⛏ A Quarry on the Ropes, a Budget Reset, and Power Lines in the Gorge - Skamania BOCC 7/7 - 7/21

🏛 July 2026 Skamania BOCC Round-Up

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

Agencies Covered: Skamania County Board of Commissioners (meetings of July 7, 14, and 21, 2026)

The Bottom Line: A run of short, summer-quiet meetings that mostly teed up bigger decisions. Commissioners closed the books on the old finance system with a first supplemental budget, seated a batch of volunteers on county boards, and watched two long-running fights inch forward: the Storedahl gravel quarry, whose comment window closes July 30, and the arrival of the state's energy-siting council in the National Scenic Area.

The Vibe: Light turnout, a lot of "thank you for volunteering," and one pointed public comment. Quiet in the room, busy underneath.

🔎 What Changed

• Adopted Resolution 2026-19, Supplemental Budget #1, the first budget cleanup run through the county's new BARS accounting structure. Staff called it mostly "truing up" the numbers, with only about $30,000 coming out of current expense.
• Seated three volunteers on the Board of Equalization (Brenda Bush, Jeff Payson, and Susan Haynes) and appointed Kaitlyn Conrath to the Homeless Housing Council Advisory Board.
• Passed Resolution 2026-20, distributing federal forest-fund receipts from the Treasurer's trust, and signed a snow-plowing contract for two Forest Service roads.
• Forest Youth Success is running this summer with about 18 youth enrolled, after a spring federal-contract rejection nearly canceled the program.

⚠ What Escalated

• Stevenson resident Mary Repar told the board the Storedahl quarry Draft Environmental Impact Statement is "one of the not best" she has had to comment on, and urged the project to "die on the vine" before the July 30 deadline.
• The state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) is now reviewing the county's Scenic Area code for a transmission-line project, described as EFSEC's first project inside the National Scenic Area.
• A commissioner reopened the Homeless Housing Council's bylaws to push the group from a "community update" body toward "task-based" work.

🧭 What's Next

• Storedahl DEIS comments close July 30.
• The Title III funding workshop, pulled from the July 21 agenda because staff data was not ready, will be rescheduled.
• National Night Out is August 4 (Public Works will take Critical Area Ordinance questions), the county fair runs in August, and the EFSEC Scenic Area interlocal is expected back before the council's September meeting.

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Skamania County Board of Commissioners

⛏ The Storedahl Quarry: "Dies on the Vine"

The West End gravel fight is now a race against a calendar. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the J.L. Storedahl & Sons quarry has been out for public comment since April 1, on an unusually long 120-day window, and that window closes July 30.

At the July 21 meeting, Stevenson resident Mary Repar used her public comment to press the case against it. She called the document "one of the not best DEISs that I've had the misfortune to have to comment on," said it has "so many gaps," and pointed at the road it would feed onto: "I don't know if you've been on the roads lately, but there are way more trucks on our side of the river... the highway has not been properly paved for a number of years. We've got more patches than we have pavement on Highway 14." She estimated the quarry would add "500 more trucks," invoked the West End sub-area plan that residents helped shape, and said she hopes the project "dies on the vine in the future as comments come in."

This is the same blind spot commissioners themselves flagged this spring, when roughly 150 people packed a DEIS open house and the board noted the study said little about the quarry's impact on an already-underfunded Highway 14 West. The county cannot force WSDOT to weigh in, and it is not the permitting authority here, so written public comment before July 30 is the main lever residents have. (For the earlier chapters of this fight, see our June recap.)

🧹 The state's cleanup backstop:

One question residents keep raising is what happens if a pit gets dug and then abandoned, so we decided to look into it. In response to questions from the Dispatch about this process, the Washington Department of Natural Resources' lead regulatory geologist, Rian Skov, helpfully walked us through the state's safety net.

First, a status check: DNR says it has not received a surface-mine reclamation permit application for this site, which is normal, because county land-use permitting generally comes first. If the project does advance, state law (RCW 78.44) requires the operator to post a performance security, essentially a bond, before disturbing more than three acres or digging past 30 feet. The detail that matters: DNR, not the operator, sets that amount, and it is pegged to what DNR itself would have to pay a third-party contractor to reclaim the site, not the operator's own estimate. The bond is re-checked at DNR's annual inspections and grows as the pit grows, and it is held until reclamation, stable slopes and appropriate revegetation, is finished. If the operator defaults or goes insolvent, DNR says it can seize the security to hire the work done and pursue the operator for any shortfall.

⚡ Power Lines Meet the Scenic Area

A quieter item in the July 21 department reports may matter more over time. Public Works Director David Waymire told the board the county has worked out an interlocal agreement, together with the state Attorney General's office, the Columbia River Gorge Commission, and Prosecuting Attorney Adam Kick, that would let EFSEC, the state's Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, review the county's National Scenic Area code as part of the Cascade Renewable Transmission line project.

