To Plan Or To De-Plan, That Is the Question

On Tuesday, May 21^st, Bellingham will host both a "short course" on local planning and another chapter in Whatcom County's very long history of local de-planning. 

From 6:30 to 9:30, in the City Council chambers (210 Lottie Street), the Planning Association of Washington and the Washington State Department of Commerce will present “A Short Course on Local Planning,” focusing on topics such as “The Legal Basis of Planning in Washington State,” “Comprehensive Planning and Implementation Basics,” and “Roles and Relationships in the Planning Process.”  The agenda is here.  

Across the street, the Whatcom County Council will be hosting the latest installment in its very, very long course in how not to plan.

As regular readers of this blog know, the County’s Comprehensive Plan remains out of compliance with the Growth Management Act.  The Rural Element still doesn’t comply with part of the law that was passed over 15 years ago.  In January of this year, the Growth Management Hearings Board listed some of the ways that the Plan is out of compliance.  The County has appealed some of those issues to court, but it is obliged to fix the rest.

On Tuesday night, the Council will hold a public hearing on the Planning Commission’s recommendations relating to the issues that the County didn’t appeal.  Here’s the agenda. 

Remarkably, the Planning Commission has recommended that not complying with the Hearings Board’s decision is the appropriate response for many of the remaining issues.  Here’s the Planning Commission’s recommendation. 

Perhaps the Planning Commission is concerned that We the Taxpayers haven’t paid enough to the County’s Seattle law firm yet – after all,  “only” $46,000 has been billed to the County for the first four months of the year, with the court hearing on the county’s appeal nowhere in sight yet. 

Speaking of lawyers -- in the Planning Commission’s defense, it appears that the only legal advice that it has received was from the lawyer for some property owners who are suing the Board and the County.  Yes, it’s the same lawyer who compared the Planning Commission’s responsibility to comply with the Growth Management Act with being loaded into a cattle car to Auschwitz.  (Not kidding.  For those who missed it, the exact quote is here.) 

While it is ironic that the Short Course in local planning will conflict with the County Council meeting, it does provide the public with an interesting choice:  learn how local planning should be done in the City Council chambers, or watch how it shouldn’t be done in the County Council chambers. 

Certainty About Water Supply

This blog will circle back to water supply, I promise.  But first, a confession:

I think that New York Times columnist Gail Collins is funny.

I admit this, publicly, despite the fact that many in Whatcom County view any connection with any geographic location outside of Whatcom County (especially the east coast) to be a terminal disqualification for expressing an opinion on any local issue.   Those who have been tainted by outside thinking – heck, by having breathed the air of elsewhere –should just shut up and let the folks with their great-great-grandpappy’s homestead certificates run County affairs.

Or so folks often say, during County Council meetings and especially during County elections.  Just you watch and listen over the course of the next few months.

(These are the same folks, by the way, who will be insisting that the County must plan for an enormous influx of population over the next 20 years.  Once houses have been built, profits have been realized, and those new homebuyers have moved in, they should just shut up and be ignored for several generations, apparently.)

Anyway, Gail Collins’ most recent column is an exposé of the sheer nuttiness of Mark Sanford, South Carolina’s former Tea Party governor and current candidate.  You’ll recall that ex-Governor Sanford coined the term “hiking the Appalachian trail” when he met “jetting off to South America to meet up with his mistress.”

What impressed me most about this column, though, was the first comment in the “Reader’s Picks” section.  One Bill Appledorf asked:

Isn't there anyone, in a country of more than 300 million people, who understands economics, believes in science, and wants to be part of government because s/he wants to improve the lot of everyday American citizens?

Hmmm.  A good question.

Mr. Appledorf concluded:

Problems need to be solved. Schools, roads, bridges, windmills need to be built. Sane people interested in helping others it seems to me might find this sort of thing challenging and rewarding -- not monetarily rewarding, but emotionally and personally rewarding, the feeling of having contributed something worthwhile to society.

What, I asked myself, is wrong with this Mr. Appledorf?  Isn’t he aware that voters don’t want the kind of person who believes that government exists to solve problems and help people?  American voters want people who will tear down government in order to prove that government doesn’t work!

And then I looked again.  Mr. Appledorf is not from Whatcom County.  

