Benton and Franklin counties’ Recovery Center can still be on track if we work together

Every five days a resident of Benton or Franklin County dies of drug addiction. This rate doesn’t count those who die of drug-related causes such as infections, abscesses, organ failure, or suicide — which aren’t recorded as drug deaths in official records.

At the same time, the Tri-Cities is the only metro area of any size in Washington State that has no detoxification services and no residential/inpatient treatment center for addiction. This lack of services in a place that has so much medical expertise for other diseases is a blight on our community, especially because addiction is, in many cases, a treatable illness.

The Benton Franklin Recovery Coalition (BFRC), a grass-roots group of local citizens, sees and hears heartbreaking accounts of people seeking treatment who can’t find it because waiting list are long statewide and accessibility is harder still when you don’t have a local Recovery Center to deal with.

Fortunately, this situation is about to change! Benton County and the BFRC have worked for many years on plans to bring addiction treatment services to the Tri-Cities, along with treatment for mental illness which is often closely related to addiction. Plans are coming together for Benton County to buy the former Kennewick General Hospital for addiction treatment and transitional housing, and to lease a downtown Kennewick facility for mental health services. The two facilities will work closely together to integrate comprehensive services that we badly need.

It might have been nice if all the services could have occurred in the former Kennewick General Hospital, but the building’s owner – the Lifepoint Corporation — held firm on restrictions to mental illness treatment for adults. The corporation wouldn’t allow such patients to stay more than three days, a number that wouldn’t allow adequate treatment. Benton County then pivoted to the two-facility plan. It’s essential that the Tri-Cities community continues to support these plans, because schedule delays cost lives! The BFRC knows personally of individuals who have lost their battle with addiction just in the last few months and years while trying their best to get into detoxification and treatment they couldn’t access. This situation is tragic and we need to fix it now.

Another important reason to support the Benton County plans underway is that funding sources — legislators and grant fund administrators – favor plans that are solid and ready to go. Some people call such projects “shovel-ready.” And there are plenty of shovel-ready projects all over Washington State that will be quick to take available funding if our current Recovery project fluctuates, changes its structure or appears unsettled in any way.

If the Tri-Cities splinters its support of this project, we’ll become our own worst enemies.

The planning and work that has gone into bringing recovery services to the Tri-Cities has been hard and exhausting — but successful! Thus far, Benton County’s project has amassed $12.25 million, not counting any funds to come from the sales tax enacted last year. Preliminary discussions with key state legislators indicate a favorable response to another budget request in 2023.

We have got to hold firm on these plans. We all want to make our community safer and cleaner. We want to free up our police and sheriffs and EMS personnel from repeated calls to persons in crisis, reduce overcrowding in our hospital Emergency Departments, and keep hundreds of thousands of treatment dollars in our local economy. But we can’t have these benefits if we dither, endlessly discuss, or fracture our plans.

Stay the course Tri Cities! Unite in support of the Benton County plans that are underway, and step into a better future.

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This story was originally published June 27, 2022 at 11:46 AM.