Declaring Drought Pt 2
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. Weather-wise, we got lucky this year with cooler and wetter conditions on the heels of last year’s drought. But moving forward, could we be more efficient in how make those declarations.
Washington Policy Center’s Pam Lewison says our drought monitoring system could use a little tweaking …
LEWISON … “So, you have the, quote-unquote, regular water supply advisory committee and they meet on a regular basis. There’s not necessarily a calendar, per se, but they do have regular meetings to evaluate how things are looking during the water year.”
From there, Lewison says we see a little over-kill …
LEWISON … “And then there’s this, sort of, “executive committee” that gets called in, in the event that there’s sort of a water emergency. And that committee is the one that says, okay now we have a drought situation and we need to pass it on to the governor.”
Lewison says it seems a little silly that two committee’s monitor the same thing …
LEWISON … “One of them looks at it on an ongoing basis. And then they have to call in this other committee to make the final say? Why not just have them be one large committee and have kind of a deadline of sorts to say, okay we’re going to declare a drought emergency or not.”
Lewison says our definition of what constitutes a drought is also a little too broad and could be simplified.
