HomeMy WebLinkAboutNatural Resources May 4 20041
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DISCLAIMER: This document contains the Whatcom County Council or Committee
minutes, as approved. However, unless an attested signature page is attached, they
are not the final approved minutes.
WHATCOM COUNTY COUNCIL
Natural Resources Committee
May 4, 2004
Committee Chair Sharon Roy called the meeting to order at 9:33 a.m. in the
Council Chambers, 311 Grand Avenue, Bellingham, Washington.
Present: Absent:
Seth Fleetwood None
Laurie Caskey- Schreiber
Also Present:
Dan McShane
COMMITTEE DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATION TO COUNCIL
1. DISCUSSION REGARDING WRIA 1 WATERSHED MANAGEMENT
PROJECT (AB2004 -025A)
Bruce Roll, Water Resources Division Manager, stated he would discuss
section four and appendix K. The early action work and the process for plan
adoption wasn't approved formally at the Planning Unit meeting. Some members
were reluctant to approve the plan section by section. Some wanted to go through
the entire document before approving any section.
The other topic discussed at the Planning Unit meeting was a suggestion to
release this draft to the public. One concern was that if this needs to stay in the
Planning Unit for another six months or a year, it could be released to the public.
From staff's perspective, it's healthy to get the public reading the plan as soon as
possible. It's something to consider.
A couple of caucuses were reluctant to provide approval for the early action
funding. One caucus has specific questions to work through, and it will come up at
the next Planning Unit meeting.
For the next Council water resources work session, he will discuss the
instream flow adoption methodology and action strategy for a significant amount of
time. He will also discuss how it relates to early action items. That is a
cornerstone of the plan that they hope to have approved in the next month or to,
so it will go to the Planning Unit.
He is not seeking any approval from the councilmembers today. He will
simply discuss section four.
Natural Resources Committee, 5/4/2004, Page 1
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DISCLAIMER: This document contains the Whatcom County Council or Committee
minutes, as approved. However, unless an attested signature page is attached, they
are not the final approved minutes.
Caskey- Schreiber stated she supports divulging this draft to the public. Roll
agreed. It will help them understand how the community perceives the plan.
Roll stated that in March 2000, the Planning Unit put together a work plan
from then to where they are today. One key element was the need to clearly
define implementation to make sure they have a strategy for moving forward. A
proposal for moving forward is on the table for adoption and implementation. Two
pieces to move forward this year are the elements of the plan they're all willing to
support and also the instream flow strategy.
Legislation provided for establishment of the Initiating Governments. A
memorandum of agreement was signed by all parties except the Nooksack Tribe.
The memorandum morphed into an interlocal agreement that established them as
an entity.
There was a need to develop the caucus interest groups. They identified the
water interest groups and set up caucuses, which was a novel approach. Most
other planning units in the state had something like an application or appointment
process. The Initiating Governments established the Planning Unit, which is made
up of all the water caucuses. The Joint Board was established in late 1999. That
was the framework for moving forward. Other groups are working daily. The
Planning Unit meets monthly. Most of the work is done by the staff team, including
Initiating Government and small city representatives that meet weekly. That's the
on- the - ground work being done on the various elements. That core group is the
staff team. If there is a proposal before the Planning Unit, the staff team tees up
the proposal and deals with Joint Board issues.
As they move forward, there has been interest by water groups that there be
a focalized governance structure. The County has been lead administrator for
contracts and those types of things. Focus on the elements they want to move
forward with sooner than later and see the natural structure that might be
proposed to ensure that things will work well and move forward. It was never the
Water Resources Division's intent to indefinitely play the role as administrator. The
proposal was to fund this project through plan development. They're at that point
now. No funding was set aside for the water resource inventory area (WRIA) work
this year. The work being done now is through existing contracts and is being
spent out through 2004. The lion's share of the work will be continuing contracts
through 2004. As they move into implementation, there will be times when
additional funding is needed.
All Joint Board members and most Planning Unit members concur that some
type of structure needs to be established into the future so the water interests can
work together. That is one of the most significant accomplishments of this process.
They need to consider how that will continue into the future. One suggestion is a
water resource implementation assembly. The Joint Board and tribes have
expressed an interest to move forward jointly.
Natural Resources Committee, 5/4/2004, Page 2
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DISCLAIMER: This document contains the Whatcom County Council or Committee
minutes, as approved. However, unless an attested signature page is attached, they
are not the final approved minutes.
They will start to see some of these processes merge, including the salmon
recovery plan. A salmon recovery board is being formed to deal with salmon
planning and the issue of receivership and ranking of salmon recovery funding
grants. A key is to consider what they need to move forward with WRIA and
salmon, and consider structures best suited to do that. The tribes are reluctant to
bring salmon recovery and WRIA under one umbrella, but that's changing. It's
something to consider as they move forward.
