Conservation Districts Focus On Water Use, Quality
Finding ways to balance salmon restoration, water rights and farming was the challenge at the Washington Association of Conservation Districts meeting in Spokane on Tuesday.
Several hundred conservation leaders from 48 districts around the state came in search of the solutions.
“Salmon may be the poster child, but the issue is water quality,” said Colin Bennett, a WACD director from Klickitat County.
In fact, he winced at the notion that salmon was the hot button issue at the event. “I’m afraid we’re going to get too much of a reaction to the salmon issue,” Bennett said. “I’m afraid too many ideas, too many policies and too much regulations will come through that won’t really help the situation.”
Still, salmon and shellfish are the prime examples of how poor water quality can damage the environment.
And about 30 percent of water quality problems in Washington can be traced to agriculture, said Julie Hagensen, assistant regional administrator for the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
“Dairies are a large part of it. Only about onefifth of all dairies manage waste correctly to protect ground and surface water,” she said. “That’s discouraging.”
Last January, the EPA started to buckle down on the worst offenders in the dairy industry by taking up inspection and enforcement where it appeared to the federal agency that the State Department of Ecology had fallen short. In Whatcom County, the EPA inspected 60 dairy farms. A half dozen that had repeatedly violated the Federal Clean Water Act were fined between $10,000 and $20,000, Hagensen said.
Though another six or seven farms were commended for good practices, 42 were given warnings with requests to improve conditions on their land, the EPA official said.
Over the next few months, the agency plans to inspect 60 to 100 dairy farms in Pierce, King and Yakima counties. “The goal is clean water. That’s what we’re here for,” Hagensen said. “Nobody wants to put farms out of business.”
Several conservation district representatives, some of whom also are farmers, said Clean Water Act requirements are impossible to meet.
“I hear you saying that some of this is just plain impossible,” Hagensen said. “I don’t have an answer to that.
“What is clear to me is the agriculture community for the next 10 to 15 years has got an incredible job to do with pressure coming from all fronts,” Hagensen responded. “But it’s not just agriculture. Eventually all of us are going to be looked at: the way we build our homes, how we deal with runoff, our septic tanks.”
The conservation districts’ job is to help farmers solve the water problems before the federal government gets involved, said Linda Arcuri, WACD president. In short, they need to help keep species like salmon from becoming endangered.
“What we’re trying to do is get in front of these listings and do something to prevent further declines of these species and avoid the listing,” she said. “Education is the biggest component of that.”
, DataTimes