Climate Eyes | San Juan County has a climate ‘problem’

||| CLIMATE EYES BY STEVE BERNHEIM, theORCASONIAN REPORTER |||

The Planning Commission met Friday, April 15 to be briefed on three more sections of the draft Comprehensive Plan that was due in 2016 to cover the planning period from 2016 to 2036. The complete draft plan will have a public hearing at the Planning Commission in July, then, regardless of what the Planning Commission proposes, will go before the County Council for public hearing to be revised and adopted sometime later this year, over six years late.

On May 6, the staff will brief the Commission on the Transportation and Economic Development elements. On May 20, they will brief it on the Capital Facilities and Utilities elements.

But last Friday, Water Resources, Historical Preservation, and Land Use were the three sections up for briefing. Some commissioners came to the briefing with multiple objections to the proposed drafts, but only Peter Kilpatrick offered a written proposal to share with the other commissioners: he suggested Forest Resource Lands be viewed as assets for carbon sequestration rather than as timber to be logged and transported off-island. The Development Director David Williams said he would review Kilpatrick’s proposal for a later meeting.

During the rest of the meeting, commissioners voiced objections to various goals and policies but came prepared with no suggested revisions, which led to hours of discussion of every objection, rambling talk moving from one topic to another, drafting substitute language on the fly, many misunderstandings, initial reactions with 180 degree turns minutes later, and lots of time trying to figure out if anyone had in mind any revisions that might remedy the various gripes expressed by other commissioners when the commissioners with gripes had no suggestions themselves.

Here is some of the discussion to illustrate the perspectives of some of the commissioners, some of whom were skeptical of claims that water in San Juan County was or will soon be in short supply.

For example, the Commission talked about whether to approve a draft goal to “manage water resources … by monitoring and measuring the amount of fresh water used.” The Commission rejected the idea of management and monitoring of water supplies. Instead, their new draft says that from now through 2036, the County should use this time to “explore methods available for measuring and monitoring county water use.”

The commissioners also deleted a proposed goal to “Ensure that development does not impact water available for Agricultural Resource Lands to ensure their viability,” because, as one commissioner expressed it, “We don’t have any way of measuring what ag resource lands need for water, so how if we don’t know what they need for water how do we know what anybody’s impact is on it?”

And while the Water Resources draft under consideration was getting its third briefing, it still contained no goals which mentioned climate change. Consequently, the Commission added just one climate-related goal suggested by public comments, after watering it down to “Encourage policies that support water availability in response to climate change.”

The Commission also rejected a goal suggested by public comments to “Reduce water demand through conservation and efficiency,” largely because it was unfair to make anyone who has enough water to conserve it. In the words of Commissioner Smith (Orcas):

“For example, on Orcas Island, we have Purdue Reservoir which Eastsound Water manages. We had overflow at Purdue this winter in one day more water than we use on our entire system in one year. … That was one day during the winter during a rainstorm. So, if we had more storage capacity, we would have been able to capture that but that means a larger reservoir, that means more fish impact, and that means other things which are challenging to do and cost money. My point being though that parts of the county have surplus of water, parts of the county have a great shortage of water, I just don’t want to do a blanket statement saying, “hey everybody has to conserve because one person does.” … How about “encourage the responsible use of water?” I’m not sure we even need to make that a goal, but that would be something I’d be comfortable with, “encourage the responsible use of water,” and just leave it at that. And then we can make policies that play off of that. So over on Lopez Island, we’re going to be much more careful about how we use water, and we’re going to be much more careful how we use it in Deer Harbor than we would in Olga for example.

Commissioner Kilpatrick (San Juan): Yes, I agree, “encourage efficient use of water through conservation and efficiency,” yeah, something like that is better.

Chair (Orcas): OK, so [Commissioner Smith], you want to state that again so [staff] can adjust or did she already get it, she got it, “encourage use of water through conservation…”

Commissioner Smith: I think if you just put a period after encourage responsible use of water. Some places, “through conservation” is appropriate, other places I’m happy to put up a nice fount and shoot it in a nice big stream of water out into the Sound so everybody sees how much water we have. I mean it’s going into the ocean anyway, so it’s just showing off. The point being yes, there are places where we do have a water issue and we need to be sure we are responsible with that water. There are places where the wells are too close to the ocean. And we are contaminating the aquifer, we need to be careful with it. But there are easy ways to address that. So, I just don’t want to do a blank statement. I think this, “encourage the responsible use of water” allows us to make policy that affects properly for each community.

