Bridges, airport and CRP rate atop county's federal concerns

Better funding for bridges, a fix for the runway at the Pullman-Moscow Airport and considering road-side erosion in Conservation Reserve Program contracts topped the list of concerns brought by local officials to the regional director of Congresswoman Cathy McMorris-Rodgers.

Mike Poulson, agriculture and natural resource policy director for McMorris Rodgers, met with officials from Whitman County and the city of Pullman during the county commissioners’ regular meeting Monday morning.

To much of their concerns, Poulson said deregulation could be the answer, instead of more funding.

“Nothing is more important right now than fiscal management,” said Poulson.

Biggest spending item discussed is a long-standing plan to re-align the runway at the Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport.

Airport Manager Tony Bean said the $60 million project was hung up when Congress changed Federal Aviation Administration funding from 95 percent of a project to 90 percent.

Bean said the present configuration of the airport leaves a poor approach with hills blocking larger planes from using the runway. He said the FAA has mandated the airport change its runway and is currently operating under a safety exemption.

“We don’t have a choice. It’s either fix it or we lose our air service,” he said.

The smaller federal match leaves the locals with a $6 million commitment to move the runway. Washington state’s aviation department has in the past paid half of the local match. Bean said he was unsure if the state would increase its contribution with the decreased federal funding.

“This is the problem we get into when we set spending levels for our good years,” said Poulson.

Pullman City Supervisor John Sherman said the airport could have raised the matching funds through increased passenger facility charges to $7. Congress, though, capped that fee at $4.50.

Whitman County Public Works Director Mark Storey said a stagnant level of funding for bridge repairs have coupled with increased permit requirements to lower the ability of those funds to cover maintenance costs on the county’s 340 bridges.

“We’re only building and replacing a fraction of the bridges we were 10 years ago,” said Storey, who stressed the importance of making timely and regular repairs to bridges. “With bridges, if you wait until the problem becomes extremely visible, it’s probably too late.”

He added federal rules that limit spending to repair bridge approaches at 15 percent of the project’s cost are insufficient. The county routinely spends about 25 percent of bridge cost fixing approaches, he said.

Federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also require rigorous rounds of permitting on repairs over water, said Storey.

Poulson said the best place to save costs may be in pressing those agencies to put together more efficient permit processes.

Commissioner Greg Partch mentioned changes to CRP that would pay farmers to enroll strips of land along ditches that run beside county roads as a way to keep down road maintenance costs.

With Whitman County’s hills, said Storey, having more grass land between farm operations and ditches would keep soil from going into ditches and then streams.

Poulson said he wanted to hear from farmers whether they would be in favor of adding a column to keeping soil out of ditches to the CRP score.

“They’re the ones that ultimately pay the bills to clean those ditches out,” he said.

“No. The amount of taxes farmers pay doesn’t clean those ditches out,” said Commissioner Pat O’Neill.

Regardless, Poulson said, the environmental community sets the bar for how CRP offers are scored under the Environmental Benefit Index.