Yakima Basin INtegrated Plan

The Yakima River Basin covers 6,000 square miles in Central Washington and is home to 370,000 residents, including 10,000 enrolled members of the Yakama Nation. Decades of development have created a $4.5 billion agricultural economy and $1.2 billion outdoor recreational economy but devastated salmon populations.

 

The Yakama Basin Integrated Plan is a coalition of local, state, and federal agencies, the Yakama Nation, and NGO partners, collaborating on a shared suite of goals and projects to:

• Improve water supply reliability for irrigation, municipalities, and fisheries

• Restore fisheries throughout the basin

• Protect and restore habitat

• Support climate resilience for the economy, communities, and environment.

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Since 2013, more than $700 million in federal, state and local funding has been effectively and efficiently applied to Integrated Plan projects including:

• Helping conserve 65,000 acre-feet of water

• More than 80,000 acres of forest and shrub-steppe protection

• Juvenile fish passage at Cle Elum reservoir and additional fish passage occurring throughout the basin

• More than 1,500 acres of floodplain restoration initiated

 

My role in the Integrated Plan has been to secure funding, manage contractors and staff budgets, oversee the development of a communications strategy, support legislative outreach and advocacy, and help guide plan implementation as one of two environmental representatives on the Executive and Implementation Committees.

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This project is occurring while I am employed at American Rivers.