| Clallam County, WA: Current well-water users can continue
current consumption, `water lawyer' says 2004-10-12 by
JIM CASEY Well-water users in the Elwha and Dungeness valleys can continue their current consumption under a proposed water resources plan, a self-described ``water lawyer'' said Monday. Shirley Waters Nixon, a part-time Port Angles resident and staff attorney for the Center for Environmental Law and Policy in Seattle. said the state's prior appropriation doctrine establishes that ``first in time is first in right'' to water. Nixon addressed Clallam County commissioners at their work session Monday. The three commissioners will hold the last of three public hearings on the Elwha-Dungeness Watershed Plan at 10:30 a.m. today in Room 160 of the Clallam County Courthouse, 223 E. Fourth St. in Port Angeles. Two previous hearings have been before packed audiences, including about 200 at a session last week at Guy Cole Convention Center in Sequim. Future water allocations Future users would be the losers in any water-allocation or limitation scheme, Nixon said. So-called ``junior users'' would include any stream-flow requirements set by the state, she added. The Elwha-Dungeness plan sets no such regulations, however. Commissioner Mike Chapman, R-Port Angeles, said it is a planning and policy document, not a regulatory or legislative one. ``There's no proposal to get people off their wells,'' he said. Nor does it mandate metering people's wells. Such actions could come only from the state Legislature, Chapman said. What's next? Commissioners will face three choices after today's hearing: adopt the plan, reject it, or remand it to planning agencies for refinement. They likely will make no decision today, said Chapman and Commission Chairman Steve Tharinger, D-Dungeness. The board will probably will spend at least another work session discussing the plan again. ``We've got a lot of testimony to digest,'' Chapman said. ``We haven't made up our minds.'' And Clallam County’s decision will be closely watched across the state. Nixon, the attorney called the proposal---officially know as the Water Resource Inventory Area 18 Plan--- “the poster child” for water regulation in Washington. She said it was “head and shoulders” above efforts elsewhere. But rejecting the plan could cost the county any local autonomy in water issues. “If it can’t work here, maybe the Legislature will say, ‘Maybe we were wrong’ in implementing this thing from the bottom up.” and impose its own regulations on the county, Nixon said. Testimony reviewed The commissioners spoke most of Monday’s work session reviewing objections that were made at the Oct., 6 hearing in Sequim, where the plan drew criticism from real estate and construction interests. Criticisms and responses from the county Health and Human Services, included: * The plan is too vague with terms like “reasonable” and “timely”. Staff response: Narrow definitions at this stage in the process would have been criticized as “too detailed.” * There should be no well-metering requirements. Response: There are none beyond strictly voluntary programs for individual wells. * Don’t reduce the 5,000 gallons per day limit for exempt wells. Response: Only the Legislature can do this, although the plan recommends that law-makers consider limits based on households and individuals. * Get “peer review” of the scientific content of the plan. Response: It already recommends consultation with the well-drilling industry. * The plan should be put to a referendum. Response: Adopting the plan would make it only a policy. To implement parts of the plan would require more public participation. Four years in the making The proposal has been more than four years in the making. Rejecting it, the commissioners agreed, would risk alienating the citizens and agencies who have produced it and agreed to it. Adopting it, though, would risk lawsuits from property-rights advocates and building trades interests. Should the commissioners remand it for refinement, the health staff said, they should be very specific about what they want rewritten. Tharinger agreed. “We must be very laser-like in our suggestions,” he said.
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