Other pieces needing to be accomplished include the short -term plan
adoption and development of instream flow action strategy. Once those two are
complete, they will move into serious implementation. Sometime this year, they
will need to move beyond plan adoption and instream flow implementation.
Adaptive management is another key element of this process. They
continually ask themselves if there is a better way to address an issue. The
fundamental pieces of adaptive management will need to be the piece that sits
within whatever implementation structure they choose to go forward with.
Moving into phase two, they're going forward with things like early action
work and instream flows. There is a nexus between land use, salmon recovery,
and WRIA planning as they work on new critical areas and shoreline regulations. It
is one of the more important pieces for the County to actively consider as it moves
forward. There is no shortage of people who will look for funding, which is one
reason to put the plan before the public.
Section four is long -term monitoring, which is an element identified early in
the WRIA process. It is monitoring to determine how they progress over time and
help aid in calibration of the various models. In response to this need, staff put
together a grant proposal for $250,000 to develop a long term monitoring strategy.
It will move forward this year and into 2005 to identify stream gauges, weather
stations, snow stations, and other things. That long term monitoring will be a key
piece, whether it is looking at work in Bertrand, Lake Whatcom, or other locations.
He doesn't advocate the County being the funding source for long -term monitoring,
though. One benefit of working with Utah State University (USU) was that it
gathered all the information they've had and are putting it into the decision support
system. They will continually need to update land use and geographic information
system (GIS) coverage as a part of the long -term monitoring program.
The County will acquire from USU the fully functioning versions by year's
end. They will have functioning units of the decision support system. The group
has been determining historical, current, and future conditions. They are
coordinating with the Planning Department to make sure models will predict the
land use changes they want. There are also pieces of their work tied to additional
data collection from groundwater and surface water. In a lot of cases, WRIA 1 has
data that's specific to location and time. They are moving toward creating data
that will be much more significant and beneficial to models.
Natural Resources Committee, 5/4/2004, Page 3
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DISCLAIMER: This document contains the Whatcom County Council or Committee
minutes, as approved. However, unless an attested signature page is attached, they
are not the final approved minutes.
Appendix K includes more details of the proposed governance structure.
This section has more detail on specific goals and objectives during each phase of
the WRIA watershed implementation strategy. The first phase is plan adoption and
the instream flow action strategy. Appendix K lists specific goals and objectives for
this first phase. Page six of Appendix K is a diagram of where they are going. The
interim strategy recognizes that there isn't additional funding coming in. With the
milestones indicated, they'll move into phase 1, which is the first significant piece
to consider implementing as a community. They don't have to implement every
element of the plan. The County will need to identify in which elements it wants to
participate.
Caskey- Schreiber stated she worries that phase 1 will have a too -
complicated team structure. Roll stated each of those teams have a specific
purpose. Technical teams review products and provide direction. They will
continue to need to have some kind of technical review. There is an opportunity to
combine staff and technical teams. He would encourage that some of those teams
combine as they move forward.
Caskey- Schreiber stated they won't have the luxury of having the many
offshoot groups. Make the structure as simple and lean as possible to get the job
done.
Roy asked if the County will decide on the priorities in phase 1 or if the
County will step back and let another take over. The County needs to step back
and let others share the weight. However, she can see how people expect the
County to pay. Roll stated two legislation were crafted at the same time. One was
salmon recovery and one was WRIA. They are parallel processes with different
groups but the same players. The Puget Sound Recovery Plan also came up.
Those three are the core planning work efforts. The Salmon Recovery Funding
Board is specifically dealing with the salmon recovery plan and project ranking.
Simplifying the structure is a good suggestion. They need to ask if this is a good
structure for WRIA implementation. That is an example of how they can combine
resources into a single area. It's something to move forward with. Early in the
process, he proposed that concept. Some Joint Board members were reluctant to
have that single umbrella over everything. It could happen sooner. There was
some reluctance, particularly by some of the tribal members, to have both salmon
recovery and WRIA under a single board.
Roy stated the County will ask for support for the projects, yet it dictates the
direction they go. Roll stated the staff has been playing the role of bringing
interests forward rather than taking a hard position. He agrees that they need to
hear from the community in terms of what people think is important.
Phase 1 is the time needed to go through the entire basin and develop the
instream flow strategy for all basins in WRIA 1. It will take three to four years.
That would be the framework by which they would manage instream flows. That is
a significant step and the lion's share of the work over the next few years.
Natural Resources Committee, 5/4/2004, Page 4
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DISCLAIMER: This document contains the Whatcom County Council or Committee
minutes, as approved. However, unless an attested signature page is attached, they
are not the final approved minutes.
Phase 2, once they establish instream flow and develop a mechanism for
maintaining the flow regime, is how they move forward. Now, they are talking
about updating the plan every two to four years. In phases 1 and 2, they will
continue to see staff people from the governments to help work move forward.
