✨🧁 A Spider Called Sparkle Muffin - Skamania BOCC, PUD, & Weed Board 7/28 - 8/4

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🏛 August 2026 Skamania County Round-Up

Agencies Covered: Skamania County Board of Commissioners (July 28, August 4, August 11) · Skamania County PUD No. 1 (August 4) · Skamania County Noxious Weed Control Board (August 3)

The Bottom Line: The PUD shut the door on new commercial water hookups in Underwood and may not reopen it until the end of the decade, while the county divided a Title III pot that came up $74,000 short, settled three years of labor cost in ninety seconds, and learned that its entire emergency stockpile is unusable.

The Vibe: Two and a half weeks of hard arithmetic. Nobody got everything they asked for, the utility was doing its hardest work with an empty chair in the room, and the smoke outside canceled the one night everybody was supposed to be together.

🔎 What Changed

• The PUD adopted Resolution 2905, a moratorium on new non-residential water connections in Underwood, and mailed the resolution plus an explainer to every parcel on the system.
• The commissioners awarded $218,955.35 in Title III money across six agencies after requests totaling $293,144.09.
• The county approved three-year labor agreements for two Public Works bargaining units and a matching pay package for non-represented employees, all covering 2027 through 2029.
• The county recognized Judge Randall C. Krog for 25 years of service, and confirmed that its noxious weed program can start banking mileage reimbursements toward replacing a worn-out truck.

⚠ What Escalated

• The Underwood moratorium's own paperwork gives three different answers about when it ends.
• The Cascade Renewable Transmission comment window drew fire at the county board, where a Stevenson resident asked the commissioners to take a position and questioned whether an earlier hearing was properly noticed.
• The High Lava Fire closed trails a county youth crew had just spent the summer reopening, and the closure now runs to the end of October.
• National Night Out was canceled for unhealthy air, and the county's entire COVID-era protective equipment stockpile was declared unusable in an emergency.

🧭 What's Next

• August 18: the PUD expects to formally award the Carson Water Treatment Plant contract; budget workshop at 8:00 a.m. (We'll follow up with these in the next issue).
• August 26: the EFSEC comment window on the transmission line's land use consistency closes.
• September 8: the Noxious Weed Control Board takes up its cost-share program, which has never once been used.

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Skamania County Board of Commissioners

Three meetings in this window: July 28, August 4 and August 11. Commissioners Brian Nichols (District 1, chair), Rob Farris (District 2) and Asa Leckie (District 3) were seated throughout.

💰 Title III: seven asks, one pot, $74,000 short

The county held its Title III public hearing on July 28 with a gap sitting on the table. Available: $187,770.65 in reauthorized funds plus $31,184.70 carried over, for $218,955.35. Requested by partner agencies: $293,144.09. The shortfall was $74,188.74.

No one testified. The commissioners then worked through the split in open session, which is worth noticing, because this is the kind of arithmetic that usually disappears into a workshop. They did not vote that day: the approved minutes record that the board closed the hearing and made no decision, directing the clerk instead to balance the figures and bring them back. The decision came the following week.

Their method was simple, and they used it in public: each commissioner filled in his own column of numbers, the clerk averaged the three columns, and the average became the award. One commissioner opened by moving the "big three" (the Sheriff's Office, North Country EMS and Skamania County EMS) toward $75,000 each and proportioning the rest downward. Another wanted the fire districts zeroed out entirely, pointing at the treasurer's report: "I looked at the treasurer's report this morning and Fire District 1 is sitting on $800,000." A third balked at cutting the Underwood Conservation District to nothing, noting UCD had actually shown up to present this year and that its ask was for wildfire defensible space work: "cutting them off cold turkey is maybe a detriment to our residents, especially on the east fire zone."

The averaging is why the final numbers look the way they do. The fire districts were funded despite at least one commissioner arguing for zero, and UCD survived at roughly a quarter of its request.

The final award, adopted by motion on August 4:

• Skamania County EMS: $70,150.00
• Sheriff's Office: $69,693.35
• North Country EMS: $60,498.00
• Underwood Conservation District: $8,746.00
• Fire District #1: $6,684.00
• Fire District #3: $3,184.00
• Total: $218,955.35

One commissioner asked for something critical for next year: that the funded agencies come back and tell the board collectively how the money could be spent to best effect, rather than each arriving with a separate ask. "I would love to see feedback from the group that is providing the service as to how best to utilize these funds to move forward."