Waymire described it as EFSEC's first project inside the Scenic Area: "they've not done a project in the scenic areas, so they have to review the scenic area code." The state would reimburse the county for staff time spent helping. A commissioner who attended EFSEC's July 15 meeting said he asked what engagement is required with local government now that the state is taking the lead role on siting and zoning compliance, and "they didn't have an answer for me right away."

When EFSEC certifies an energy project, it can preempt local zoning. Having the state read the county's Scenic Area rules into that process, rather than around them, is the county trying to keep a seat at the table on a project it does not control. The interlocal is expected back for the board's final approval before EFSEC's September meeting. This one is caption-tier and still moving, so treat the project name and the parties as provisional until the signed interlocal reaches the board.

The commissioners' interlocal is the local, land-use corner of a much larger EFSEC fight. For the whole picture, what is driving the region's power demand and why Skamania keeps pressing for answers, see our companion edition, The Nuclear Plant Wants Power, Skamania Wants Answers.

💵 A Budget Tune-Up, and the Forest-Fund Split

On July 21 the board held a public hearing on Supplemental Budget #1 (Resolution 2026-19) and adopted it with no one signed up to testify. It is a milestone of sorts: the first supplemental the county has produced on the new BARS account numbers that came with its new ERP finance system, so, as the finance officer put it, "it does look a little bit different than in the past." Most of it was "truing up" the budget, and nearly every request was backed by revenue rather than the general fund. Only about $30,449 came out of current expense, according to the recording.

A week earlier, the July 14 consent agenda carried Resolution 2026-20, distributing federal forest-fund receipts from the Treasurer's trust, the timber money the county has spent much of the year worrying about. The same agenda added a snow-plowing contract for Forest Service Roads 90 and 25, a batch of Community Health contracts (a new tuberculosis contract and two consolidated-contract amendments with the state Department of Health), and the 2026 indigent-defense contract for District Court.

For the routine-approvals crowd: vouchers ran about $457,000 (July 7), $310,000 (July 14), and $675,000 (July 21), with payrolls near $800,000 and $780,000, all per the recordings and all pending the minutes.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 New Faces on the County's Boards

July was appointment season. The board:

• Reappointed Brenda Bush (Position 1) and Susan Haynes (Position 4) and appointed Jeff Payson (Position 2) to the Board of Equalization, the citizen panel that hears property-tax valuation appeals. Each was the only applicant, which drew a recurring note of thanks from the dais: "in the era of hard to get volunteers, I appreciate the want to be on the board."
• Appointed Kaitlyn Conrath to the Homeless Housing Council Advisory Board (July 7).
• Heard a WAGAP update from new Executive Director Julie Hester (July 14), who has taken over from Jennifer Pauletto at Washington Gorge Action Programs.

That housing council is itself in transition. A commissioner reported July 21 that he had "opened the bylaws up" to reset the group's function, "trying to drive into more of a task base" rather than "a community update group," and had asked Public Works to start refreshing the county's aging leases with WAGAP.

🚧 Public Works: Turn Lanes, Parking, and a Hatchery Guardrail

The Carson traffic saga continued. Commissioners are still pushing WSDOT for a turn pocket at the Hot Springs intersection on SR 14, and one said he had sent video of a "very close call" there to a legislative contact working the issue. Closer to town, Public Works restored parking spaces at the Carson four-way and painted new lines to stop drivers from treating a downhill stretch as a turn lane: "before we'd have a T-bone, which has really happened."

Two other Public Works items are worth a resident's attention. The department opened a 60-day public comment window, far longer than the 10 days required, on a Critical Area Ordinance update that will mirror the City of Stevenson's; a workshop and hearing will follow, and staff invited questions at the August 4 National Night Out. And after repeated crashes into the ponds at a WDFW salmon hatchery on the upper Washougal River, a 25 mph stretch the director called a frequent crash site, the county met with the state about a guardrail and other fixes.

🏞 Recreation: 850 Racers and a Growing Downwind

The Gorge Downwind paddle race ran July 16, sending more than 850 racers from Home Valley Park down to Hood River. A commissioner who volunteered as a safety boat called it a growing annual event and an economic shot in the arm, noting Stevenson "was packed." It is the friendlier face of the same story the board has spent months on: the Gorge's recreation economy is booming, and the boat launches and highways are straining to keep up. A second boat-launch stakeholder meeting is still expected in late July or early August, before fall fisheries.

🌲 Around the County: A Youth Program Survives, and a Weed-Law First

Two smaller items from the department reports are worth flagging, both from the recordings. First, some good news on a program that nearly died this spring: Forest Youth Success, the WSU Extension summer work-and-learning program for local teens, is running, with about 18 youth enrolled this season, after a federal contract rejection in the spring put the whole summer in doubt.

