"Moscow should rescind water appeal"

Queen Nancy fiddles while Whitman County suffers. From today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Moscow should rescind water appeal

Since 1994, the town of Colton has been working on a plan to increase the water rights for the town in order to support the growth of residences and businesses within the city limits of Colton.

In the past 10 years, the town of Colton has had an aggressive plan to conserve water use and, as a direct result, the per capita water use for the town has declined.

Due to the fact that we live in a dryland agriculture area, very few water rights are available for transfer to our town.

The town of Colton is limited in growth because of the lack of available water rights. Not the lack of actual water, just the piece of paper giving them the right to pump the water out of the ground.

In the past couple years a chance to purchase some additional water rights became available. As the process moved forward, the Hawkins Companies approached the town of Colton and, in exchange for the 22 acre-feet of McKeirnan water rights that the town of Colton was purchasing, Hawkins Companies would find 100 acre-feet of water rights for the town of Colton.

The town was well on its way to making this happen when the city of Moscow, led by your mayor, Nancy Chaney, stopped the whole process by appealing the decisions made by the Washington State Department of Ecology. The actions taken by the Moscow City Council has stopped dead in the tracks any more development and expansion of businesses in Colton.

The city of Moscow is now paying a water rights attorney from Helena, Mont., to represent them in this matter. We wonder if the residents of Moscow know how much of their taxpayer money is being spent to restrict the growth and development of our small community.

We would hope that the new City Council elected by the people of Moscow would reconsider the decision of the past council and rescind their appeal of the water right transfer for the town of Colton.

Greg Schultheis, president,

Art Schultheis, secretary,

SD7, Inc., Colton