The County’s prior Comprehensive Plan, still in effect, has no data collection or reporting requirements for water supplies nor does it make any reference to a changing climate’s threats to county water supplies. To illustrate one aspect of this new world problem, Commissioner Smith next talked about proposed policy goal #26, suggested in public comment, to “Discourage the use of water for irrigation of lawns.”

I’m going to put on the hat of Eastsound Water, I’m the president of Eastsound Water Board. I’m going to speak from their perspective for the moment. This document, some of the additions that we have for example under the ag resource committee, we want to discourage the policy number 26 for example, discourage the use of water for irrigation of lawns, there’s also a couple others in here that suggest we are in a short supply of water. There are parts of the county which that is appropriate. However, Eastsound Water actually encourages the use of water, we want people to use more water, the reason I say that is we have plenty of water, the more water we generate, the more water that’s used, the better for our system, it lowers the cost for those who don’t use much, so the amount of water available varies by the part of the island, and I don’t think it’s accurate and fair to suggest that all parts of the island are, have a surplus, nor is it fair to suggest that all parts of the island have a shortage. It varies considerably by where it’s at, and I don’t just don’t like the generalization that we have a shortage, so I think I would like to see us modify that a bit to recognize that there are places where water has a surplus.

The Commission then turned to a goal in the current draft which commits the county to measuring the amount of water used in order to manage potentially limited water supplies in times of shortage or drought, since the current comprehensive plan does not have any data collection or reporting requirements:

Commissioner Smith: We have a number of things where we’ve indicated under the goals I believe, or maybe its back earlier in the documentation where we talk about monitoring the aquifer, monitoring the status of our water resources and that type of thing. I just checked with our general manager yesterday and asked him if we do any of the reporting to health and community services as is outlined in this document. We don’t. We monitor our own wells, we put our own well data loggers in place, we monitor them, but we don’t report them to the department of health [DOH] nor do we report them to the county. And the good news is the aquifer, at least on our section that we manage for the island is in excellent condition. And by the way, we’re not only managing the Eastsound water area, but we’re also managing Doe Bay and Olga and we’re involved in providing some activity on behalf of Rosario and the Highlands, as well. So at least for the east half of Orcas Island I know that what’s being suggested in here as happening is simply not correct. What I would like to do is have the opportunity to go through this from one of the primary water providers in the community and take a look at the goals and policies and make some suggestions. We as a board have not done that but I think it would be helpful and productive and beneficial to do so. We’re also in discussions and negotiations to provide some services to some of the Class B systems on the island, which are not on the east side of the island, so I would like to have that opportunity as Eastsound Water and I know we’ve not taken that opportunity yet.

Commissioner Kilpatrick: “Yeah, just a comment kind of taking off on what [Commissioner Smith] was saying, item 18 in the policies, “Require all new water well and surface water users to install a water meter.” This is crucial I think to creating some kind of database so that we have you know much better idea of water use and capacities cause right now there’s just so much speculation so I would almost like capitalize that whole thing. Yeah, crucial information that’s needed is an extensive database of water use.”

Commissioner Smith: I’d like to echo what [Commissioner Kilpatrick] says regarding the meters. I do support the idea that all wells or systems have a meter I think it’s central to do that. I’m not so sure that community health should be the repository of that database. The reason I say that is community health has not been maintaining the database the comp plan and regulations have required them to be doing so far for to my knowledge for several years, maybe they do more than I’m aware of but it’s my impression that that information is not being collected. [Note from author: because there is no data collection currently required, the draft comprehensive plan proposes it for the first time.] There’s also in one of these goals and policies I don’t remember which one it was which suggests having the county pay the employee which is responsible for providing some of this monitoring, some of this advice and recommendations, I guess my advice on that, yeah, it’s number 4 there [“Fund and maintain a staff position of County Hydrologist to provide technical assistance to staff and property owners to protect ground and surface water and associated fish and wildlife habitat.”] …

I don’t believe that’s a prudent use of county money we already have a number of people in the county which have that knowledge and experience, and what I might suggest we do instead is for example on Orcas Island, to engage Eastsound Water or, we are the only primary provider, engage Eastsound Water to provide that information and just have that be a fee that we could charge back to the homeowner or to the Class B system and then the same thing for the other islands, so rather than have that be a county expense it might just be a fee for service that would be allowed to be collected for that so if county health did collect the information they would be collecting it just from Eastsound Water, Friday Harbor, and whoever else might be necessary would allow that to be a much more efficient thought. If you also go to policy number three [“Review and update codes as necessary to address seawater intrusion, available alternative water sources and water resource data acquisition”], policy number three has us doing a number of regulations which restrict how we do new water sources and that type of thing, that is currently being managed by the Department of Health with its own set of regulations, we could duplicate state regulations with county regulations, but I again see that as not necessarily the best use of county resources and funds. It’d be something that I’d, since the state is very involved in that process and we do extensive reporting to the state, I don’t think it’s beneficial to duplicate that at the county level. It might be prudent for the county to monitor and make sure that the state’s doing a good job or make sure the information is provided to the state but I don’t really want to see my tax dollars duplicate effort that doesn’t gain us anything. If we saw some effort that the state wasn’t requiring that we thought was essential for our county, yes, but I’m not aware of such, anyway those are my comments.