Also, there will still be a need for having a forum for water interest participants to
work through issues. They need to see how instream flows play out before
committing to phase 2 pieces.
Caskey- Schreiber asked if USU made recommendations on instream flow
levels. Roll stated they're looking at it. Instream flows includes both ecological and
out -of- stream uses. USU was never charged with setting a regime. They're
providing the tools for the community to make those decisions. Instream flows is
the amount of area available under certain flow regimes for the life stages of
certain salmon stocks. A question is the regime that best maximizes the water for
all those life stages. They will run different scenarios during wet, dry, and normal
years to see what water they can expect to have available in the stream. It's a
strategy for managing wet water during the different times of the year. USU will
make recommendations for the data and approach of how to technically do that. It
will make recommendations for different drainages as a starting point.
Fleetwood asked how conflicts will get resolved. There isn't much in the
governance section on dispute resolution. They talk about process, but now how
conflict is resolved. Roll stated it's not on paper. A lot of times they have
discussion with whoever has the issue. Oftentimes, proposals are crafted that can
be brought to the broader audience. That's happened many times. He likes to
think there will be data they can all agree on, and the adversarial nature will be
lessened by how they've worked together to solve problems.
Fleetwood asked if they can anticipate and plan for conflict on some level.
He asked if there is a responsibility to have it in the plan on some level. Roll stated
this issue is the reason there was a proposal to do the Bertrand pilot project. The
Bertrand project is an opportunity to make all this operational and see how they
will deal with dispute resolution. At this point, he's not sure where tribal disputes
will be settled or dealt with as they try to preserve government -to- government
relationships. He will bring forward this topic of more clear language for dispute
resolution.
Fleetwood stated they should, on some level, speak to conflicts that may
arise.
Caskey- Schreiber stated she agreed, but don't bog down the plan because all
the parties don't agree on dispute resolution procedures. It might be a can of
worms. Roll stated this is a very detailed plan, but it doesn't include all the details.
It's more detailed than any other WRIA plan out there. Many times, keeping people
at the table involves changing language so that everyone agrees on the language,
but it may not be the clearest language.
Natural Resources Committee, 5/4/2004, Page 5
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DISCLAIMER: This document contains the Whatcom County Council or Committee
minutes, as approved. However, unless an attested signature page is attached, they
are not the final approved minutes.
Fleetwood asked what is considered serious implementation. Roll stated
serious implementation is spending the bulk of their time making projects
successful instead of working on the plan. Implementation is making the pieces of
the plan operational.
Fleetwood asked about potential drought in the west this year. The New
York Times talked about how they are in a seven or eight year period of drought.
The article was pretty frightening. He asked if this phenomena was anticipated
when all this discussion occurred. Roll stated there were discussions. He doesn't
know how predictions over time will be made with the decision support system.
He'll find out. It's interesting to watch the global warming issue. Changes in the
amount of snow pack is a change they'll see in their lifetime.
Caskey- Schreiber stated glaciers are retreating worldwide. The Mt. Baker
snow pack is at 50 percent of what it usually is. Roll stated the question is how
they will manage the resources in drought years. USU is collecting data on the
amount of water available during low flow years. They will look at the range from
low flow to high flow years, and how to adjust the instream flow management
strategy accordingly. That will require a more robust gauging system and an ability
to switch to other sources and identify other strategies during those times of the
yea r.
Caskey- Schreiber asked for a comment about potential de- listing of salmon
due to comments made by the President. Roll stated he has to talk about the
implications with legal counsel. As a water resources manager, he desires to have
a healthy environment and make sure it doesn't lose. The County's position on
salmon recovery has been to look at all stocks as land use managers. They look at
the presence of fish. They have to deal with the legal implications of an
endangered species, but he's never approached it from the standpoint of only
dealing with one stock. All stocks are important.
OTHER BUSINESS
McShane stated he wants to schedule a discussion with Robin Matthews in
the Natural Resources Committee on June 1. Two weeks later, have Steve Hood
with the State Department of Ecology talk about how things are progressing with
the total maximum daily load study. After that, have a discussion about what they
might want to do or not do regarding that information.
(Clerk's Note: End of tape one, side A.)
ADJOURN
The meeting adjourned at 10:20 a.m.
Natural Resources Committee, 5/4/2004, Page 6
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DISCLAIMER: This document contains the Whatcom County Council or Committee
minutes, as approved. However, unless an attested signature page is attached, they
are not the final approved minutes.
Jill Nixon, Minutes Transcription
ATTEST:
Dana Brown - Davis, Council Clerk
WHATCOM COUNTY COUNCIL
WHATCOM COUNTY, WASHINGTON
Sharon Roy, Committee Chair
Natural Resources Committee, 5/4/2004, Page 7