A structural note the board raised itself: Title III flows from the federal Secure Rural Schools program, and as one commissioner put it on August 11, "SRS is still not reauthorized again." The pot the county just divided is not a pot the county controls.

🗣 Public comment: "The river has given enough"

The only public comment across the three meetings came on August 11, from Stevenson resident Mary Repar.

She asked what the board intends to do about the land use consistency certificates the applicants need for the proposed transmission line under the Columbia, and told the commissioners she believes an earlier hearing was improperly noticed. She called the river, "already burdened beyond belief by all of us wanting something from her. We want fish. We want recreation. We want irrigation. We want, we want, we want." Her closing line: "The river has given enough. It is time for us to give back to her."

The commissioners took no position and asked no questions, which is standard: their own rules say the board will not engage during public comment. But the ask is now on the record, and the state's comment window closes August 26. Our July coverage of the energy siting council explains why the line will not go through county permitting at all, which is the reason a request like Repar's has to be made at a commissioners' meeting rather than a hearing.

⛏ A deadline that passed quietly

One item inside this window got no discussion at all and deserves noting: the comment period on the draft environmental impact statement for the Storedahl gravel quarry closed on July 30. Public Works flagged the date in his July 28 report and nothing further was said. We covered the run-up to that deadline in our late-July round-up, where commenters urged the project to "die on the vine." What happens next is the substantive comments being folded into a final EIS, on no announced schedule.

🌲 Timber: $5 million under contract, and a spider named Sparkle Muffin

DNR District Manager Brian Poehlein and Region Manager Scott Sargent brought the county's timber revenue picture on July 28, and it is healthier in the near term than the long term.

• Four sales are under contract, representing roughly $5 million in timber revenue to the county running through October 31, 2029. (DNR said "about $5 million"; a commissioner restated it as $5.5 million a moment later and was not corrected, so we use the figure DNR gave.) Just over $1.4 million has been wired to date.
• Another $95,000 or so is locked in before the end of October because a sale expires.
• Two sales, Geode and Ricochet, have purchasers who say they are going in this fall. DNR conservatively estimated they might move half their volume before snow, adding roughly $660,000 at what DNR called a medium degree of confidence. That would put calendar year 2026 near $1.8 million.
• Kingfisher sold shortly after DNR's April visit and should bring around $2.9 million net to the county, but it is a three-year contract not expiring until October 2029, and the purchaser has Ricochet to finish first. Nobody expects Kingfisher activity this year.
• Three more sales go to auction between now and mid-2027: Amethyst in December 2026, Pronghorn in April 2027, and Sparkle Muffin in May 2027, together worth a minimum of about $1.8 million. Yes, that is the name DNR gave the county. Asked about it, DNR said it is named after a spider, which is true: Maratus jactatus, a peacock spider, is commonly called sparkle muffin.

The commissioners' real question was about the cliff after 2030. "Listening to some of the recent Board of Natural Resources meetings, some of the comments by some of the members make us concerned for what's going to happen after 2030 and beyond." DNR's answer was that the picture holds through 2029, that fiscal 2030 and 2031 start to show the effect of policy changes now in play, and that the next sustainable harvest calculation for the west side has not started yet because DNR is still working the east side. Translation: the county's timber money is solid for about four more years, and after that nobody at the table can tell you.

👷 A three-year labor package, done in a single meeting

On August 11 the board approved, each on its own unanimous motion and without debate on the record:

• the 2027 through 2029 OPEIU Local 11 Public Works collective bargaining agreement;
• the 2027 through 2029 OPEIU Local 11 Managers Unit collective bargaining agreement; and
• 2027 through 2029 compensation adjustments, longevity program updates and personnel policy changes for non-represented employees.

The quiet on August 11 is the product of noise earlier. A commissioner reported on July 28 that "this past week we've been involved in union negotiations." Three years of labor cost for two represented units and the non-represented workforce were settled in about ninety seconds of public meeting time, which is normal and also the reason the negotiation itself is invisible to residents.

