lands so far this year, and returning $3,000 to the fund from a surplus dive-trailer sale.
• Skamania County EMS: $75,000 for 24/7 response to federal lands, from swift-water rescue to trail carry-outs.
• North Country EMS: a similar reauthorization, with hopes of staffing the Pine Creek station around the clock this summer.
• Fire District 1: $10,500; Fire District 3: $5,000, mostly for wildland hose after falling off DNR's grant radar.
• Underwood Conservation District: $34,000 for 40-plus home wildfire-hazard assessments, the popular mobile chipper, and two community-scale fuel projects, building on its fuel break on North Bonneville's east side.

 Title III is the "other half" of the Secure Rural Schools money, and it comes with hard choices we've covered before: last August the board weighed wildfire prevention against rescue gear, and this spring's contracts moved out under federal red tape. Final invoices are due around July 10 so the county can compute carryover; awards follow a public hearing later in July.

📋 Also This Month

• Two retirements, two clocks: Tana Berkemeyer closed more than 20 years as a Sheriff's Office civil deputy (June 23), and Barbara Ayers wrapped her run as Emergency Management manager and E911 coordinator (June 30).
• Northwestern Lake, rumor-checked: commissioners publicly corrected "weird information" circulating about the park: the county's plan with the Conservation Fund and Forest Service would write a conservation restriction into the deed so no future board could sell or develop it, with an MOU with the Yakama Nation covering trails and native plantings.
• Public comment, June 16: Stevenson's Mary Repar urged scrutiny of the Storedahl quarry Draft EIS, arguing it is thin on water impacts and that "Highway 14 has more patches on it than it has pavement." Commissioners responded with logistics: the comment period runs through July 30, four times the standard 30 days, and copies are available on the county website, at the library, and printed on request. (Our May coverage has the West End's earlier EIS concerns, including the roughly 150-person open house.)
• Milfoil, raked: county crews hand-raked the washed-up milfoil off Home Valley Park beach, and new permits (with the Port participating) will finally allow treating the boat launches directly.
• More federal boots: Forest Service law enforcement covering the Gorge doubles in July with two academy graduates, and the Dog Creek encampment at milepost 55, flagged in our January public-lands coverage, is down to two trailers after arrests.

⚠️ Editor's Note: Broader Context

Secure Rural Schools (SRS) compensates counties with large, untaxable federal forests. It is not permanent law: Congress must reauthorize it, and each lapse hits Skamania twice, once in the county road fund and once at the school district. The month's legislative intelligence came from a June trip to Washington, D.C., by EDC Director Kevin Waters and Stevenson-Carson school district representatives, reported to the board June 23. By Waters' account the group met with Senator Patty Murray, Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Senator Cantwell's staff, agriculture committee staff, and the National Association of Counties, and heard the same warning: the coalition behind SRS is shrinking as property-rich counties elsewhere switch allegiance to PILT. Senator Jeff Merkley's advice came separately, from a chance airplane seat next to Waters on the flight home.

Washington's DNR manages trust lands deeded by the county in 1937 whose timber revenue benefits local services; commissioners spent June pulling the original deeds from microfiche and drafting a public records request so the county can check DNR's numbers against its own before the state's "sustainable harvest calculation" locks in future harvest levels. And the county's multi-county amicus brief challenging new state stream-buffer rules (Resolution 2026-14, May) was filed June 17; the first hearing was set for July 2.

🛠 Jargon Buster

• TIP (Transportation Improvement Program): the rolling six-year list of road projects a county must adopt to qualify projects for state and federal grants.
• SRS / Title III: federal payments to forest counties; Title III is the slice counties may pass to search and rescue, wildfire preparedness, and emergency services on federal land.
• PILT (Payments in Lieu of Taxes): federal payments compensating counties for untaxable federal land. The program does not sunset the way SRS does, but Congress still has to fund it year by year, and short years are prorated; counties are lobbying to make the funding permanent and automatic.
• GNA (Good Neighbor Authority): lets state DNR crews run projects on federal forest; gets work done, but sends little revenue to county schools.
• ERP: the county's new "enterprise resource planning" finance software (Tyler Technologies), replacing decades-old systems.
• DEIS: Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the study-and-comment stage of a big project review, like the Storedahl quarry.
• .09 funds: a small slice of state sales tax rural counties keep for economic development projects.

How to Join & Learn More

The Skamania County Board of Commissioners meets Tuesdays at 9:30 AM at the courthouse, 240 NW Vancouver Ave., Stevenson, and by Zoom (meeting ID 627 669 8258; phone 1-346-248-7799). July meetings: July 7, 14, 21, and 28. Agendas, minutes, and audio: www.skamaniacounty.org.

Written comment reaches the board via the Clerk of the Board at emerson@co.skamania.wa.us by noon the day before a meeting. Storedahl DEIS comments are due July 30; the document is on the county website, at the library, and available printed on request.