Who Needs Water?

Last Wednesday’s City Club meeting provided a forum for Whatcom County Executive Jack Louws and Bellingham Mayor Kelli Linville to discuss the most significant issues faced by Whatcom County.   

According to an article in the Bellingham Herald, Executive Louws is concerned about water issues, especially the potential economic effect of water scarcity on speculative land developers.  The Herald quoted Executive Louws as stating "People who have invested in the raw property and have made their living doing that are concerned, and we need to find a resolution to it."

'There is no question that people have made money, a lot of money, from the conversion of rural and agricultural land to residential development in Whatcom County.  That is why the Building Industry Association and its various alter-egos – the Farm Bureau, the Citizens’ Alliance for Property Rights, the Realtors, the Tea Party – are so active here. 

 

 

And there’s no question that the building industry is one constituent of Whatcom County, with one well-recognized interest.

 

The question is:  is it the only interest?  Or does the County also have an interest in making sure that we have water for agriculture, for fish, for tourism, for drinking? 

If so, the County has plenty of issues to address, from pollution of the aquifer that provides drinking water to the northern part of the County, to the fact that somewhere around ¾ of the water used for agricultural irrigation is not based on a legal water right, to low stream flows that can jeopardize salmon.

But if those issues don’t matter, and encouraging rural land conversion really is the County’s primary water resource goal, the new Council will soon have the opportunity to make this clear. 

The Growth Management Hearings Board recently found that the County has an obligation to connect its land use planning to the availability of water.  And please understand:  Whatcom County has the obligation to connect its land use planning to water.  The Herald article inaccurately stated that the Board “would require Whatcom property owners to prove new wells would not affect the levels of certain streams.” 

The Board did no such thing.  It told Whatcom County to determine that water is available where development will occur.  Now, if the County makes a decision to throw up its hands and tell County property owners that they have to come up with proof of water availability themselves – well, that would be the County’s decision.  The Board’s decision addresses the County, as the responsible planning body.  The folks trying to scare property owners by telling them that they’ll have to make the water availability decision themselves are assuming that the County won’t do its job.  (Of course, given the County’s approach during the past four years, this prediction may carry a grain of salt.)

But back to the case.  Rather than trying to bring its land use and water planning into the 21^st century, the County appealed the Board’s decision to court, hiring Seattle attorneys to fight against the obligation to plan for water quality and quantity.  The amount of money allocated to legal battles emerged as an election issue during last fall’s County Council race. 

Apparently the mere possibility that the Council might not continue to fund outside lawyers to fight against better land use and water planning has upset the folks discussed by Executive Louws:  the people who make their living by buying raw land to develop.  They are so concerned that they have assured the County that they will provide the legal horsepower needed to keep fighting and avoid planning, according to Tea Party activist and KGMI radio personality Kris Halterman,

So the County doesn’t need to pay for outside lawyers, because the lawyers for land development interests are lining up to represent Whatcom County.

In a very stark and real way, this raises the question of who the County Council represents.  Is Whatcom County’s interest in water congruent with the interests of “people who have invested in the raw property and have made their living doing that”?

Maybe it is.  If so, I sure hope that the County Council will have the guts to say so.  If our County’s long-term economy and quality of life is so dependent on rural land conversion that the County Council is content to let these organizations represent the County, the Council ought to make that finding and back it up.

 That view would run counter to another perspective:

How does one put a dollar value on being in the presence of crystal clear water coursing down a steep slope through a rock-lined, moss-edged stream bed among evergreen trees, for example? While commercial uses of the state's instream flows might be made--tourism and paid-for recreation, for example--such uses do not entail the total benefits derived from streams and lakes.

Hey, who wrote that environmental hogwash?  Some tree-hugging hippy, right?

Wrong.  The Washington Supreme Court wrote that, a few months ago, in Swinomish Indian Tribal Community v. Dep’t of Ecology, 178 Wn.2d 571, 600, n. 15 (2013).

Does the state Supreme Court have a point?  Might Whatcom County’s water resources provide “total benefits” that aren’t based solely on the economic value of using water for land conversion?  Will the County Council recognize those benefits, and see the opportunity that it has to work for a broader solution, or will it follow the path of least resistance by putting the development industry incharge our future?

