Jefferson County WRIA 17 policy statement being developed

This morning the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners deliberated on a new policy on the WRIA 17 Planning Unit's work and its relationship with the Department of Ecology's instream flow rule-making process. The county's policy seeks to differentiate the WRIA 17 watershed management plan from Ecology's rule-making, help the public understand that the two are completely separate, and that the watershed management plan is well worth supporting, and that its recommendations are worthy of implementation.

As public interest in the Planning Unit's work and, more specifically, as public resistance to the instream flow rule as currently drafted by the Department of Ecology grows, our concerns are being noted by decision-makers at the local and state level. This notice is resulting in actions of various kinds. Jefferson County initiates a clarifying policy document. The Department of Ecology hints that it's going to take enforcement action against exempt well owners "illegally" using water.

We're making a difference. We need to continue making that difference, and we need you to join us in our efforts. If you're not already involved, please feel free to get in touch, come to a meeting where WRIA 17 is being discussed, whatever you can do. Let's all work together to get control of our water resources back into our hands, where it belongs. We have done a pretty good job of taking care of our water over the years, and we don't need an unsympathetic state agency coming in and taking over Jefferson County's local government and individual responsibilities.

Here's the text of one of the pieces of public testimony read into the record at today's Commissioners' meeting. It outlines some of the thinking being done in regard to the county's policy update, and we think you'll find it interesting...

---

Jefferson County Board of Commissioners
P.O. Box 1120
Port Townsend, WA 98368

October 17, 2005

Commissioners:

I support the effort to establish a county policy on implementation of the WRIA 17 watershed plan, and to distance the county from the Department of Ecology’s instream flow rule-making process. However, I recommend that you allow an additional week to refine the language of your proposed policy statement. The present version reads more as an early draft than a settled, well focused policy of government. Taking action a week from now will still allow the policy to be in the public domain ahead of the next WRIA 17 Planning Unit meeting.

Should the Department of Ecology sign their proposed instream flow rule as currently drafted, I feel that it will be open to litigation from multiple standpoints. Foremost from the county government standpoint is that it would appear that the establishment of the reserves, and the insistence that the county agree to abide by the provisions of the reserves’ severe rationing of the availability of exempt well permits, amounts to an abrogation of the county’s authorities and responsibilities under the Growth Management Act, without legislative authority for the Department of Ecology to do so.

I believe that the Department of Ecology’s new restrictions on how future exempt wells would be allowed to be used are likewise an unauthorized abrogation of the provisions of RCW 90.44.050, which in 1945 established the provisions for exempt well use. The 1945 law has not been amended to the best of my knowledge, and any change to acreage watering or withdrawal amounts are solely within the purview of the legislature, not an administrative department.

You may wish to consult with your inside counsel on these issues for a more precise outlining of the potential legal issues present in the current draft of the Department of Ecology’s instream flow rule for WRIA 17. I would be happy to discuss my observations with your counsel. Distancing the county from the rule-making process now could help avoid being included in litigation arising from the rule.

The WRIA 17 Planning Unit has made a tremendous investment in time, resources, and research that has resulted in a watershed plan that deserves continued work. As one of sixteen designated critical watersheds, there are many things that should be done to improve the way we manage our resources. However, it’s important to note that we’re not using all that much of WRIA 17’s available water. Of the nearly 46 trillion gallons of annual groundwater recharge, all of our uses of groundwater combined have used only about 4% of the available recharge amount annually. That 4% represents about 14% of the water that we have water right permits and exempt wells to lawfully withdraw. We’re already being pretty good stewards of the resource, and have been making very conservative use of it.

Water storage for active instream flow management and other uses is an area that has a great deal of potential for innovative solutions. This is perhaps a much more productive approach to ensuring adequate water for all uses than the Department of Ecology’s currently preferred rule-based strategy, and certainly allows for more effective implementation of the Planning Unit’s recommendations.

The Planning Unit is in need of broader stakeholder representation from groups that are only recently becoming aware of how greatly provisions of the watershed plan and its related rule-making processes may affect their futures. This points to an incomplete community representation on the Planning Unit that needs to be addressed. These recently awakened stakeholders should be invited to and welcomed into the Planning Unit as voting nongovernmental members.

Jefferson County is blessed with highly talented and entrepreneurial people, many of whom are engaged in small, sustainable agricultural endeavors that are viable under Washington’s current exempt well limits as set in RCW 90.44.050. They should be supported in their desire to produce wholesome produce for themselves and our local market in the context of WRIA 17’s watershed management plan, not prevented from following their dreams by a remote and unresponsive state bureaucracy.

The county’s concern about the challenge of consistent and impartial enforcement of an adopted instream flow rule will certainly be valid if the Department of Ecology moves toward the adoption of a rule substantially the same as the current draft. In my reading of the department’s guidance documents, though, I see considerable room for using far less punitive and much more innovative options than those they are currently proposing. There need not be the level of “shared pain” that the draft rule indicates we might suffer.

Jefferson County is not alone in its discomfort with the Department of Ecology’s instream flow rule-making. Snohomish County is refusing to sign the department’s initial reserve in the Stillaguamish River Basin (WRIA 5). It’s good that Jefferson County is today considering a more proactive approach. Let’s move ahead and see what we can do together to manage our local water resources locally, instead of having that management be imposed from a distance.

As we do so, though, could we review the language we use in the policy statement? There are a few things that are not quite as accurate as they perhaps could be … and it would be good to include a stated commitment to supporting the needs of the human residents of Jefferson County, as well as the fish.

Thank you very much for your time and kind consideration of my input.

---