Hump gauge saved

Daily world article

MONTESANO — The county commissioners approved a contract with the U.S. Geological Survey on Monday to save a popular river gauge on the Humptulips River used by fishermen, farmers and emergency services personnel.

But County Commissioner Terry Willis says the county still doesn’t know how it’ll pay for the gauge.

Willis says the federal government will continue operating the river gauge through the end of next year. The county must pay for it by December 2010.

“This makes sure the river gauge stays operational as we continue to look for funds,” she said.

The county is supposed to pay $8,870 to operate the river gauge, but the funding was cut off in the commissioner’s approved operational budget. The total cost to operate the river gauge is $16,870. The federal government chips in the other $8,000.

The river gauge, the only one on the Humptulips, is used by fishermen to determine the depth and flow of the water.

It’s also used by farmers to determine how much water is in the river in the summer time and helps give emergency services personnel a heads-up for possible flooding during storm months.

Good news.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

good news

God to hear. Hopefully the county will find funding to keep the gauge working.

sweet!

Abu will be happy.

i knew all my emails and bitching might help..

If they charged an access fee to the site they could help defer the cost... I'm sure $20 per year isn't out of the question for someone that uses it quite a bit...

Hell It would only take a little over 400 subscribers to pay for it...

On the other hand, we already pay taxes which, of all things, should fund something like this.....a govt. run monitoring station.

I hardly use the site. Yesterday we saw like 1.75in rain here near Shelton. I'd be willing to contribute $20 to help fund the site.

The word, earlier was this had to come from the county? If the county has an account to accept fishers to help fund this site more people could contribute.

I made the suggestion to the folks who run the guage, that we really only need from October thru March at the latest. That takes care of the flooding.

Im somewhat surprise, that noone has seen any correlation between the humtuplips and flooding of other rivers in the area. Its not the same area, but you can set your watch by the activities of the snoqualmie and the skykomish. They flood within hours of each other and one will clear up, one day sooner than the other. Alot like the Satsop and the Nooch.

The farmers that pull water out of it, can put in a stick guage and drive the tractor out to the gauage and look at it.

Or they can spend the money to run a pipe in from the sacramento river.

True that! We pay federal taxes to fund USGS for exactly this type of public service. But these are extraordinary times, and many USGS gages are funded by the interests most affected by river elevations. Utilities that operate dams pay for the gages on rivers controlled by dams. Counties pay for a lot of gages primarily for flood warning purposes.

Sg

The day is coming when alot of these fluff federal services will have to be funded by other sources or just flat out cut...

personally, I think we need to start pulling some of this back to the grass roots level where we actually care about it...