Maybe Not
For those of you who rely on private wells for your water, or know someone who does, you need to know that private well owners rights are in serious jeopardy in this state.
There will be a Dept. of Ecology Water Resources “workshop” on Tuesday, 3 December, 10:30am at the County Commissioners’ Building, 1800 Continental Place.
There was no official, public notice of this meeting and it did not even show up on the BoCC agenda until one of our fellow citizens complained and the agenda was revised.
In my opinion this is what needs to happen at the Tuesday meeting:
1. Private water well owners and their friends need to show up en masse because the recent Washing State Supreme Court ruling means your private water well can be shut down.
2. The Tuesday meeting should be stopped immediately and postponed until Carl Einberger’s (Golder & Assoc) Skagit exempt well study is presented to Dept of Ecology in Olympia on 16 December. That is where the real information and decisions will be made. The Tuesday meeting is premature, at best. This is all about taking away your water rights (actually, they’ve already been taken by the WA Supreme Court). What could be more fundamental than that?