Chelan Valley residents zero in on Open Space Vision at third community meeting

CHELAN - The Lake Chelan Community Open Space Vision held their third meeting on Thursday, May 11 in cooperation with the City of Chelan, Lake Chelan Trails Alliance, Chelan-Douglas Land Trust and the Trust for Public Land. 

The objective of the meeting was to discuss how the trail verification went, - from the people who volunteered to do so at the last meeting in January - vote on a vision statement, discuss the vision scenario and come up with possible ways to implement standards for water quality and expanding access to local parks. 

“In the last month, a bunch of volunteers looked at 18 potential trails that were assessed on health and equity, if they can provide access to a wide range of people, how difficult it would be to make it an official trail, the user experience and what the current condition of the trail was,” Program Manager of the Trust for Public Land Amy Morris said.

One of the volunteers, Garth Donald, manager of Stormy Mountain Brewing, gave the only report on a few trails he verified on Bear Mountain. 

“It has really good territory and amazing views in all directions, it is family friendly, wide open and can be turned into a shallow grade trail,” Donald explained. “The complex itself is enormous, parking could be a problem but for a little work we could have some spectacular, untapped trails to work with.” 

The attendees then voted in favor of the vision statement drafted by Guy Evans of the Lake Chelan Trails Alliance and Lake Chelan School District Superintendent Barry DePaoli: to thrive in a valley defined by its spectacular scenery, small-town character, agrarian traditions and world-class recreation and to leave a community rich in opportunity for future generations. 

After a quick stretch break, Morris shared what the technical team has been working onto measure the criteria for implementing the vision. 

Based on the community poll, water quality ranked the highest in terms of conservation priorities, with recreation access in second and wildlife habitat and working lands tied for third. So with that in mind, the technical team used GIS mapping to overlay and stack each category, with a weighting toward water quality, to find potential areas that could intermix with all four resources. 

Some community members in attendance suggested more equal weighting to represent more of the other choices, but after some discussion about water being indispensable to all other values, the attendees voted in favor of the original community poll. 

“If we say water quality is what makes everything happen, when is it stacked on top of wildlife and recreation, water is the primary thing and is what wildlife, recreation and agricultural fields require,” Morris said. 

Shifting gears, Morris then directed the conversation toward local parks and access. 

“The idea is that everybody should have access to a park within a 10 minute walk, that is a nice number that is accessible,” Morris suggested. 

Currently 70 percent of residents in Chelan, 20 percent in Manson and a total of 45 percent in the study area have access to green space within a 10 minute walk according to Morris. 

“So we’ll need some out of the box thinking where new parks might go,” Morris stated. 

Morris then split the room into four groups to allow the community to discuss how to protect water quality, what strategies should be used and how to improve and increase the access to local parks. Attendees then filled out a worksheet for what steps they felt would be most important to ensuring that the Lake Chelan Open Space Vision was successfully implemented. 

“In the water quality discussions, attendees particularly wanted more water quality testing and expressed a lot of concern about potential pollution from boats and leaky septic systems,” Morris said after the meeting. “Overall the meeting went really well, I am so impressed by how engaged this community is and how much passion there is for protecting the lake and expanding lake and trail access.” 

The final meeting for the Open Space Vision will be on July 13. Before then, Morris said they will integrate the other field verification data, create a final overall map, develop a story map, integrate outreach to the Hispanic community and begin working on the final report. 

Zach Johnson can be reached at lcmeditor@gmail.com or (509) 682-2213