🚑 The stockpile that cannot be used

The August 4 workshop on the county's emergency supplies produced the bluntest finding of the window. The county's local emergency response coordinator for public health reported that after talking to Washington's Department of Health medical logistics coordinator, the recommendation was to get rid of the county's stockpile.

The reason is not that the goods are gone. It is that the county cannot prove how they were stored. Without temperature and humidity control, DOH will not green-light the county to use its own expired supplies in an emergency. DOH will, however, swap them for its own expired stock, because DOH can document the storage conditions. So the county would give up its own gowns and masks and receive back state-warehoused ones of similar age, and those it could use.

What is in the container is a monument to March 2020. The county has a 40-foot CONEX holding everything bought during COVID, including roughly 117,000 N95 masks. One official described the buying: "they were literally buying them out of box trucks and parking lots. And we were going and getting anything that we could." Another recalled the panic on the demand side, carefully: "there was some panic going on where people were saying I need a thousand of these, and so they were just, not that they were using them, they were taking them."

The state's own planning target is PPE for 20% of the population for 30 days. The commissioners discussed setting a higher local floor, batting around 25, 30 and 45 percent, before agreeing that the target has to come from the response agencies rather than from a number picked in a workshop. Next steps: bring it to the Emergency Services Council, get burn-rate data from the COVID inventory sheets, and settle a target inventory in the next month or two.

One practical outcome, available now: DOH has given the county a letter permitting the use of expired N95s for smoke events. The county has them, and said plainly that anyone who wants some can have them.

🏚 The Grange: $15,000 raised, $1 million needed, and a rumor knocked down

GRACE, the nonprofit formed to restore the old Grange building at the fairgrounds, came to the August 4 meeting at the six-month mark of its lease. Its report: a board formed, insurance in place, the Stevenson Downtown Association signed on as fiscal sponsor, the kitchen and grounds cleaned, vegetation that was damaging the structure removed, a small patio and porta-potty installed as a rest stop for hikers using the parking lot, a website launched, and $15,000 raised.

A structural engineering study says the building is salvageable. It also says what that means: a new foundation, some roof material, and shear walls the building does not currently have, which requires pulling the shiplap siding off. The siding is lead paint, so it has to be mitigated. The group's own estimate for a full restoration into a low-cost community hall is "potentially up to a million dollars," aimed at groups that cannot pay $1,000 a day for a venue.

Two things are in GRACE's way, and the board addressed both.

The first is the lease. GRACE wants ten years, because most state and federal grants require ten years of site control. The county prefers six months, and not out of coyness: under the county code, any lease beyond six months must be advertised and bid, and as staff explained, a competitor can simply outbid you. "Anybody else can come in and say, sure, you're going to pay $500 or whatever, I'll give you $501, and I have to start the process all over again." The board's landing spot was to continue six-month renewals while GRACE builds a plan and a cost estimate, with Public Works pricing out what a ten-year lease would actually cost, starting with the county's insurance exposure.

The second is a rumor, and it was aired directly: that the Grange and that corner of the fairgrounds parking lot will be sold to developers. GRACE's treasurer put it as a condition of continuing at all, saying the group did not want to keep going "just as an exercise in futility." The commissioners knocked it down. There is a feasibility study, funded by a CURB grant, examining moving the county shops. Moving them would cost $40 to $50 million and require 10 to 15 acres the county does not own. One commissioner: "It's not feasible to move the county shops. That's an emotional hot-button topic that's being used around the community at this point. I'm pretty confident that I'll never see it moved in my lifetime." He added that a consultant in a recent visioning workshop had said the same thing first.

A third obstacle is more prosaic and may be the binding one: the building is full of county storage, and Public Works has nowhere else to put it.

🚗 Traffic, launches and a parking lot that probably will not happen

The east end recreation problem got two different treatments in two weeks.

On July 28, a commissioner floated a private landowner's offer of property across from the Spring Creek entry for a parking area, plus a possible pedestrian path under the railroad bridge so wind sports users would stop crossing Highway 14 on foot. The regional transportation council and the railroad were both reported supportive, the railroad because people have started parking on its right-of-way. The idea was to use lodging tax money for a county lease.

