Clinton to preserve Hanford Reach

WASHINGTON - President Clinton today will designate 200,000 acres of Eastern Washington sagebrush country around the Hanford Reach as a national monument to protect the last free-flowing stretch of the Columbia River from future development, administration officials said yesterday.

News of the announcement, which officials were working to finalize before Vice President Al Gore visited the Tri-cities area this morning, drew praise from environmentalists. But Eastern Washington officials condemned the move as a federal land-grab that runs counter to local public opinion.

There are 200,000 people in Grant, Adams and Benton counties, "most of whom are opposed to this designation," said Grant County Commissioner Deborah Kay Moore.

The 51-mile stretch of the Columbia around Hanford was never dammed because it runs alongside the Hanford nuclear reservation, which was a top-secret federal facility until recent years. As the last undammed portion of the Columbia above Bonneville Dam, it supports a healthy run of wild chinook salmon that, in turn, sustains tribal, commercial and sport fishing.

Fisheries authorities consider the reach to be a biological model that could be critical to restoring the salmon runs up and down the river. Ancient Native-American cultural and religious sites also are found along the stretch of river.

"This will be a tremendous action that saves a regionally and nationally significant treasure," Bill Arthur, the Sierra Club's director in the Northwest, said of the monument designation. "It allows for protection of a bigger part of this incredible landscape that you could not have achieved otherwise."

The Hanford Reach national monument will be double the size of the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, at 110,000 acres, and almost as big as Mount Rainier National Park at 235,000 acres.

Officially, White House and Gore-campaign spokesmen would say only that the vice president plans an "environmental event" when he ventures out to Eastern Washington.

But administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity told The Seattle Times that Gore, the Democrats' likely presidential nominee, would highlight the decision when he visits the Washington State University campus in Richland and cruises the river by boat with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

Gore also was expected to tout the creation of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument around Soda Mountain in Oregon.

Murray, D-Wash., whose father grew up in the Tri-Cities and who vacationed in the environs of the river as a young girl, has made protection of the Hanford Reach a top priority. She said she hoped the president's designation would preserve both the area's wildlife and its history.

"When they make the announcement," Murray said yesterday, "it will really change the Northwest view, the nation's view of this beautiful area, and it will make it a destination.

"It's been a lot of work by a lot of people and it truly, to me, is a historic moment," she said.

Local officials, however, see the designation as a political power play by the Clinton White House. By approving the Hanford Reach as a national monument, the president does not need to rely on support from a Republican Congress.

"We have been advocating shared management - state, local, tribal and federal," said Benton County Commissioner Max Benitz. "Now local citizens are being excluded from the process. I call that dictatorship."

Benitz said he and others have been denied a chance to meet with Gore during his visit today.

County officials support preservation of the river and of the spectacular white bluffs that line much of the north shore. But they argue that some level of irrigated farming should be allowed in the arid, sagebrush area across from the Hanford nuclear reservation.

Local and federal officials and citizens have negotiated for several years, trying to find a compromise on how to protect the area and who should control it. But Murray asked the administration to step in earlier this year when talks broke down.

Yesterday, Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., criticized the administration's action. In a conference call with reporters organized by the presidential campaign of Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Gorton chided Gore and accused him of interfering in local affairs. He noted that it was Gore's first visit to the eastern part of the state in years.

Clinton's monument designation for Hanford is likely to become a flashpoint in this year's elections.

In his re-election campaign, Gorton has sought to strengthen his backing in Eastern Washington by arguing that proposals to breach dams on the Lower Snake River and preserve the Reach are proof of the federal government's top-down intrusion in local affairs. And many residents have long complained that the federal government already controls too much land in that part of the state.

"The only justification for unilateral action would be an immediate threat to the Reach," Gorton said, noting that the Department of Energy still controls the area and that development is not an immediate concern. "The only emergency is that the president is going to be out of office soon."

Clinton has used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to protect more land in the continental United States than any other president except Theodore Roosevelt. This year alone, he has set aside 3 million acres through the expansion or creation of national monuments, including the Grand Canyon and the Sequoias in California.

"The president has done this as a last resort when Congress has failed to act to protect pristine national resources," said one administration official who confirmed the decision.

Clinton hadn't signed the Hanford declaration before he departed on a 36-hour trip to Japan and back for the funeral of former Prime Minister Obuchi, officials said. He was due back in Washington last night and expected to give final approval to the Hanford and Soda Mountain declarations upon his return.

Jim Watts, a local union official who had been tapped to broker a compromise between Tri-cities community leaders, environmentalists and tribal leaders, applauded Clinton's expected move.

"The community had their chance, and unfortunately they didn't take advantage of it," he said. "It's a unique, extremely unique piece of property. It is the last true wild section where salmon are spawning in successful numbers."

Watts also said he hoped the added attention because of the Reach's new status would focus public attention on the effort to finance cleanup of the Hanford nuclear site.

The town of Hanford was evacuated in World War II to make way for a top-secret nuclear-research facility. Senator Murray's father was wounded in the war, and he returned to find the town transformed. He told her preserving the area would be an appropriate gesture of thanks to the community.

"He said to me that he thought it was really wonderful, that I was giving back something to a community that had given so much," Murray said.

But Moore, the Grant County commissioner, offered a different perspective on that history. When the government took over the land in 1943, it paid "literally pennies" to the landowners, but promised it would be returned to farmers when it was no longer needed, she said.

"If you make a promise," she asked, "shouldn't you follow through?"

Times staff reporter Ross Anderson contributed to this report.

Kevin Galvin's phone message number is 206-464-2772. His e-mail address is kgalvin@seattletimes.com.