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Questions and Answers about Protecting Lake Whatcom Resevoir

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Builders' proposed checklist to protect watershed all wet

By: Chris Dillard, Rick Dubrow and Tom Pratum, Guest Columnists

Should builders be allowed to clear land in the Lake Whatcom Watershed during the rainy season?

This question has been causing a significant stir from developers, and is one issue slowing the Whatcom County Council's decision on new development regulations for Lake Whatcom and other critical watersheds.

Monday's Bellingham Herald editorial "County urged to OK new watershed rules" (June 9), correctly identifies the importance of the new watershed development regulations being considered by the County Council. However the seasonal land clearing "check list" proposed by the Building Industry Association, and endorsed by The Herald will not adequately protect Lake Whatcom.

The need to limit land clearing in sensitive watersheds is scientifically indisputable. Exposed soils in areas with limited ability to soak up precipitation - which includes most of the Lake Whatcom and Lake Samish watersheds - are likely to carry silt and phosphorus into nearby waterbodies during rainstorms. Silt and phosphorus harm lakes, leading to low oxygen levels, a problem known to occur in Lake Whatcom.

Basin 1 of Lake Whatcom is already listed under section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act as an impaired waterbody for low levels of dissolved oxygen. Making matters worse, the most recent Lake Whatcom monitoring report shows that this condition has spread and is worsening in basin 2 - the location of the city of Bellingham water intake.

What is scientifically in dispute is the validity of the proposed "clearing checklist." There is no quantitative science available to back up the proposed system. It is merely an arbitrary system that was agreed upon by Realtors and developers - over the objections of community members - to allow clearing to occur throughout the year.

The County Council Planning and Development Committee was wise to remove the provision that would allow wet season clearing activity on the most threatening parcels - with merely an engineers stamp. It is unclear why The Herald editors disagree with this minimal level of protection.

The editorial board might want to review an article the newspaper published in last week's Bellingham Herald (June 1). The article stated, "On a dry afternoon last February, muddy water from earlier rains flowed off a Sudden Valley home construction site and into a ditch along Lake Louise Road. Mud made it into the ditch, through culverts under two streets and into Lake Louise despite plastic and straw covering fill dirt, a fabric silt fence above the ditch, and sandbags and straw bales in the ditch to catch sediment."

This description beautifully illustrates that Best Management Practices, often touted by the BIA as the easy solution to complex run-off problems, are highly ineffective and should not be relied on to protect our only drinking water source.

A scientific review of the effectiveness of these measures provided by county planning staff included these points:

• Prevent erosion rather than treat runoff. (Department of Ecology)

• Construction run-off can contribute between 7-1,000 tons of sediment/acre/yearr from poor construction practices.

• Erosion prevention practices are an element of the more successful strategies because they can keep from mobilizing the more harmful fine-grained particles that sediment controls cannot capture.

• While construction is just one of many industries with storm water impacts, its impacts are so significant that it is treated separately under the federal and most state and local programs.

A study of one of the strongest erosion control programs in the country found:

1. "More than 40 percent of silt fence applications were poorly installed and two-thirds required maintenance to perform properly"

2. "More than 25 percent of the two most commonly prescribed practices were never installed"

3. "Nearly 50 percent of all prescribed velocity dissipaters were not in place"

4. "Widespread use of silt fences perhaps should be re-evaluated in light of their dismal performance in the field"

Additionally, the proposed "point system" will be difficult if not impossible to enforce and will significantly increase the workload for an already overburdened staff. The largest drawback (and disappointment) is that the new point system will not stop the continued flow of excess pollutants and soil from construction sites flowing into the lake during the rainy seasons.

The county would do well to follow the lead of the city of Bellingham's Silver Beach Ordinance, and limit the clearing, grading and excavation of construction sites to the five drier months, May through September.

Chris Dillard is the vice president of People for Lake Whatcom. Rick Dubrow owns A-1 Builders, Inc. They were members of the County's Seasonal Land Clearing Committee. Tom Pratum is a board member of the North Cascades Audubon Society.

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