There is practically no awareness of the financial and environmental implications of the new Puget Sound Partnership (PS). However, the enthusiasm and awareness exhibited by State agencies and environmentalists such as People for Puget Sound at the September 28th Olympia (House) Select Committee on Puget Sound meeting were unbounded.

While the PSP is an enforcement agency without regulatory power, more than enough habitat regulations from such as the Shared Strategy Salmon Recovery Plan and King County – which prides itself on leading the State in environmental protection and restoration – are already in place awaiting PSP enforcement. But worse is to come. On page 18 of the Puget Sound Regional Council’s Draft Vision 2040, shorelines are listed as a Natural Resource Area, along with customary forest, farms and minerals. This means coming regulations for shorelines restoration and enhancement, thereby disrupting humans’ favorite habitat as well as local tax revenues as people successfully appeal their tax assessments. Of course, more, not fewer, tax revenues are needed as indicated by agency testimony to the legislative committee. (Previously up to $27 billion in new expenditures by 2020 has been estimated.)

The PSP will be depending on and enforcing watershed plans such as the one that included the Sammamish Valley which is agricultural. In the 1960s the Sammamish River was straightened and deepened by the Army Corps of Engineers to prevent flooding. King County officials signed a maintenance agreement authorized by Congress with strict rules about maintaining bank riprap and forbidding bank vegetation that could fall into the navigation channel. But the watershed plan calls for remeandering the river, adding backwater pool areas, riparian forest, and in-channel large woody debris in the form of big logs and jams. Enforcement by PSP will impact not only the recreation trails along the river but also the valley agriculture. And cost a fortune.

As far as relying on the well-publicized “Reasonable Use” rules that guarantee legally created lots that can be built on, I’m looking at a letter from the City of Kirkland stating that reasonable use process for building on an environmentally constrained lot on a small Kirkland lake will cost $9000 for Planning Director and Hearing Examiner decisions, plus the cost of a private consultant’s report and review of that report by the City’s consultant, plus 5 years of monitoring and maintaining whatever will be permitted, as well as performance bonding and corrective action costs. Following the mitigation costs will be the usual building permit application related fees. “Reasonable Use” is not reasonable.

No one really has any idea of what it will take to restore “the entire ecosystem” in the Puget Sound drainage area between the Carnation border and Olympia. But whatever it takes, the taxpayers can believe our State agencies, environmental groups, and the Puget Sound Partnership are eager to throw the taxpayers money at whatever it does take.