To the editor - I read your April 24 editorial with great interest. As a 16-year vineyard owner with junior water rights in the Kittatas Reclamation District, we must think outside the box in years like this and going forward. Captain Kirk's Kickstarter Campaign has merit and needs to be reviewed with vigor, not ridicule.
If one looks objectively at the myriad issues facing the Yakima River Basin, they all get traced back to funding. The fixes to the Yakima River Basin system have been identified, studied to death and summarily dismissed as costing too much to implement (e.g. Black Rock, pressurized piping, lined canals, re-regulation ponds, etc.).
However, if you take at face value what the cost of water should be (after all, water is the new gold of the West), combine that with a willing buyer (California), and charge them whatever the market will bear, voilá, there now is enough money to fix all that ails the Yakima River Basin System.
As the alpha species of the ecosystem, give us enough time/money and we can engineer our way through anything, eh?