It got a cool reception from his colleagues, and the objections are worth recording because they will recur. One was flatly opposed to a lease: "If a private individual wants to capitalize on an opportunity, that's one thing, but to do a lease, and I don't think it would pass for National Scenic Area anyway. It's essentially a parking lot. It's the same thing we were running into with the Cape Horn trip." Another was open to helping the landowner but not to the county taking on the risk. No motion was made, and nothing has been decided.

On August 4 the more procedural version showed up: a second traffic safety stakeholder meeting on the Drano and Wind River launches produced a punch list rather than a plan. Traffic counters to get real data on launch use and peak times. Possibly hiring a traffic control company on forecast-heavy days so congestion does not shut down SR-14. Reconsidering the overnight launch closure, which exists to deter camping but which guides work around anyway. Finding alternative parking, with some guides already running their own shuttles. The commissioner's framing was that they want tests running before the fall season, which starts at the end of this month.

Separately, the county is pursuing Target Zero high-visibility enforcement funding with the Sheriff's Office and the regional transportation council, aimed at overtime patrols in the crash-data hot spots: the Upper Washougal, Washougal River Road, and Wind River, the last mostly for summer motorcycle traffic. A contract was to be signed in the following week so the money could be used this year if it materializes, with a further contract in September for the next program year.

🏛 The rest of the file

Judge Krog, 25 years. The August 11 meeting opened with a recognition of Superior Court Judge Randall C. Krog for 25 years of service: deputy prosecuting attorney beginning in 1999, then private practice with much of it in public defense, then Superior Court Judge Pro Tem, then elected Superior Court Judge in 2017. From the board's statement: "Over the past 25 years, Judge Krog has served this county in many roles, as a prosecutor, defense attorney, and now as our Superior Court Judge."

The coroner's numbers. Coroner Angie Hollis reported that through week 30, the county had 18 deaths under coroner jurisdiction, about one every 1.6 weeks. Twelve went to the Clark County medical examiner, but the billable count is 10 because external examinations count as half. The county is contracted for 15 a year; this year's contract is $29,793, a 3.2% CPI increase. The resident/non-resident split is running about 72/28, lower than last year, in the season when it usually rises. The coroner has started tracking a category that never shows up in the count: people injured in Skamania County who are flown out and pronounced dead elsewhere, most often from Mount St. Helens. "Folks still are dying here, but they're being transported away."

Money. Through June, current expense had collected 51.25% of budgeted revenue and spent 45.49%, which is close enough to the halfway mark for finance staff to call it normal. Two things distort the picture: a $500,000 grant and $150,000 in picnic shelter roof money that appear on neither side of the ledger yet, and a $1.2 million Sheriff's Office radio grant that a commissioner flagged as skewing the department's expenditure average. Solid waste is the sore spot. It is barely covering its own costs at 51%, the current tipping fee is $185 a ton, and staff told the board it will "probably have to go up to probably $200 a ton" in the fee schedule adopted at the end of this year. Asked whether the legislature had helped, the answer was no: "They actually made it worse. They got rid of some programs that would help us."

Housekeeping. County budgets were due to the auditor on August 10. The state auditor offered to start the accountability audit early, having split it from the financial and federal single audit for the first time in twenty years; the county politely declined, citing the new ERP rollout and budget season, and pushed it to fall. The federal single audit must be uploaded to the federal clearinghouse by the end of September. The clerk is scheduling Planning Commission interviews, with one set and three more being arranged, and hopes to have the seats filled by September. Elise Howard's resignation from the Klickitat-Skamania Developmental Disability Advisory Board was accepted with thanks on August 4.

Development signal. Public Works Director David Waymire told the board on July 28 that pre-application meetings for subdivisions have picked up noticeably, several of them in Carson. His caveat matters: "Just because they're having a pre-application meeting doesn't mean it's happening. That's just the first step." But he also noted the county has not seen a subdivision in quite some time and has had a couple this year already, with perhaps three more in pre-application. In the same report: slide repair work is running ahead of schedule with crews working Saturdays, culvert replacement and grading continue on Little Soda Springs and Skamania Mines Road, and the Fairgrounds sign restoration on Highway 14 is finished. Also, for the person who keeps asking: rumble strips are not coming. They would tear the blades off the county's snowplows and shorten the life of the road.

