What would happen to North Dam Park if a local group didn’t take care of it?

Commissioners for the Coulee Area Park & Recreation District discussed renewal of their contract with the United States Bureau of Reclamation at their April 1 meeting.

The bureau owns the land at North Dam Park, but contracts with the district to take care of it.

That 10-year contract is coming up for renewal.

“Let’s talk about the downside,” said Commissioner Kevin Portch. “If we don’t take this up, then it falls back to where it was 10 years ago before CAPRD, and North Dam falls into ruin.”

Commissioner Bob Valen elaborated on the history:

“The city of Grand Coulee was maintaining [the park] under an agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation, then said they aren’t going to do it anymore, it cost too much money. And the grass turned brown, and it looked like crap,” Valen said.

Valen noted that Colorama and the Harvest Festival are two major local events held at the park, and that the two ball fields at the park, used by youth and adult leagues, wouldn’t be able to be used if the park wasn’t managed.

“It seems like it’s been working; and before it wasn’t working,” Commissioner Ben Hughes said about CAPRD’s agreement with the bureau.

The commissioners agreed that continuing to manage the park is a good idea, but have ways they’d like to modify the contract, including considering a five-year, rather than 10-year contract, and more.

“I see some things I would like to have addressed that they’d be responsible for,” Portch said. “Maintaining the roads — right now they’ve put that on us, and I don’t think that’s right. They will maintain the road from the skatepark up to there, but they will not maintain the roads into the park and into the softball. They said it’s not part of the agreement. So I would like for us to address a couple of the things.”

“Water,” Portch continued. “I like the way we have water set up, but do I think we should have to pay for the pump?” he said, referring to an irrigation pump.

“Under the agreement, they added the water pumps,” Valen said. “I’ll bring that up as an irritant, that we were in the middle of a 10-year agreement, and then they added another element to it.”

Portch expressed some frustration in working with the bureau. “I know there’s been a lot of commissioners come through here that have had a lot of good ideas that I’ve heard and read about in the paper over the last 10 years that weren’t able to get things done because we had a 10-year agreement in place,” he said.

Still the commissioners, including Valen, Portch, Hughes, Carla Marconi and Josh Vega, agreed it was best to continue with the bureau, but to possibly hold a special meeting at the park to identify topics to raise with the bureau, and eventually meet with someone from the bureau to discuss those topics.