He’s from British Columbia. 

So close, yet it might as well be another country.  Canadians, like all other people who aren’t from here, really need to learn how to be seen (handing over cash while buying our real estate and milk) but not heard.

Still, I can’t help but think about the type of government that Mr. Appledorf envisions:  one that addresses problems.  Collective action problems.  The type of problems that individuals cannot solve on their own.

Water supply, for example.

On May 30^th-31^st, the WRIA Joint Board is sponsoring a symposium called “Water Supply:  Searching for Certainty in Uncertain Times.”  Along with a cast of thousands, I’ve been asked to participate in a panel at the end of the first day.  We have all been asked to address the following questions:

1. From your perspective, what is the uncertainty that your interest faces with today's water supply or stream flow status?

2. Why is it important to address the challenges associated with that uncertainty?

3. What do you see as a solution for certainty for water now and in the future?

And here’s my problem. For the life of me, I don’t think that there’s any “uncertainty” about water supply, from the point of view of my “interest.”

My “interest,” according to the program, is “land use.”  This is because, along with Futurewise, my clients and I recently challenged the County’s failure to even consider, much less protect, water quality and quantity when it revised the Rural Element of its comprehensive plan.  The Growth Management Hearings Board heard arguments on April 26^th, and it should issue a decision sometime in June.

Regardless of what the Hearings Board decides, though, I don’t see any uncertainty about how Whatcom County will address water supply issues in its land use planning.  It will continue to do exactly what it’s been doing over the past 13 years.

Whatcom County adopted a Water Resources Plan in 1999 and a Coordinated Water Supply Plan “update” in 2000. 

Since then?  Nothing. 

The County’s position is that it doesn’t have any obligation to plan, or adopt development regulations, to protect water supply so long as the County’s regulations aren’t in actual conflict with the Department of Ecology’s rules.  In 1985, the Department of Ecology adopted rules stating that most of the watersheds in the County are closed to surface water withdrawals during all or part of the year.

The County’s population in 1985 was somewhere between 107,000 and 128,000 (those are the 1980 and 1990 census figures).  Now the population is 205,000.  Not quite double, but somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000 people more than in 1985.  Times have changed since “Like a Virgin” and “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” were the top songs.

Times have changed, and not for the better, when it comes to water supply. We still have closed watersheds -- and we have thousands of people moving into those closed watersheds and digging wells there. Farm Friends has estimated that as many as ¾ of Whatcom County farmers are now farming without legal water rights.  We have an aquifer in which 70% of tested wells don’t meet state drinking water standards.  We have salmon streams that don’t have enough water in them to provide the habitat that salmon need.  And so on, and so forth. 

What could the County do?  It could plan.  It could figure out where water is available, where it isn’t, encourage development in areas where we have water and discourage development in areas where we don’t.  It could adopt rigorous regulations protecting water quality, because the County’s water supply problem in some areas is related to water pollution problems.  Of course, that would require believing in science -- including the science that says that leaking septic tanks and unlimited impervious surfaces are hard on water quality.

And it would require a view of government as a force to solve problems and help people.

What will the County do? 

It will wait for a catastrophe.

Maybe the tribes or the state will take legal action, someday, that will force the County to do something.  Maybe climate change will make the wells run dry.  Maybe salmon species will go extinct.

Someday, something drastic will happen, and County taxpayers will then be on the hook for enormous capital facilities expenditures for – who knows.  Desalination plants, pipelines and reservoirs for north county, maybe a reservoir on Mt. Baker to catch the melting glacial waters.

Doubt me?  Look at the precedent of Lake Whatcom, where the City of Bellingham is gearing up to build a multimillion dollar algae removal system.  In the meantime, the County delays action in favor of studying how to make sure that lot owners can build more houses around the lake without being burdened by pollution removal requirements.

So the only uncertainty about water supply that I see is when and how much taxpayers will pay. 

Looking on the bright side, by reading this short blog, you just saved the two days that you might otherwise spend at the symposium.

But if you still want to go for some reason, click here to see the program and to register.

For Shame, Whatcom County

I thought that nothing that Whatcom County did at this point could surprise me, but I was wrong.   Not only can the County still surprise, but it has the capacity to make me sick.

