PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson County leaders call for a comprehensive water management strategy that protects local food production as much as salmon and general water supply.
“A workable system that includes an agricultural trust water right or other measure that would tap new, reserved, conserved or transferred water for ongoing local food production is one of the key beneficial uses protected by regulation, and is a priority,” the county commissioners state in their latest policy statement to the state Department of Ecology.
The commissioners on Monday tentatively approved the draft statement on the implementation of the Water Resource Inventory Area 17 (Quilcene-Snow) watershed plan, and are expected to formally adopt it in two weeks, following more public comment.
“This is really a collaboration, and it reflects a process,” said Commissioner Pat Rodgers, R-Brinnon, who worked with Commissioners David Sullivan and Phil Johnson, both Democrats, to add specific language with the intent of protecting small-scale farmers growing and selling niche-market crops from Port Townsend to Quilcene.
Implementation phase
The policy statement comes as a time when Ecology, through the Water Resource Inventory Area 17 planning unit, enters the implementation phase of the plan intended to protect water for humans and fish.
That implementation phase and other related subjects are expected to be addressed by the WRIA 17 planning unit at 3 p.m. today in the commissioners’ chambers of Jefferson County Courthouse, 1820 Jefferson St., Port Townsend.
Ecology policymakers, who wanted more study on how best to protect stream flows, came up with the proposed instream-flow rule, allowing access to 3.87 million gallons of water a day areawide.
That sets an average single household usage benchmark of 350 gallons daily, based on the assumption that the average person uses 70 gallons daily, official said.
Today, residents can use up to 5,000 gallons per day per home.
The rule in question also calls for closure of the Big Quilcene River from March 1 to Nov. 15 and Chimacum Creek from March 1 to Nov. 30 to new water appropriations.
It closes other water bodies in the area year-round to future water rights.