Chair: [Commissioner Smith], my reaction to your comments, Eastsound Water works for a portion of Orcas but we have the other islands and to my knowledge none of them have a water system quite as extensive as Eastsound so are your suggestions that this would be county wide or specific, just specifically to the east side of Orcas?

Commissioner Smith: What I would suggest happen I guess is we go through this and take a look at it, I don’t think it’s prudent or necessary for the county to hire a hydrologist and I made a number of different comments here, some of them would be applicable to Eastsound Water only, some of them would be applicable to county at large, I would like to have the opportunity to go through this as Eastsound Water , and come up with maybe some specific suggestions that I think would save the county a lot of money and resources that would still benefit, I mean we all want clean water. It’s essential to life and to our community, we want to make sure that it’s there, its reliable, we want to make sure that there’s nothing, you know, we don’t want chemicals and we don’t want fertilizers in our water supply and assorted other things so it’s essential that we do those things. I just think that we can do that without duplicating a lot of efforts, that’s my comment, and if we can do that in a way where we’re not hiring a hydrologist by the county but instead using the existing data collection resources, I agree with you, on Orcas Island you could use Eastsound Water, for example, to provide not just what we have as our own members but let’s say a Class B system in Deer Harbor for example, could report that to Eastsound Water instead of to the county that would save a lot of money that’s my point and then we would compile that information and share it with the county as appropriate. Or with the department of health which is where really all the enforcement is happening. Right now, the county simply doesn’t actually do some of the things, I mean we have these nice goals and policies and regulations but oftentimes they don’t happen in practice for good or for bad whereas DOH does, they’re fairly stringent at it. [Another one of the proposed new goals “Require[s] all water hauling permit holders to report volume of water trucked for potable water use by month.”]

Chair: When people are hauling water sourced from wells, are they required to report how much water they’re taking and distributing and is there an upper limit, particularly with wells close to the shoreline?

Commissioner Kilpatrick: Most of the hauled water on San Juan comes from the town of Friday Harbor. So that, I think the town keeps a record of that. But I don’t, as far as I know, there’s no reporting requirement for that.

Commissioner Smith: On Orcas Island, almost all the water is being hauled by Rolf Erickson he is not, he’s sourcing the water basically from the Rosario system which is currently being operated by Washington Water, I notice in here that the recommendation is that that be reported, I don’t know if it’s, I kind of doubt that it is, Eastsound Water has the ability to sell water by truck, by truckload if we want to, nobody’s using that yet [inaudible] because we just put the resources in place to do it. We have the ability to chlorinate all water, so if somebody wanted to source a truckload of water it could come to them chlorinated and so it would be definitely clean, to my knowledge the county, even though its policy is that we have such reporting, I don’t think that exists. [NB: there is no current county policy of water reporting.]

Chair: I know there’s a water hauler in Deer Harbor that is drawing from independent wells and I just wondered at what point do does that well particularly since there other wells nearby you know, is it being monitored and it sounds like it’s not.

Commissioner Smith: I don’t know what who’s sourcing the water for Deer Harbor and I don’t know if they’re monitoring that or not I cannot speak with authority on it. I do share your opinion that that is something which people who are knowledgeable about the aquifer and the saltwater intrusion risks and the possible depletion of that should be aware of and make sure it’s not being abused, we have plenty of water on the island so there’s no reason to ever take water from a well which would impact its neighbors or which would impact or have a saltwater intrusion issue because of doing it. But I don’t believe there’s anybody out there that’s verifying nobody’s abusing it. Is there a responsibility for the county to do that? Well, to be blunt, I don’t think the county has the expertise, and I don’t, it’s not an insult, I just don’t think it’s there, but on Orcas Island there are multiple people who do have that expertise and in my opinion we would be wise to set up our goals and policies such that knowledgeable people who understand that aquifer and understand it could do it without costing the county a lot of money….