There’s no point attending County Planning Commission meetings these days, because it’s a closed club – a biweekly Tea Party convened to serve the building industry and its attorneys.  Perhaps the ingrown atmosphere is conducive to forgetting that the proceedings are taped, and that what is said in Northwest Annex doesn’t necessarily stay in Northwest Annex. 

Or maybe all of those involved believe that what follows is perfectly acceptable public discourse.

Attorney Jack Swanson appeared before the Planning Commission on March 28^th – the audio was recently posted on the Planning Commission website (click the link from this website). 

Mr. Swanson ostensibly was representing three property owners, but he really was giving one barn-burner of a political speech.  He emphasized how angry everyone should be that the Planning Commission and County Council don’t have the last word in planning in Whatcom County, because the Council's decisions are subject to review by the Growth Management Hearings Board.   

(In reality, Jack knows that the County Council and Planning Commission have never had the last word, because he makes very active use of the courts to attempt to overturn decisions that do not favor his clients.  But railing against the Hearings Board, a 23-year-old institution, plays well to this crowd.)

And he urged the Planning Commission to vote for nullification.  That’s right, Jack Swanson was there to tell the Planning Commission to violate the law.

“I’m really concerned that we may get to the County Council here and they may throw up their hands and give up with the Growth Board, and remove my client’s property from the LAMIRD,” he said.  Well, that’s what the County Council has to do because it’s the law and the County did not appeal the decision. 

If Mr. Swanson wins in court, then he will want the Council to follow the law.  Not to make up its own mind about whether the court was right or wrong. 

But Jack wasn’t a tiny bit subtle about telling the Planning Commission to violate the law.  “Tell the Council, tell the Council to stand up to these people for a change,” he said, at about 1 hour and 25 minutes into the audio.  And then added “Am I getting angry?”

Nowhere near as angry as I was, four minutes later, when Jack Swanson justified his call for nullification by comparing the Growth Management Hearings Board's decision to the Holocaust.  Listen to it yourself, at 1:29:15 in the audio:

And now, as you know, you’re probably getting to wonder what the people felt like when they got on the rail, the cattle cars on the tracks that would take them to Auschwitz, you know.  Because that’s kind of where you are, right now, because of the failure of the County to appeal last year, year before, not appealing certain issues.  You’re now stuck with those, and it’s going to be a real fight to see what you can do to help out the people of Whatcom County, who deserve a lot more than what they’re getting right now.  So that’s my sales pitch, if you don’t mind.

I’ve been in the public process business for close to 30 years, and this is, without any competition, the most offensive and distasteful remark I’ve ever heard.  Nothing even comes close.  I had to turn off the audio when I heard that line because my hands were shaking. 

What disrespect for those who lost their lives at the end of that cattle car journey.  They were not facing the potential loss of speculative profits from their property, which is the concern of Mr. Swanson’s clients.  They did not have a right of legal appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, as Mr. Swanson’s clients do.  It’s just the worst type of demagoguery --

and our Planning Commission ate it up. 

Were you thinking that the Chair of the Planning Commission, Michelle Luke, would tell Mr. Swanson that he was out of line? 

Did you suppose that other commissioners, and County staff, would say “that’s totally out of line?”

Not a bit of it.  “That’s my sales pitch, if you don’t mind” were the last words of Mr. Swanson’s testimony.  Here are the next few lines from the audio:

Michelle Luke:  Thank you. 

Jack Swanson:  Thank you.

Michelle Luke:  Anyone else wish to speak?

And you know what?  The Planning Commission found Mr. Swanson so persuasive that they’re doing exactly what he asked for.  Yes, recommending nullification to the County Council.

This goes well beyond normal partisan discord.  It’s shameful, it’s out of control, and it’s happening right here where we live. 

Fish, Out of Water

Now that the spring monsoons seem to be back, it can be hard to think about problems with water supply.

Nonetheless, it seems to be on a lot of people’s minds.

For example, Federal District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez, who grew up in Whatcom County and graduated from Lynden High (according to Wikipedia, so it must be true), recently issued a decision about water. 

You may have read about the decision (United States of America v. State of Washington); you can read the actual decision here.   

