Lawmakers to attend water plan session in PT

Things are moving forward in WRIA 17. Thursday, November 10, there will be a meeting with our legislative team, Representatives Buck and Kessler, along with Senator Hargrove, at Fort Worden, from 5:00 - 7:30 PM in The Commons. Representatives will also be there from the Department of Ecology.

The following article appeared in the November 1, 2005 edition of The Peninsula Daily News, Jefferson County print edition.

---

Lawmakers to attend water plan session in PT

By Jeff Chew
Peninsula Daily News

PORT TOWNSEND — The North Olympic Peninsula's three state lawmakers say that they will join Department of Ecology officials for a public forum next week on Ecology's controversial instream flow proposal.

The forum, spawned by public outcry and interest in the Legislature-required instream flow rule — part of the Quilcene-Snow Water Inventory Resource Area (WRIA) 17, intended to provide enough water for fish and humans — is scheduled for 5 p.m. Nov. 10 in the Fort Worden State Park Commons, 200 Battery Way.

The meeding, which will follow the all-day Jefferson County Economic Development Council economic summit, is apparently the result of a barrage of e-mail messages to 24th District state lawmakers in October from a group that includes farmers, well-drillers, and other water interests from around the county.

A statement from Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, and Reps. Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, and Jim Buck, R-Joyce, on Monday announced plans for the forum with the lawmakers all planning to attend.

They were already planning to address the EDC summit at the same location.

Attempts to contact the lawmakers by phone Monday were unsuccessful, but Jefferson County residents watch-dogging the proposed instream flow rule said they were happy to be informed of the lawmakers' plans.

"Between my messages and other messages, I guess the legislators got together for the meeting," said Greg Fay, a Quilcene-area fruit grower helping to form a group proposed to be named Olympic Water Users Association.

The association is the outcome of an Oct. 20 special meeting at the Chimacum Grange Hall. More than 70 at the meeting showed interest in becoming members in the new water users association, group founders said.

"This is something that everyone should be involved with, it's not just the growers." said Judi Stewart, a Port Townsend fruit farmer who serves as Western Cascade Fruit Society president in Puget Sound.

Her organization includes the North Olympic Fruit Clib chapter in Jefferson County, which represents about 120 families.

Stewart, a fruit grower for 10 years, has about 60 fruit trees in on her Hastings Street property, with about 100 more in a nursery where she grafts fruit trees.

Stewart on Monday called the state lawmakers' forum "precedent setting."

"This is not just important for our county, but for the state as a whole," she said.

Saying she understands the importance of water, Stewart does not believe Jefferson County's water problem is as big a problem as Ecology makes it out to be.

Ecology policy-makers, who want more study on how best to protect stream flows, came up with the proposed rule allowing access to 3.8 million gallons of water a day areawide.

That sets an average single household usage bechmark of 350 gallons daily, based on the assumption that the average person uses 70 gallons daily, officials said.

Today, residents can use up to 5,000 gallons daily per home.

Exempt of permit

Under the proposed instream flow rule, water can be used exempt of a state water rights permit so long as what is grown is not sold commercially.

This aspect of the proposal has raised the concerns of new small-scale commercial farmers who use existing residential wells.

The wells must have existing water rights, or new farmers will have to seek water right permits.

The rule in question also calls for the closure of the Big Quilcene River from March 1 to Nov. 15 and Chimacum Creek from March 1 to Nov. 30 to new water appropriations.

It closes other water bodies in the area year-round to future water rights.

Existing water rights would not be affected under the proposal, but new applications would.

Islands such as Marrowstone would be closed to new groundwater withdrawals under the new rule unless otherwise approved.

Stewart said Ecology should focus less on taking water away from people and more on catch basins such as Peterson Lake, which was recently bought by Jefferson County Public Utility District, and reclaiming and reusing some of the water used by Port Townsend Paper Corp. mill.

She called state water catchment restrictions on rain barrels "one of the most ridiculous rulings" she has ever seen.

"For people to say you can't use rain barrels, it's absolutely asinine," she said.

'Good stewards'

Calling farmers "good stewards" of water uses, she said they practice heavy mulching and irrigation techniques such as soaker hoses.

Rules without science is a common public theme echoed by Stewart when discussing Ecology's proposed instream flow rule.

Fay and Stewart point to the so-called Kim ruling to fortify their positions.

Jim Tracy, who now represents Fred Hill Materials Inc. in Jefferson County, which seeks to expand its gravel-mining operations in Shine, also represented Jo Il and Keum Ja Kim in their six-year-long legal battle against the state Pollution Control Hearing Board and Department of Ecology.

The Kims filed suit against the state agencies after state officials said they had to have a water right permit to use well water for their commercial nursery on less than a half-acre in Poulsbo.

Ecology ordered the Kims not to use the well drilled in 1965 for anything other than their residence.

The Court of Appeals rejected Ecology's assertion, ruling that the Kims' commercial nursery was using water for an "industrial purpose," which exempts them from a permit.

The court ruled that the 1945 law should be recognized and applied, and that rendering the statute obsolete was up to the Legislature, not Ecology.

Although the case lost in the lower courts, the state Court of Appeals reversed the previous decisions, which gave the case filed in 1998 precedent, akin to a state Supreme Court ruling because it has gone unchallenged and the law has not been amended by the state Legislature.

Tracy, who attends WRIA planning unit meetings and has made appearances before Jefferson County commissioners, said he fought for the Kims for six years, losing five times before the successful appeal.

Calling it an "uncontested Court of Appeals published case," Tracy on Tuesday said, "Either the people with [Ecology] don't understand their work or there's a cavalier disregard of the law."

Today, residents can use up to 5,000 gallons per day per home.

Under the rule propposed, that could be cut back to 350 gallons per day.

Existing water rights

Existing water rights would not be affected under the proposal, but new applications would.

The association's representatives said Ecology's instream flow rule proposal has attracted interest from across party lines, from Democracts, Republicans and political independents.

"There's a very broad base of people who are interested in this issue and who see bad things from what direction [Ecology] is going in," said Stewart.

Norman MacLeod, an Internet consultant who lives near Port Townsend has been conducting forums online at www.blogspot.com.

The new organization's Web site and Web log can be found at www.olywater.org.

"This is an issue that everyone needs to be concerned about," MacLeod writes on the Web site.

"There are many solutions and innovations we can use to actively manage the watershed's instream flows."

"A government agency seizing all the unappropriated water in the watershed and rationing a tiny portion of it back is certainly not the best or only alternative, and is something we as citizens should not allow to happen."