The Extension report had a grace note, too. Staff thanked two private donors, Kate Bertash and Jarrod McClean, for covering a gap the grants can't: they took five of the students to Coastal and outfitted them head to toe, work boots and all, so those kids showed up on the first day as ready as anyone. The Mount Adams Institute also gave about $5,000 for programming, even as Extension said, with real sadness, that the Institute is winding down as a longtime partner.

Disclosure: one of the two donors named, Kate Bertash, writes this newsletter. We are including the moment anyway, partly because it is on the public meeting record, and partly because it was our coverage that helped us get to know this program. It's a small example of something I hope our work helps readers connect with: the local programs that show up in this coverage often have specific, unglamorous needs, a pair of work boots, a line a grant will not cover, that an ordinary reader could actually help fill.

Second, the county's Noxious Weed Program, under manager Emily Stevenson, reported filing what it described as its first full enforcement lien under the state weed law (RCW 17.10), after doing abatement work a landowner would not, and flagged Class-A false brome spreading on the Gifford Pinchot near Beacon Rock and Hamilton Mountain. Small, but it is the rare moment a county actually uses its weed-enforcement teeth.

🏛 In the Room: Legislators, a Stalled Appointment, and Executive Sessions

On July 7 the board met with Katie Whittier of CFM, the county's lobbying firm, and 17th Legislative District members, Senator Paul Harris and Representative Kevin Waters, and heard that a governor's appointment the county is waiting on remains stuck ("Governor Ferguson won't take action").

The same morning also brought a Gorge Commission update from Executive Director Krystyna Wolniakowski, and two threads stood out. The Commission is holding a rulemaking hearing at its July 14 meeting on its own open-meetings, public-records, and conflict-of-interest rules, the end of a roughly two-year effort to reconcile Oregon's and Washington's requirements into one set. Wolniakowski flagged it because the county has filed public-records requests to the Commission about those very rules; one commissioner, noting how easily boards slip into "serial emails and serial meetings," said he was glad to see the Commission tighten up its open-meetings practices. Wolniakowski also previewed "Gorge 2030," which is not a scheduled project yet: if the Commission can find the funding, she hopes to spend the 2027–29 cycle reviewing just a short list of management-plan topics, ADUs among them, rather than reopening the whole plan. Tight budgets, she noted, have already pushed the Commission back to mostly Zoom meetings.

July 14 was the busiest gavel-to-gavel: the board added a letter of support for a tribal-led salmon fish-passage and culvert-replacement project (no county money, just backing), then went into two executive sessions, one on an employee's performance and one on possible real-estate acquisition. No action was reported out of either. (The tribe's name and the project's exact name are garbled on the recording, so we are holding them until the typed letter confirms them.)

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⚠️ Editor's Note: Reading a Month Without Minutes

We cover 30+ agencies here at the Dispatch. To be able to manage this weekly volume, rather than listen to recordings or watch videos live, we create transcripts with the help of MacWhisper. This helps us quickly digest hours of media, and more easily surface the meatier parts of a meeting. But this means we rely on two sources for writing our editions: the transcript and written records, and sometimes one arrives before the other.

This edition is built on the county's typed July agendas plus these automated meeting recordings. Skamania publishes approved minutes weeks after the fact (as do many other agencies managing such a busy schedule) tucked inside a later agenda packet. Where we could pin a number or other specifics to the county's own typed document, we did. Where we could not, we said so. The one place this matters most is money: every July voucher, payroll, and budget figure here is recording-tier and will be reconciled when the minutes post.

🛠 Jargon Buster

• Supplemental budget: a mid-year adjustment to the adopted budget, to add revenue and spending authority the county did not have when the annual budget passed.
• BARS: the state's Budgeting, Accounting and Reporting System, the standardized account codes Washington local governments must use. New codes are why this supplemental "looks different."
• Board of Equalization: a citizen board that hears appeals from property owners who think the Assessor over-valued their property.
• Title III / Secure Rural Schools (SRS): federal payments to timber counties that backfill lost logging revenue; the county has spent 2026 bracing for shortfalls in it.
• DCR (Designated Crisis Responder): a specially trained mental-health professional authorized to evaluate someone for involuntary treatment. The board designated Katelyn Murphy, LICSW-A, as one on July 21.

📍 How to Join & Learn More

The Skamania County Board of Commissioners meets most Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. at 240 NW Vancouver Ave. in Stevenson, with a Zoom option (Meeting ID 627 669 8258). Agendas, minutes, and audio are posted at skamaniacounty.gov. Written public comment goes to the Clerk of the Board (emerson@co.skamania.wa.us).

To comment on the Storedahl quarry Draft EIS before the July 30 deadline, see the county's project page.

Read the full written Dispatch and past Skamania BOCC coverage at SkamaniaDispatch.com.