What has been a seemingly endless marathon of studies on how best to meet the water needs of farmers, fish and communities in the Yakima River Basin is now a sprint to the finish line.

State and federal officials said Tuesday they're hopeful an agreed-upon plan will emerge over the next several months.

The plan is likely to include fish ladders at basin dams, new storage on the Naches River, habitat improvements, water conservation and a market for the buying and selling of water as a commodity.

An initial step will occur when interest groups -- irrigators, the Yakama Nation, local elected officials, environmentalists, and officials from the state Department of Ecology and federal Bureau of Reclamation -- meet June 30 at 10 a.m. at the Yakima Area Arboretum. The meeting is open to the public.

Stakeholders hope to craft a comprehensive plan to develop a firmer water supply for farmers, improve fish habitat and assure basin communities water for future growth.

The Yakima River Basin, which stretches from near Snoqualmie Pass to Richland, is a diverse agricultural area that has been dogged by drought in the last 20 years.

If initial efforts are successful, the next chore will require federal and state funding to put the plan into effect.

That task will come later. For now, the locals are optimistic that decades of failure dating back to the 1960s won't be repeated.

Derek Sandison, Ecology's director of the Office of the Columbia River, said this effort has a better chance because it is comprehensive.

"We are not looking at storage in a vacuum or passage in a vacuum," he said. "We are looking at the needs of the basin and coming up with solutions that have synergy, that have the opportunity to provide value that collectively deal with all the problems."

Sandison heads a recently created office that is reviewing water-supply development for all of Eastern Washington. He said he hopes to see an agreed-upon plan developed within six months to a year.

"We are in a position to be able to relatively quickly come to consensus around that package of solutions that works best," he said.

Irrigators agreed the time is ripe.

"I hope everyone will come together. We seem to have a fairly large coalition of support right now," said Ron Van Gundy, retired manager of the Roza Irrigation District and now a district consultant working on basin issues.

Tuesday, Ecology officials released the final piece of information on which the group will base its discussion.

The agency issued a final environmental report on what the agency calls an integrated water resource management alternative. The report recommends some new storage, fish passage, changes to current river operations to enhance fish habitat, more water conservation and a market-based approach to allocating water.

Ecology's study is a part of a multiyear $18 million federal-state study on new storage that concluded none of the projects studied -- including the massive Black Rock reservoir -- met federal guidelines for implementation.

Another site rejected was Wymer, 15 miles north of Yakima in the Yakima River Canyon.

The 1.6 million acre-foot Black Rock reservoir would have drawn water from the Columbia River to meet irrigation needs, leaving Yakima River water for fish enhancement.

But the project's cost-benefit ratio (about 13 cents on the dollar) and potential impacts on underground radioactive contamination on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation doomed its chances. Although it's been supported by some business and agricultural leaders, the proposal hasn't mustered the political support needed to secure federal funding from Congress.

Ecology decided to look at alternatives other than only new water storage. Still, some storage is likely to be a component.

Sandison said the state agency's review concludes that the Naches River has enough water available to support new storage.

Studies already are under way to provide fish passage at the basin storage dams. A project to allow fish to exit Cle Elum Dam has been going on for several years. A 2008 Bureau of Reclamation report concluded a fish ladder for passage of smolts over the dam is feasible. The passage study said returning adult fish would have to be captured and trucked around the dam to reach spawning grounds in the lake's tributaries.

The three county governments in the basin will be represented during the upcoming meetings.

Yakima County Commissioner Mike Leita said the looming issues of population growth, endangered species needs and climate change all argue for the need to find a solution soon.

"This challenge before us is the most significant challenge Yakima County will face in the next decade," he said.

* David Lester can be reached at 509-577-7674 or dlester@yakimaherald.com.

The Ecology final environmental impact statement on the Integrated Water Resources Management alternative can be viewed online at:

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wr/cwp/cr_yak_storage.html