Water happens to be an area where I’ve spent decades of my life involved with. Before I came to Orcas Island I was involved in water policy in the state of Nebraska both at the local level and state level. We monitor every one of our irrigation wells in the state of Nebraska, every one of them has to have a meter, those are managed and maintained by what we call a natural resource district, which would be the equivalent of a local county group of people who do that and they police themselves and it’s a big deal, in fact it’s a big deal in the sense that multiple court cases have been filed on it. It‘s gone to the Supreme Court multiple times. The reason I mention all of that is what we have here on ag resource committee on point number 2 [Draft Goal 2: “Establish coordinated programs for monitoring water quality … and agricultural uses so that … protection programs can be modified as necessary.”] has wanted to insert the word “agricultural uses.” By the way I own a farm and I have to be very careful how much water I use on my farm. Right now on San Juan County, nobody monitors agricultural water use, nobody knows how much water is being used by any of the agricultural uses, so in order for us to establish a coordinated program somebody’s going to have to require people to start monitoring that. That means not just adding the meter to existing or to old or new wells it means going out and putting a meter on all of the new wells, excuse me all of the old wells as well and then somebody’s going to have to maintain that database and be able to make policy on it. It will take years to generate the data necessary to do that intelligently.

I’m not really objecting to the goal having the word agricultural uses involved, but if we actually implement policies that do that, it’s not something you do easily, it involves a lot of money and it involves a lot of people and a lot of time and we have multiple farmers with multiple wells and we’re going to basically go to them and say OK we’re going to require you to put a thousand dollar meter, although we could probably get by with some of the less expensive ones, you might be able to get by with a $500 meter on each of your wells and then that well’s going to have to be reported to somebody, who’s going to maintain that database, once we have that data, what are we going to do with it ? Now we’re going to start to establish coordinated programs for monitoring this and using it. I don’t have a problem with doing all that but realize that when we inset that as our goal, that’s what all of it entails.

Chair: It still seems like a worthy goal, given that we’re going into, dealing with climate change, warmer summers, drier summers, it seems like having that in there as a goal to me feels reasonable.

Commissioner Hoffman: It occurs to me that this could start as a voluntary program, and it also occurs to me that the islands are very different, you hear Commissioner Smith say there’s not a water problem on Orcas, that’s wonderful, but Lopez is very different, we don’t have a large defined aquifer, we’re very individual and very individual wells, we do have a small water district and a few HOA districts that are state reporters, but we do have a lot of agricultural users that are on their own wells, and I think this might start as a voluntary program if people want to get involved in it, as Commissioner Smith says this is a big undertaking and we’re going to get some pushback on this from the farmers, but a voluntary program might get us started down the road.

Chair: Thanks [Commissioner Hoffman], any other comments regarding number 2?

Commissioner Smith: I guess my comment on it would be simply and this is a question for Mr. Williams, we put a goal in place, should we then have a corresponding policy and should we have a corresponding regulation. In other words, if we create a goal are we kind of obligated to create the next steps as well?

Director Williams: I think the goal speaks for itself, I don’t think we need specific policies for this goal, I think staying at the higher level and I really think goals and policies here are kind of commingled together here anyway as far as how it’s written. I don’t think we need to add anything else to it. To me it’s functional in the way we’re talking about it right now, I think it’s functional to move forward with. [Another proposed goal, number 6, proposed to “monitor and measure the amount of fresh water used,” and was next addressed by the Development Director.]

Director Williams: Madam chair if I may put a comment into this one specifically, it’s not even a comment, it’s just something to consider, is that measuring domestic wells and really I’m referring to private wells, to private wells, not commercial wells, like Eastsound Water, tends to be a very polarizing property rights issue when we start putting meters on individual private property wells, so just something to take into account, that can be a major, major, polarizing issue in the community.

Commissioner Smith: I will echo what Mr. Williams says, in our community where we required every person to put a meter on every one of their wells, it was multiple lawsuits very expensive, very engaging. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t do it, but in Nebraska we did it in response to a major declining aquifer and we felt the essential need to preserve it as best we could as a community so we imposed these restrictions on ourselves, but not everybody agreed, not everybody wanted to spend the five hundred dollars it takes to put a proper meter and data logger, thousand dollars it takes to do a full system on it, so we as Eastsound Water we do that but we’re currently not reporting that information to anyone. We’re doing it for our own purposes and for our own management purposes, it’s a good thing to do so I’m not objecting to it in concept but once again right now goal number 6 says this is something the county should do and I question whether it’s something the county should do. I believe that right now we do not have a threat to our water supply for most of the county. Are there communities or sub-communities within the islands which do have that issue ? Maybe. And that little subgroup, maybe that HOA, should take action to protect themselves, but I’m not so sure it’s something we should impose on the entire county.