Forest Youth Success. The WSU Extension program brought its whole crew to the August 4 meeting: 18 youth, six of them mentors with added leadership duties, working since July 7 on fuels reduction, invasive species removal, brush clearing and trail maintenance. Trails worked this season included Dry Creek, Bunker Hill, Lava Butte, West Crater and Soda Peaks. The last two are inside the footprint of the High Lava Fire, and the Forest Service announced trailhead closures there the day before the meeting. The crew's trail work may end up helping the firefighters using those routes. Commissioners said afterward that all three of them are looking for a way to stabilize the program's funding, which currently depends on the same unreauthorized federal money as Title III.

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Skamania County PUD No. 1

🚱 Underwood: no new commercial hookups, and three different answers about when that ends

On August 4 the PUD commission adopted Resolution 2905, declaring a temporary moratorium on new non-residential water connections on the Underwood water system. Residential connections continue, reviewed case by case. The board then mailed the resolution and a plain-language FAQ to every parcel on the system, roughly 500 of them, on August 5.

The engineering behind it is straightforward. The Department of Health approved amendments to Underwood's water system plan, extending its approval through May 5, 2033, and that approval establishes that the system is currently overconnected. Two projects fix it:

• Huber Reservoir. A new 250,000-gallon tank replacing one that is undersized, leaking and at the end of its life, roughly doubling storage for Pressure Zone 3 and adding fire-flow capacity. Construction is nearly complete. Funded by a $276,862 Public Works Board grant, a $1,568,884 Public Works Board loan, and a $1,030,000 state legislative appropriation sponsored by Representative Kevin Waters and Senator Paul Harris. Staff told the board on August 4 that the reservoir should come online in two or three weeks, pending VOC sample results, a chlorination cycle and biological testing.
• Galligan Booster Pump Station. Built in 1978, sitting at the base of the Underwood bluff, pumping every drop of the community's drinking water more than 900 vertical feet to the top. The replacement raises capacity from 270 to 380 gallons per minute, funded with $2,400,000 in federal money the PUD credits to Congresswoman Gluesenkamp Perez. It is in design and permitting, with construction planned for 2028 to 2029.

Together the two projects free up 189 additional equivalent residential units.

Here is the thing a reader needs and the paperwork does not settle. Three documents give three different end conditions for this moratorium. The July 21 minutes record the project manager describing the need for a moratorium "until the source project is complete." Resolution 2905 itself says the moratorium runs "until such time that system capacity supports new growth." The FAQ mailed to property owners says non-residential connections "will be allowed again when the Huber Reservoir and Galligan Pump Station projects are both complete."

Those are not the same promise. The reservoir is weeks away. The pump station is not scheduled to finish construction until 2029. If the FAQ is the operative version, Underwood property owners are looking at a commercial connection freeze lasting roughly three more years, and that is also the number staff used at the table: "we expect construction complete within about three years."

To their credit, the commissioners pushed on exactly the reader-facing weakness. One objected to the FAQ's answer on new residential connections, which says applications are "still being considered": "That's not a real positive, I don't think. I would look at that thinking, OK, I might or might not be able to get one." He pressed for a number. Staff declined to give one, explaining that the constraint is maximum day demand during peak summer irrigation rather than a fixed count, and that the five-year average of new connections in Underwood is "just one or two" a year. Their judgment was that Underwood's large, hard-to-subdivide lots make a rush unlikely, but they wanted the room to evaluate "if something unexpected happens. County changes zoning law, something like that."

Why non-residential specifically? Staff were direct: "the vineyards and stuff, they use much, much more water than the typical residential connect does." Underwood residential customers already average 283 gallons a day with a peak-summer maximum daily demand of 808 gallons, against Carson's 193 and 476. A three-quarter-inch connection is a three-quarter-inch connection, but as staff put it, "you can get a lot of water out of the quarter-inch connect, but you're running it 24 hours a day, and that's what some of the non-residential do."

A commissioner asked for a monitoring commitment to go with it, and the reasoning is the most quotable thing in the meeting: "the word moratorium is just a terrible word. I think it's right, I think it's appropriate. But I want to make sure that the public knows that we're still monitoring, and if we're running six months behind, give them plenty of notice." Staff agreed to carry updates through the newsletter and the website and to put the project completion estimates on the FAQ.

One question got a clean answer. Asked whether a customer willing to pay for the infrastructure could speed things up, staff said no: "We already have the funding. We just need to design and build the project." The delay was never money. The PUD knew about this limitation years ago and spent that time chasing grants rather than building.

