Federal shutdown ripples through NCW
WENATCHEE — The first days of a shutdown don’t arrive with sirens. They show up as a locked visitor center in Stehekin, a ranger program that isn’t on the board, a Wenatchee shipper waiting an extra day for an electronic stamp. People here remember that rhythm from 2018–19: Five weeks of thin federal staffing, deferred maintenance, and “call us when we’re back” at program desks. This week looks similar. Parks and forests are “generally” open, but with pared-back services and limited maintenance under the Department of the Interior’s contingency plan — the same template that left some sites strained in the last long standoff.
The stakes aren’t abstract. North Central Washington sells fruit to the world, and exporters depend on a choreography of state inspections and federal systems. When Washington state inspectors do their part but federal capacity thins, paperwork timing becomes a chokepoint — not dramatic, just costly if a vessel cutoff slips. In 2018–19, the slowdowns were mostly visible in the margins; if this shutdown stretches, we’ll feel those margins again.
U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier, who represents the 8th District, framed the local risk plainly on Day One: “I know that a prolonged shutdown hurts all of us, especially working families, seniors, and our brave service members here in the Eighth District.” She added that she “cannot vote for a funding bill that is harmful to the people I represent.”
Ward Media reached out to Congressman Dan Newhouse's office in Washington, D.C. for a statement on the federal government shutdown and how it might affect his district and the rest of North Central Washington, but received no response.
At the same time, the administration’s separate decision to cancel clean-energy funding — including money tied to the Pacific Northwest hydrogen hub — swept Washington state into a broader national rollback. Schrier called it “a senseless decision to gut one billion dollars in funding,” arguing the move is politically motivated and would raise costs for families while undercutting regional jobs and competitiveness. She pledged to push for a reversal. Independent reporting tallies those cancellations as part of a $7–8 billion national cut that includes hydrogen hubs and grid projects.
Underscoring Schrier’s assertion that the clean energy cuts at the national level were a political move is the fact that the White House’s Budget Director, Russell Vought, wrote on the social media site X late on Oct.1 after the shutdown began, “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled. The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA.” Those 16 states, out of the 21 total states that had federally-funded clean energy projects, all voted for President Trump’s opponent in 2024. The five states unaffected by the cuts all voted for Trump.
For public lands users, the near-term picture echoes the last long shutdown. Much of North Cascades National Park and Lake Chelan National Recreation area will remain open including roads, trails, lookouts and open-air memorials. However, most visitor centers and facilities – such as restrooms and garbage pickup – will be suspended, and areas that are closed will remain closed. Permits, programs, road and trail updates, social media and web activity, such as information that is vital to trip-planning and safety, will also not be provided during the shutdown. According to the National Park Service contingency plan, 9,296 of 14,500 parks staff have been furloughed across the national parks system.
The USDA planned to shut down activities on over 193 million acres of Forest Service land across 46 states, including over 154 national forests and over 500 plus ranger districts. However, the number of furloughed employees across the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest is unclear.
According to Rachel Granberg, a union steward with the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) and Federal Wildland Firefighter, there are still a lot of unknowns, such as who is still required to work, if there are funds available to maintain payroll, and how to manage the threat of more layoffs.
“It’s really frustrating with these fires ongoing,” said Granberg.
As the Labor Mountain and Lower Sugarloaf Fires continue to net over 77,000 acres across the region, wildland firefighters are continuing to work – despite whether or not their pay comes in on time. As these crews work to save people’s homes and livelihoods, Granberg says the thought of them not getting paid until the government reopens is disheartening.
Federal employees are required to receive back pay retroactively when the government reopens, but the uncertain length of delay can burden employees with finding alternative ways to make their mortgage payments or pay their bills.
NFFE has been providing guidance on working with banks, utilities and loan servicers to manage delayed paychecks during the shutdown. However, union representatives recognize that not all situations provide flexibility or alternatives, such as a landlord needing rent payments.
“With this government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal workers are going to have their pay suspended while being furloughed or made to work without pay until the shutdown ends. Many federal employees live paycheck-to-paycheck and cannot sustain any period of suspended pay without enduring significant hardship. This shutdown must come to an end soon,” NFFE National President Randy Erwin said in a statement, calling on decision-makers to collaborate and compromise to end the shutdown.
Local Public Works projects are following the same fine-for-now pattern, with the possibility of issues if this shutdown drags on. Eric Pierson, Chelan County’s Public Works Director and County Engineer, said, “This year, Public Works doesn't have any major road construction projects. So we don't have any issues with reimbursements from the federal government. For next year, we are far along enough in the planning and design of our upcoming projects that we are also seeing little impact on the grant side.” He went on to say that they “are in a good spot at Public Works; however, if the shutdown carries on much longer, we may see some impacts in the future to our federal reimbursements and grants.”
Echoing the same sentiment, Chelan County Natural Resources Director Mike Kaputa says environmental projects that rely on federal partners and funding are continuing as usual. Kaputa doesn’t anticipate things changing, unless the shutdown is prolonged more than a few weeks.
“We’re only three days into it, but we haven’t received any stop work orders,” said Kaputa. “It depends on how long it goes.”
Air travel follows its usual pattern in funding lapses: TSA and controllers continue working without pay, with delays tending to build at big hubs first and ripple outward. A call to the Chelan-Douglas Regional Port Authority, which operates Pangborn Airport, confirmed that there are no staffing issues thus far after the announcement of the shutdown, since TSA agents are limited there and do not work for the airport itself. But for Pangborn, one wrinkle is that the runway rehabilitation project runs through Oct. 3 — so any shutdown-related ripple will be most apparent after flights actually resume.
Economically, the last long shutdown left a measurable dent. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the 35-day 2018–19 lapse cut output by $11 billion in the following fiscal quarters, including $3 billion the economy never regained — not catastrophic on paper, but the kind of drag local families and contractors feel in delayed paychecks and paused work. That’s the baseline for understanding what a five-week run would mean now.
It remains to be seen how things will shape up for the region if this shutdown stretches toward that 35-day mark. But local leaders find themselves in the position of having to balance both what’s pressing here on the ground in the valley and concerns about those “ripple effects” that affect a region like ours in ways that may not be seen in big cities.
East Wenatchee Mayor Jerrilea Crawford is still on a trip to our sister city in Japan, Misawa, and when she’s back at work, it will be nine days since the beginning of the shutdown, Pangborn will have reopened for fixed-wing flights, and she’ll have a thousand things on her desk immediately. That same day, Wenatchee Mayor Mike Poirier will be issuing a Children’s Environmental Health Day Proclamation — as concerns about air quality in our region remain from the fires, and wildland firefighters work without pay.
The balance between the local and the national is a tightrope that city governments, public works departments, PUDs, chambers of commerce, transportation offices, and many other agencies have to walk during a time like this. When grant funding bottlenecks, when permits are delayed, when projects that include federal dollars stall, it’s not the President answering to the people of Entiat or Chelan or Waterville.
None of that is inevitable. But the pattern is familiar. In 2018–19, the noise in Washington, D.C., translated here into a dozen small inconveniences that added up — a park with fewer eyes on it, a loan that waited, a paycheck that came late. The difference this time is the early-shutdown backdrop: a national fight over health-insurance subsidies and, now, a sudden axing of clean-energy money that Washington state had been counting on. That combination puts NCW’s everyday concerns — public lands, fruit on ships, deals on desks — right where national politics is loudest.