In a nutshell, the court found that the depletion of salmon stocks has harmed Washington’s tribes, including the Lummi Indian Nation and the Nooksack Tribe, both of which are parties to the case.  It also found that salmon habitat has been degraded by blocked culverts, and requires the state to fix barrier culverts under transportation projects.

The case is based on language in the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott, in which the Tribes were promised that “[t]he right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations, is further secured to said Indians, in common with all citizens of the Territory.”  As the decision notes, “Governor Stevens assured the Tribes that even after they ceded huge quantities of land, they would still be able to feed themselves and their families forever.”  (U.S. v. State of Washington at 2 of 35.)

The United States, the tribes, and the State of Washington all agreed on a number of facts – pages 3- 21 of the decision.  They agree that the Tribes have continued to rely on salmon, that salmon populations have been harmed by human activities, and that more tribal members would engage in salmon fishing if there were more salmon. 

The Judge then made his own findings, based on the record.  He found that “[s]almon production is directly related to the amount and quality of habitat available.  Loss and degradation of habitat have greatly reduced salmon production”. (Page 22 of 35).  His findings of law state that “[t]he Treaties were negotiated and signed by the parties on the understanding and expectation that the salmon runs were inexhaustible and that salmon would remain in abundance forever.”  However, salmon stocks have “declined alarmingly since treaty times.  A primary cause of this decline is habitat degradation, both in breeding habitat (freshwater) and feeding habitat (freshwater and marine areas).”  (Page 32 of 35.)

Salmon need to be able to swim upstream to spawn and downstream to reach the ocean.  Culverts can be a barrier.

So can a lack of water.  

“Instream flow” requirements are supposed to make sure that there’s enough water for fish and other wildlife in the Nooksack and its tributaries.  In order to meet these requirements, some streams and lakes are closed to new water withdrawals year round, while others are closed in the summer.  If you want to see a full list of the water bodies that are closed, or have use restrictions, it’s here at WAC 173-501.  

And here’s a graphic depiction, from the 2010 WRIA 1 State of the Watershed Report (click here for the whole report, which is well worth a look).  The green areas are the parts of the watershed that are open to new surface water withdrawals year-round.  Everywhere else -- just about everywhere -- is subject to restrictions. Tapped out, you might say.

 

But why does this matter?  After all, it seems like “closed” watershed are pretty much imaginary, since it’s likely that over half of the farmers in Whatcom County (I’ve heard 75%) are farming without legal water rights.  And the County plans to allow housing for 50,000 more people – the equivalent of 10 Blaines – to be built in the rural area between now and 2029, and most of those new houses will be digging wells to use groundwater.  Groundwater and surface water are often interconnected systems, so what goes into wells won’t be going into surface water.

One reason that it could matter is that Treaty of Point Elliott. 

On March 21^st, the Lummi Nation made a presentation to the WRIA 1 joint board.  The power point of the presentation is here.(It says that it's a presentation to the Unitarian Fellowship from 2012, but the same presentation was used in March.  Lummi Nation representatives said that they'd be happy to make the presentation to any group that asks for it.)

During the presentation, Jeremy Freimund, the Lummi Natural Resources Department’s Water Resources Manager, made three points that pretty much sum up the situation.

First, the tribes have federally reserved water rights.  In the case of the Lummi Nation, these rights include sufficient water to support the reservation as an economically viable homeland, as well as the right to sufficient instream flow to support the tribal fishery.  The priority date for water for the reserved fishing right is “time immemorial” – in other words, before any other water right in the County.

Second, this federal reserved right sets the baseline for for the availability of water.  As Mr. Freimund put it, “X is the pie, Y is the tribal section, Z is the amount of water available to the junior users, the state water rights users.”  He was referring to slide 14 of the presentation, but you get the idea even without it.

Third, “You couldn’t deal with the tribal rights without dealing with instream flow, and you can’t deal with water quantity without dealing with water quality.”

This reality is not, of course, accepted by all.

Kris Halterman, who has a web page on Tea Party Nation and a Saturday morning show on KGMI, interviewed former County Council member Marlene Dawson and Elaine Willman, from the “Citizens’ Equal Rights Allowance,” or CERA, on KGMI this morning. 

CERA is holding a conference at the Best Western today.   Its intent seems to be to rile folks up, so they’ll be very, very, very upset about tribal rights.  Upset at the tribes, angry at the government, upset with folks who suggest that maybe business as usual isn’t going to work when it comes to our use of water.

