Last week, the County Council refused to update the stormwater regulations for Lake Whatcom.  The current stormwater standards are based on outdated requirements from the Department of Ecology’s (DOE) 2005 Stormwater Manual, and even then, were not intended to restore impaired watersheds. 

At the start of 2011, the County, under pressure from DOE due to the City’s petition to close the Lake Whatcom watershed to water withdrawal by new exempt wells, promised that it would expedite the development of updated stormwater regulations. The updated regulations would prevent any new watershed development that exceeded the phosphorus run-off of a naturally forested condition. Relevant letters are found at [url=http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/tmdl/LkWhatcom/LkWhatcomTMDL.html]http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/tmdl/LkWhatcom/LkWhatcomTMDL.html[/url].

So here we are, 2. 5 years later, without updated stormwater standards. The County has not honored its promise to DOE, nor has DOE taken any action to hold the County to its promise.

The new stormwater regulations were held up for a long time by the Whatcom County Planning Commission, which did all that it could to delay and derail the proposal. This included convening a Technical Advisory Group, composed solely of consultants who work for local developers, to complain that the DOE requirements were not feasible, were too expensive, and just too plain hard.  (In the meanwhile, DOE’s updated Stormwater Standards, applicable in 2016, impose greater requirements on development in Western Washington than those proposed by the County to protect Lake Whatcom. ) 

The Planning Commission finally forwarded to Council a virtually unreadable stormwater proposal based on fabricated terms and definitions that departed from normal Western Washington stormwater terminology.  It increased the size of exemptions allowed before the stormwater requirements kicked in, and it allowed for 25% phosphorus run-off over a naturally forested condition.

County Council revised the proposal to prohibit excess phosphorus run-off, which was, after all, the primarily purpose of the update. However, after a public hearing last week, the Council, by a 5-2 vote, (Mann and Weimer opposed), refused to approve the updated stormwater standards and sent it back to the Council committee for more review. 

My favorite comment of the evening was from Sam Crawford, who innocently asked, “what is the rush?”  Good question. The only things I could think of were the continued degradation of our largest potable source of water, a history of decades of inaction, the promise the County made 2. 5 years ago, and the recent GMA Hearings Board decision holding that the County failed to protect rural water quality and quantity. A visibly livid Carl Weimer expressed his frustration at further delay.

Perhaps the tipping point in the Council’s decision was the failure of Lake Whatcom advocates to attend the public hearing.  Instead, the hearing was dominated by Tea Party members, Planning Commissioners, and residents of Sudden Valley, all of whom complained that it would (gasp!!) cost money to comply with updated stormwater standards.  Not one person complaining about expense seemed concerned about the Lake’s water quality.  And if they were, they kept it to themselves. 

Planning Commissioner Onkels argued that the latest annual Lake Whatcom water quality monitoring report by WWU professor Dr. Matthews indicated that the Lake was in a process of regeneration and restoration.  This reflected a creative interpretation of the water quality monitoring data, by someone who is not a scientist and who is not associated with the study.  However, in Council Member Barbara Brenner’s world, this constitutes “new science”, and therefore, a basis for reconsidering the updated stormwater standards. 

But the real show stopper was the comment by the DOE engineer, who stated that reducing phosphorus run-off on new property might not be sufficient, by itself, to meet the TMDL goal of requiring the watershed to function as if 87% of the development was not there. This information actually indicated greater urgency in passing updated standards, a fact missed by the critical thinking challenged Council majority. The final smokescreen of the evening was the Mirror Lake diversion dam, which a city spokesperson indicated was being actively pursued and corrected.  Somehow, in the Council majority’s mind, this problem justified the County’s continued inaction.

It is unclear what will happen to the stormwater proposal now that it has been returned to the Council’s Natural Resource committee.  My advice: make sure you have a good, long lasting filter for your tap water.