MATTAWA — Animal control and traffic on State Route 243 were among the topics at a question and answer session during an event to recognize law enforcement officers for their work Monday in Mattawa.

The “Law Enforcement Appreciation” event was sponsored by the South Grant County Chamber of Commerce.

Wahluke School District Superintendent Andy Harlow said he hoped the participants would come back.

“I hope it’s the first time of many to come,” Harlow said.

Commissioners Cindy Carter and Danny Stone, along with Grant County Prosecutor Kevin McCrae, also attended the meeting, and it was Carter who answered questions about animal control. Carter said commissioners are meeting with Grant County Animal Outreach toward the end of the month to help find solutions to the issues of stray animals.

Animals picked up by Grant County Sheriff’s deputies are taken to GCAO, Carter said.

“We are contracted with them to take our animals,” Carter said. “Apparently they are not taking some of our other stray animals; like if I were to bring (an animal) in, they would not take it because they’re at capacity.”

County commissioners will be talking with GCAO members about shelter capacity as well as reducing populations, including the possibility of working with the shelter on opportunities like spay and neuter clinics, Carter said.

“Kind of get an education and maybe help them, or ask them what we can do to help,” she said.

Grant County has a number of animal rescue groups, and county officials will be meeting with them too, with the goal of helping coordinate animal welfare groups.

“We’re trying to get more rescue nonprofits in, visit with them and see what we can do to help them as well,” she said.

At one time Grant County residents living in unincorporated areas were required to buy dog licenses, and panelists were asked why licenses were no longer required. Grant County Sheriff Joe Kriete said the licensing program actually cost more money than it generated.

“The thing that we also found is that the people that were responsible enough to license their animals, they were also responsible enough to take care of them,” he said. “They weren’t our problem animals.”

Drugs, drug use and prosecution also were the subject of questions, and McCrae said one of the new initiatives in Grant County is a drug court designed to help people get rid of the habit.

“What a drug court does is, we take somebody who’s committed a crime, and we put them in a fairly intensive program, where they have to come in every week to court, they have to get treatment, there are job skills - basically it’s supposed to be a wraparound program, to hopefully get somebody’s life back together so we don’t have to keep doing this. It seems like a lot of our work is the same people, over and over and over,” he said.

Drug dealers are a different matter, McCrae said.

“That’s pretty much a, ‘You’ve got to put them in prison,’ type of thing,” he said.

Kriete said changes to Washington law have made it more difficult to prosecute people who are in possession of certain amounts of controlled substances, and as a result, there are a lot of controlled substances out there. That’s reflected in the price, he said.

“The cost of drugs is so cheap right now,” Kriete said.

State Route 243 is the primary highway in and out of Mattawa, and Washington State Patrol Sergeant Aaron Norton said his agency is trying to work with area residents to make it safer.

“One of the (challenges) is just the sheer volume of traffic we have on that road,” Norton said. “And compared with most other state routes it’s a very narrow road. And there’s not a whole lot of room for error.”

WSP is working with the Washington Department of Transportation to upgrade SR 243, but that’s a challenge too, Norton said.

“It’s a difficult process compared to other roads, because the soil, from what I’ve been told, is very soft. So it’s actually a more complex effort to (upgrade) that to a wider road.”

Speeding also is a problem, Norton said, and it’s an important route for agriculture producers in the Mattawa area, which doesn’t always mix well with passenger cars and trucks. Chamber secretary/treasurer Pam Thorsen said upgrades to SR 243 are one of the Chamber’s priorities.

Cheryl Schweizer may be reached at [email protected]. More of her work may be read at www.columbiabasinherald.com.