The next few months will tell.

Yes, Virginia, There Will Be Enough Water For Your Christmas Tree

Yesterday was a strange day.

Bright and early, I got a phone call saying that a Channel 5 news reporter would be in Bellingham to do a story on “wells in Whatcom County.” 

Earlier this year, the state Growth Management Hearings Board found that Whatcom County’s planning for “rural” areas failed to protect water quality and quantity, and habitat for fish and wildlife. (You can read the decision here.   And I’ve blogged on water issues from time to time – most recently, here.)

I represented four local citizens in the case before the Growth Management Hearings Board, so I thought that the reporter wanted to talk about it.  But it turns out that the reporter was on the trail of something quite different from the truth, more elusive than reality.

The reporter was trying to find the Grinch who wants to steal the Tea Party’s Christmas.

The reporter said that we could meet either in my home or in my office.  You really don’t want to see the dust bunnies in my home, and I was going into my office at WWU anyway, so we agreed to meet there.

At about 12:30, the cameraman and reporter rolled in.  I talked about the issues in my best sound-bitey way, and then the questions came.

“Is it fair to take away people’s water?”

Say what?

I explained, as sound-bitingly as I could, that our case would not take away anybody’s water.  We’re asking the County to plan, which means that prospectively, the County needs to think about where water is available and where it isn’t.  In the future, when it decides about where land development should occur, the County should know whether or not water is available.

“They’re saying that people with existing wells will be closed down.”

They?

I had asked the reporter what brought him here, and he mumbled something about “getting around.”  “They’ were not identified. . 

Our case won’t affect existing wells, I said.  Hypothetically, the state could cut down on water use by people with wells if it decided to do so -- but that decision would be under state water law going back a hundred years, not as a result of our case.  And that’s a very unlikely scenario, I observed, because state water law is like a speed limit that’s posted, but everybody knows that nobody will ever enforce it.

The reporter’s last question:  “Do you have any evidence, any evidence at all, that there isn’t enough water?”

Oh my goodness, I said, there’s bountiful evidence.  The Department of Ecology closed many river basins in Whatcom County in 1985.  In 2003, the Department of Ecology and the Department of Fish and Wildlife designated the Nooksack as one of 16 “critical basins” in the state, where water is so overallocated that it threatens the survival of fish.  Many streams in the County don’t meet instream flows, not just periodically, but for much of the year.  Somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the water used for irrigation is used without a legal water right.  And so forth.

If we didn’t have this evidence, I concluded, the Board would not have found in our favor.  The reporter nodded, and asked if there was anything else I wanted to say.

Yes, I said.  I want to say that we’re not interested in taking away anybody’s water.  We want the County to plan for the future, to make sure that there’s water for people, crops, and fish.

They filmed me reading my e-mail for a while, and off they went.

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What came out of it?  This report.

In the event that the link goes away, the report starts at the lovely, dust-bunny-free home of ubiquitous Tea Party activists Greg and Karen Brown.  Karen is watering her Christmas tree, while a voiceover announces, ominously, that the water might be the most expensive item under the tree.

Say what?  Do the Browns water their tree with Evian?

Karen, looking kind and sad, speaks forlornly about the people who want to take their well away from them.  Their home will be worth nothing!

Who ARE those mean people?

Well, guess who pops up next.

 

It’s not apparent why I’m there, or why it is that I’m talking about speed limits.  But at least there’s an inference that, in reality, nobody is going to desiccate the Browns’ Christmas tree.

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If you go to all the usual Tea Party places – the Whatcom Excavator, the blog of Tea Party activist and KGMI commentator Kris Haltermann – you can see the themes starting to line up.

• There is no water shortage.  (That’s the source of the reporter’s question, I’m sure.) 
• Therefore, there is no good reason for anybody to worry about water allocation, water quality, or water for fish.
• People who do promote good water allocation, who want to protect water quality, and who worry about water for fish are nothing but mean ol’ Grinches.

That’s the story that the reporter was pursuing, and that’s the story that he didn’t get.  

Because it’s simply not true.