For anyone counting systems: Carson is approved for 2,571 ERUs and has 616 spare.

🪑 Two commissioners doing three commissioners' work

Resolution 2905 was adopted by a board with an empty seat. Commissioner Liz Green died on July 10. Elizabeth "Liz" Marie Green of Willard was 64, had served 12 years as an elected Skamania PUD commissioner, and had been president of the Washington Public Utility Districts Association, which is why a WPUDA delegation came to the July 21 meeting to speak about her. The August 4 resolution carries her successor's line as "Vacant, Vice President," under President Dave McKenzie and Secretary Dan Boyes.

Public comment on August 4 was given over entirely to her. A former PUD commissioner from another county called in to remember her: "I remember when she was president, she would often refer to the point of, well, we have so much in common and how that brings us together." He then recalled disagreeing sharply with another commissioner, and Liz Green's response to him. "Even what makes us different brings us together." His closing thought, that in a divisive time it was "something that I'll hang on to forever," drew agreement around the table. A memorial service is set for August 15 at Grace Baptist Church in White Salmon.

The board also worked through the mechanics of replacing her, and this is genuinely new ground for them: "this is our first time going through this too, so please be patient." Six people have applied. The process, changed within the last couple of years, runs in two steps. The board makes a nomination, which starts a 15-day window during which the public may put forward other names, and only then does the board make the final appointment. The outer deadline is 90 days from the day Green stopped serving, which puts it around October 10 or 11.

One commissioner argued hard for speed, and tied it directly to the vote they had just taken: "My personal feeling is that we owe it to the people to expedite that. Like this decision we just made with this moratorium. That's a very serious thing. We just did it with only two people, and it'd be better clearly if there were three. And that's going to always be true until we get this done."

The other was not ready to name someone before talking to all six, noting that a nomination "does send a signal" to the public whether or not it is legally final. They landed on interviews first, a nomination targeted for the end of August, the 15-day clock running into mid-September, and a special meeting to make the appointment if the regular calendar does not line up. General Counsel Rick Hughes was to advise on the format, specifically whether the interviews can be individual or must be a public candidates' night.

Both commissioners said, on the record, that they were impressed by the field. "I find every single one of them capable of the job. So I think the utility is in good shape."

That process reaches its next step today. The PUD posted notice of a special meeting for Thursday, August 13 at 1:00 p.m. at PUD headquarters, 1492 Wind River Road in Carson, "to review candidate qualifications for an elective office nominee." The board may go into executive session. The public may attend in person or by Zoom.

💧 Six bids, and one came in $1 million under estimate

The Carson Water Treatment Plant went out to bid for about six weeks and drew six bids, which staff called close to unheard of for a project this size. The low base bid was $12,197,025, more than $1 million under the construction estimate, and all six bids landed within about $2.5 million of each other. Two additive alternates are still being evaluated: a generator at $328,485 and a canopy walkway between structures at $156,165. Engineers are reviewing the bid package, with formal award expected at the August 18 meeting.

Also from the August 4 staff reports: the electric cost-of-service rate study is nearly finished, with one scenario examining dropping the property tax and folding it into rates. And the PUD will not need a federal single audit this year, having deliberately kept expenditures under the $1 million threshold by using other funding for the Pressure Zone 3 work. Staff put the savings at roughly $15,000, since a single audit adds about 50% to an audit that normally runs around $30,000.

Budget workshops are set for 8:00 a.m. before the regular meetings on August 18 and September 1.

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Skamania County Noxious Weed Control Board

The Weed Board met August 3, and if you want to understand why your neighbor got a letter about the yellow flowers on their fence line while the county's own roadside is waist-deep in the same plant, this was the meeting.

🌼 The right-of-way problem

Board members spent a long stretch on tansy ragwort along county roads, with Bell Center Road named repeatedly: from the county line down to the Canyon Creek Road junction and on past the dump, plus Mount Pleasant and stretches near the Washougal River. The county has one weed sprayer for the entire county, and he had not reached the west end before the plants bloomed. By then, as staff noted, spraying does not help.