According to Ms. Willman, CERA supports tribal culture but opposes “the existence of tribal governments, per se” because they are “unnecessary and unconstitutional.”  Marlene Dawson said that “we have no permanent-type reservations in Washington state” and that the “Point Elliott treaties were for the tribes’ present use and occupancy.”  “The idea that they’re permanent – no.”

Ms. Halterman suggested that, if the Boldt decision went back to court today, “things” would happen that could “really dramatically change the course of what’s happening with our issues with water rights here in Whatcom County. . .”

Ms. Willman did let slip that “the state is not on our side,” which I would view as a significant problem.  But she urged supporters to go out and push back.

Fight against the state and federal government, fight against the tribes, fight, fight, fight.  Make believe that Whatcom County is the Tea Party’s own little fiefdom, exempt from the forces – of law and of nature – that govern anywhere else.  It all sounds so familiar.

It must be an election year. 
________________________________

More on water, to continue my response to Abe and Tip:

Water, as I noted below, is a special case.  The tribes, like everybody else, are stuck in a system where our official mechanism to determine water rights is a court action.  It's archaic, it's slow, it's not optimal. But it's the system that we have.

Alternatively, why can’t we all just agree on water rights through the WRIA process? An author who studied collaborative water basin efforts around the world, focusing particularly on California's CALFED process, reached a conclusion that seems to apply to WRIA:

"Clear apportionment of water supplies is essential to effective collaborative governance, whether the participants are sovereign governments or so-called stakeholders. When all the talk of public rights and stakeholder interests is finally ended, water governance is the allocation of water to particular uses (and non-uses). If there is no legally enforceable apportionment of water to specific uses and particular users, the water resource will be inefficiently used and the river basin environment will suffer unnecessary and avoidable harm.. . .

Comprehensive river basin management is not the solution to water allocation and distribution in the United States or around the globe. It is a noble concept, generally promoted for the best of reasons, but the realities of often intense competition for an increasingly scarce resource assure that good intentions and voluntary cooperation will seldom carry the day."

Huffman, "Comprehensive River Basin Management:  The Limits of Collaborative, Stakeholder-Based, Water Governance," 49 Nat. Resources J. 117, 148 (2009).

As the author states, the problem is that "stakeholders" include parties with no legal rights to water.  If they are given the same vote as parties with legal rights, this provides a disincentive for parties with legal rights to participate in the "stakeholder" process. The author wasn't writing specifically about the tribes or the WRIA process, but the analysis does seem applicable.

Now what we're seeing is a group of "stakeholders" -- the Tea Party and some other groups -- insisting that the County provide them with the same rights as parties with legal water rights.  They probably believe that they are bolstering this approach by arguing that the tribes do not, in fact, have legal rights.

If this campaign revs up and gains support in the County, I should think that it would have the opposite effect from what the CERA/ Tea Party folks want. If the tribes are asked to negotiate in a forum that is hostile to their legal rights, it is hard to see why they would engage in a collaborative process. I don't speak for the tribes, of course, but that's the outcome suggested by the logic of the situation and experience in other areas.

During the WRIA meeting, the Lummi Nation's water resource manager observed that "Sometimes resolution is more likely when there's the framework of a lawsuit."  Bob Kelly stated that the Nooksack Tribe isn't at all interested in stopping farmers from farming.  All in all, the tribes didn't seem to be taking a belligerent stance.  Their statements simply appear to reflect the reality of the situation.

Tip, it is true that the law is not static.  The County can indeed wait and hope for a ruling that the tribes don't have water rights.  After all, despite multiple adverse legal rulings, the County still assumes that the Growth Management Act will be repealed and de-plans accordingly.

Or - the County could take a "no regrets" approach on water issues.  Even if a court found that tribal water rights don’t extend to the preservation of tribal fisheries, we would still have instream flow requirements.  We would still have tribal and non-tribal people who want to fish.  We would still have rivers and streams that will provide us with more natural functions if we leave some water within them. So, we could plan for streams that will ensure healthy salmon and shellfish, regardless of the tribal water right. 

That would be a framework that could be conducive to an effective collaborative process.  How likely is that?