Working Together to Manage Our Water

The Chehalis Basin Partnership formed to bring people together to find ways to reach shared goals for the Chehalis River Watershed. Our approach is to be collaborative and engage diverse interests in the watershed. We focus on finding voluntary, cooperative, non-regulatory approaches to addressing water resource challenges.

The Partnership’s founding members recognized that water can cause problems – whether there is too much of it or not enough in the right place at the right time. They also recognized that there were emerging opportunities for local input on managing water throughout an entire landscape.

The Partnership prepared the Chehalis Watershed Plan, released in 2004, which aspired to design a flexible and informed system to manage water that maximized the involvement of local residents. In 2020, it completed a Watershed Plan addendum to address the impacts of rural residential wells on streamflow.

Today, Partnership members are working to find solutions to water issues in five priority areas:

  • Planning
  • Public Involvement
  • Water Quality
  • Water Quantity
  • Habitat

Mission

“To implement a management plan that will result in effective, economical, and equitable management of the water in the Chehalis Basin to sustain viable and healthy communities and habitat conditions necessary for native fish.”

Join Us!

The Partnership meets the 4th Friday of each month. Look for meeting details to see whether we will be meeting in-person or virtually only.   All meetings are open to the public.

If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to contact Watershed Coordinator, via our “Contact Us” page.

Chehalis WaterSmart Report – now available!

Learn how water conservation by cities and their residents can protect streams and benefit city infrastructure in a new report by a University of Washington Program on the Environment student. You can access the full report here. Blue Water

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