The equity problem was stated plainly by a board member who had stopped to talk to a woman pulling weeds by hand near her mailbox: "we can't hardly ask people to go out there and pull it when the county right-of-way is contributing." Another described a landowner who got a notice and wrote back asking what the county was doing about its own ground.

The staff response was practical rather than satisfying. The program can bill county roads for treatment, and does whenever it works on them, but that pulls crew time off contracted work. What they committed to was earlier notice next year: mapping the problem spots now, getting letters to adjacent landowners before bloom, and, as the coordinator put it, making "a note to make sure that the county road guy gets out sooner on the west end."

That message traveled. Eight days later, at the county commissioners' August 11 staff reports, the weed program coordinator raised the same issue with the board that controls the road department: "We've also had some complaints about county right-of-ways. It's a little late. Once it starts blooming it's kind of too late to spray. So we're making some notes for next year so that county roads can get out and spray earlier, and then we can always follow up if we need to with manual treatment." That is a fast turnaround from a citizen board to the elected body, and worth watching to see whether next spring's schedule actually moves.

A related note for anyone about to make an angry phone call: the coordinator told commissioners that when residents see spraying under power lines, "they think it's us, and so we're the first ones they call." That work is the PUD's.

💵 A cost-share program nobody has ever used

The board's education and outreach specialist brought a problem back from the field. Landowners getting notice letters keep asking what the program does to help, and the honest answer is: not much, in dollars.

The cost-share program reimburses 50% of the cost of herbicide, capped at $50 per landowner per year (and $100 in any five-year period) on parcels under five acres, or $150 a year ($300 in five years) on parcels over five acres. It carries a $3,000 annual program cap, first come first served, and requires an on-site survey and a written integrated pest management plan before and after treatment.

It was drafted around 2024, adapted from other counties. In all that time nobody has ever used it. The staff report on why was blunt: "They said $50 was nothing." One landowner with a large parcel was told about the $150 tier and was unmoved.

The counterargument came from the chair, who framed it against the alternative: "What if you tell them, well, we're going to assess a monetary fine on you, and it's going to be $1,000? The $50 is a pretty good deal, isn't it?" Staff also noted that a backpack sprayer loan program exists and has never been taken up either, though people do rent the program's weed wrenches.

The dollar amounts go on the September 8 agenda for review.

⚖️ Enforcement: is a fine a better deterrent than doing the work?

The board reviewed a draft detection and enforcement procedure flowchart: notify the landowner, work up a control plan, inspect, then a certified-mail order to act within 10 days, an affidavit of mailing that serves as prima facie evidence of notice, then a civil infraction, then fines or county-performed control charged as a lien against the property.

The chair proposed a per-case record form kept in a binder by district, capturing location, landowner, weed, dates, and the date the county weed list was published in the newspaper, so that "we've covered all the bases if we go through to enforcement action." The board agreed to add the civil infraction and appeal steps to the written policy.

The live debate was about which tool actually works. The board has one real case this year: the program force-controlled a property and filed a lien through the auditor's office, and the property is expected to go to auction. The chair's read is that this is the wrong incentive: "we controlled this guy for a couple thousand dollars, which was probably a bargain for him. It may be more of a deterrent if the guy's facing a $10,000, $20,000 fine." Staff pushed back on two grounds: the state administrative code caps the fine, and "when you issue a civil infraction, you have to be prepared to go to court. So there's a lot more admin on that side of it." A lien, meanwhile, only pays off if the property sells.

The board deferred a decision until it can get the county's legal advice in the room.

📋 The rest

• 2027 budget approved and forwarded to the commissioners. Proposed expenses $473,720, projected revenue $400,870, leaving a $72,850 ask of the county, down from $105,160 for 2026. The drop is a grant-timing artifact, not a reduced need: a two-year Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation grant paid out entirely in 2025, so money being spent in 2026 cannot be shown as 2026 revenue. The program expects to reapply in 2027.
• A new Class A weed turned up on the county's west end at the Weyerhaeuser and Gifford Pinchot boundary, reported by Clark County. The coordinator surveyed for two days with the Gifford Pinchot's forest invasives program manager, mapped what they found and treated it. It is a two-hour drive each way, through Vancouver, and that side of the forest has been under-visited. Expect more trips.
• Rush skeletonweed, a Class B, keeps pushing west. The program used the state agriculture department's boat to work island populations, and staff also joined a state crew at a wetland mitigation site near Beacon Rock where a Class A species has resisted control for more than a decade. The site cannot be released until it is dealt with. The description of the work: walking in mud to their knees, pushing through wapato "up to our face." They are going back with kayaks.
• Forty-five proposals to change the state noxious weed list are in play this year, enough that the state committee needed two meetings in July to work through them, with the state board meeting in September.
• Staffing is four seasonals, three of them returning. A fifth hire took another job offer before starting, so the coordinator and the outreach specialist have been filling in on field crews.
• At the fair this week, the Weed Board booth is in the exhibit hall with a kids' poster contest, a weed identification quiz, and native plants from the Underwood Conservation District. Bring them a weed and they will identify it.