Commissioner Knoellinger (Orcas): Talking about the property rights issues of encouraging people to do this, I mean voluntary, I think you would get a lot of buy in on a voluntary system, I just don’t, do we know is there legal authority for us to push that. That’s my question, if it’s not being done now, is there in state code or county code that allows us to push for that. I’m just asking for my own information.

Chair: I have no idea, does anyone know what the water policy of the state is regarding monitoring?

Director Williams: The only thing I can throw out here is that everything will be vetted by the prosecuting attorney’s office as we package this up to go to county council. So if we do run into any issues with legality or jurisdiction on this, they will be addressed here as we go forward, but the concerns are noted.

Another public comment proposed the Goal to “ensure … climate-resilient water resources … despite the impact of the climate emergency.” Commissioner Hoffman observed, “We don’t have the power to do that, to ensure long term equitable and resilient water resources. I mean you know, ‘encourage’ or ‘we should develop policies,’ but ‘ENSURE?’ We can’t do that.”

The Development Director provided this comment: “I just have a problem with the word ‘emergency’ more than anything else I agree with [Commissioner Hoffman’s] comments, it should be ‘encourage’ for a policy, but you know, ‘declaring a climate emergency,’ I’ve got heartburn with. We all recognize there’s a problem but ‘emergency’ has a different connotation with it.”

Commissioner Smith: Yeah, and when we get to the word “despite,” I guess I like the idea of saying, “encourage long term water resources in reaction to climate change, period.”

Chair: “Encourage long term water what”?

Commissioner Smith: “Encourage long term water resources in response to climate change,” or “encourage policies that will support water availability in response to climate change,” I like that better. I’ll try it one more time, then we can say whether we like it or hate it, “encourage policies that support water availability in response to climate change.”

After lunch, the Commission turned to the Historic and Archeological Preservation element of the proposed comprehensive plan and approved it in twelve minutes.

Next they faced the Land Use and Rural element. Here, the Commission deleted a proposed requirement that Agricultural Resource Lands not be rezoned for development so that there is “no net loss” of these resource lands. Under current law, single-family homes and duplexes, home occupations, farm stays, farmworker accommodations and cottage enterprises are permitted in the Agricultural Resource Lands designations. The Commission chair Sheila Gaquin explained the purpose of the “no net loss” of agricultural resource lands:

Chair: But that if we allow, if we don’t have that, little by little, the agricultural land is consumed for other purposes. And the feeling was when we have these agricultural soils, once they’re built on, and a road goes over it and whatever else happens, it’s gone forever, so as a way to maintain that for future times, it was talked about in part for food security, that you have these lands that could potentially could grow crops or graze animals or what have you, if you lose those to development of any kind, they’re gone forever, so the idea was preserve them.

Commissioner Smith: And I will argue that there is far more ag land on the islands that is capable of producing enough food to feed everybody on the islands, in other words, we have ten times as much land or maybe a hundred times as much land as necessary to provide food to everybody on the islands if that’s the goal. Obviously, if we, what we want is we don’t want just one kind of crop, we don’t just want all corn. We want lots of different vegetables, we want you know, honey, we want a variety of things. And in order to do that you really kind of need to have some of it under greenhouse, some of it you’ll put out in the open field, some of it will be, you know, a corral. So whatever it might be, I understand the desire to make sure that we don’t gobble up all of our farmland, I don’t think we’re anywhere close to risking that, I really don’t, and in my opinion, I personally would like to live on a farm, it’s what I grew up on, and I would like to have my farm house in farmland surrounded by farmland and I think a lot of people like that element and that aspect of it. If our logic is that we want to have enough land for making sure we have enough to provide food, we have ten times or a hundred times as much as we need, the reason it doesn’t exist right now is that it is not economical. I personally would remove the “no net loss of agricultural,” number three, simply because I think it effectively is there for the prohibition of allowing houses on the property. But we mitigate that by allowing farmworker housing, so it’s kind of a wash.

In the event, the Commission voted to delete the goal of “no net loss” for agricultural resource lands. Only Chair Sheila Gaquin wanted to keep it.

Possibly because the hour was growing late and county staff was working overtime, the Commission spent little time wordsmithing the county’s staff’s proposals for addressing climate change as it applies to land use. The land use climate plan has three draft climate-related goals: understand climate change and make sure development regulations take it into account, reduce the carbon footprint of new development, and use nature to help reduce effects of and adjust to the new climate reality. A major policy suggestion is to “develop a climate mitigation action plan.”