"City Council to discuss settlement with Hawkins Companies"

Hopefully Queen Nancy's ill-begotten appeal will soon be over. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in that executive session. From today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

The Moscow City Council will discuss and potentially approve a settlement between the city and Hawkins Companies during its meeting Monday.

Councilmen Wayne Krauss and Walter Steed and Mayor Nancy Chaney attended a mediation hearing in Spokane earlier this week in an attempt to reach a settlement with Hawkins on three water-rights transfers approved by the Washington State Department of Ecology.

Hawkins plans to use the water rights for its proposed 700,000-square-foot retail shopping center just west of the Idaho state line.

Moscow filed an appeal over Ecology's decision with the Washington State Pollution Control Hearings Board, arguing that the water rights are located in two different bodies of public groundwater and the transfers will impair existing water rights, not be in the public's interest and will improperly modify the manner of the rights' intended use.

The appeal also cited the Department of Ecology's failure to conduct an analysis of the average amount of water use from the rights over the past five years. The City Council will have to approve any decision reached at the mediation before it will be official.

Steed said he could not comment on the mediation between representatives from the city and Hawkins Companies.