Audio for the August 3 Weed Board meeting was recorded by a Columbia Gorge Documenters volunteer, who introduced himself during public comment. See the credit at the foot of this edition.

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⚠️ Editor's Notebook: Broader Context

• Two of this month's biggest local decisions were made by incomplete boards. The PUD adopted a moratorium affecting an entire community's commercial development with two of three commissioners seated. Skamania County is separately trying to fill four Planning Commission seats. Neither situation is anyone's fault, and both change what a vote means: with two members, one abstention or absence is a deadlock.
• A moratorium is not a denial, and it is not a permanent condition. Resolution 2905 suspends the sale of new non-residential connections. It does not disconnect anyone, does not stop residential applications, and does not affect the Carson system, which has 616 spare ERUs. What it does do is put commercial and agricultural development in Underwood on hold for a period the PUD's own documents describe three different ways.
• Federal money the county does not control is holding up two local programs, yet again. An unfortunately familiar refrain in coverage of Skamania. Title III funds the Sheriff's Office, both EMS agencies, the conservation district and both fire districts. Secure Rural Schools, the law that authorizes it, is again unreauthorized. The same funding stream underwrites Forest Youth Success. The county can allocate this money carefully, and did, but it cannot make more of it appear.

🛠 Jargon Buster

• Title III: one of three spending categories under the federal Secure Rural Schools Act, which compensates timber counties for lost federal harvest revenue. Title III is the narrow one: it can only be spent on search and rescue, community wildfire protection planning, and a few related emergency services.
• ERU (Equivalent Residential Unit): the water industry's standard measuring stick: how much water one typical single-family home uses. A water system's capacity is expressed in ERUs so that a winery, a school and a house can be compared on one scale.
• Overconnected: a water system that has more connections than its documented source and storage capacity can support at peak demand. It does not mean taps run dry today; it means the state will not approve growth until the math works.
• Prima facie evidence: evidence sufficient to establish a fact unless someone rebuts it. The Weed Board's affidavit of mailing means notice is presumed given, and the burden shifts to the landowner to prove otherwise.
• Class A / Class B noxious weed: Washington's state weed list ranks by how established a species is. Class A species are rare enough that eradication is required statewide; Class B are established in some regions and controlled where they are still containable.

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📅 How to Join & Learn More

• Skamania County Board of Commissioners: Tuesdays, 9:30 a.m., 240 NW Vancouver Ave., Stevenson, and on Zoom (Meeting ID 627 669 8258). Written comment goes to the Clerk of the Board, Roni Emerson, at emerson@co.skamania.wa.us or P.O. Box 790, Stevenson WA 98648, by noon the day before a meeting. Agendas, minutes and audio: skamaniacounty.org
• Skamania County PUD No. 1: regular meetings first and third Tuesdays, 9:00 a.m., 1492 Wind River Rd., Carson, and on Zoom. Questions on the Underwood moratorium: (509) 427-5126 or info@skamaniapud.com.
• Skamania County Noxious Weed Control Board: monthly, 10:00 a.m. Next meeting Tuesday, September 8, moved off the first Monday because of Labor Day. Find them this week at the county fair, exhibit hall.
• Comment on the transmission line: the land use consistency comment window closes August 26. Submit at comments.efsec.wa.gov; project documents are at efsec.wa.gov.

Audio of the August 3 Skamania County Noxious Weed Control Board meeting was recorded and contributed by Columbia Gorge Documenters, powered by Uplift Local, and is used under CC BY 4.0. Many thanks to Documenter Bernard Yoo for his recording and notes.