10 CapitalPress.com
April 28, 2017
Washington
Inslee stays out of rural well issue; special session begins
Clipped response
disappoints senator
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
OLYMPIA — Gov. Jay In-
slee said April 21 that he hasn’t
studied Senate-passed legisla-
tion to reopen rural Washing-
ton to well drilling, dismaying
the bill’s sponsor.
Speaking to reporters, In-
slee scolded lawmakers for
failing to pass a two-year bud-
get. The 105-day regular ses-
sion ended Sunday, and Inslee
called a special session that be-
gan Monday to continue work
on the budget.
Lawmakers could take up
other subjects. The Repub-
lican-led Senate has cited
responding to the state Su-
preme Court’s Hirst ruling
as must-pass legislation this
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Gov. Jay Inslee pauses during a press conference April 21 in Olym-
pia. Inslee said he has not looked “in detail” at a Senate proposal
to reopen rural Washington to well drilling. The proposal’s main
sponsor said she was disappointed by the response.
year. The decision, issued
more than three months be-
fore the Legislature con-
vened in January, threatens
to effectively shut down the
drilling of new household
wells across the state.
Tribes and environmen-
tal groups oppose the Senate
bill, arguing it would nullify
the court’s decision and repeal
new protections for fish. The
Democratic-controlled House
has yet to pass an alternative.
Asked whether he could sup-
port the Senate’s Hirst bill, In-
slee gave a short reply.
“I haven’t looked at it in
detail. I can’t answer that,” he
said.
The Senate’s bill’s prime
sponsor, Moses Lake Republi-
can Judy Warnick, said that a
farmer called her Friday morn-
ing concerned that he can’t
drills wells for worker housing
or his son’s home on the fam-
ily farm.
“For the governor to not
have studied this bill in detail
by the 103rd day of the session
is very disappointing,” said
Warnick, chairwoman of the
Senate Agriculture Commit-
tee. “This is one of the biggest
things standing in the way of
the rural economy.”
Senate Bill 5239 would
restore the Department of
Ecology’s authority to allow
new household wells. The
court ruled 6-3 that Ecology
had failed to ensure new wells
won’t harm other uses, includ-
ing stream flows for fish.
Under the ruling, each
landowner must prove through
a hydrological study that the
new well won’t divert ground-
water or surface water from
somewhere else. Dissenting
justices said the requirement
was too much for individuals
to bear.
Two similar proposals by
House Democrats would cre-
ate committees in each wa-
tershed to oversee projects to
keep new wells from affecting
streams and other wells. The
projects would be funded by
new building fees. Neither
proposal has been put to a
vote.
Rep. Kristine Lytton,
D-Anacortes, said House
Democrats are working to
come up with one proposal.
“I think there is a keen in-
terest to have a Hirst solution
by the end of the session,” she
said.
Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Or-
cas Island, said lawmakers
should protect current water
users, as well as letting land-
owners drill wells. “We are
working diligently on this,” he
said.
Warnick agreed lawmakers
will have to address the cu-
mulative effect of new wells.
“I think we can do it without
additional fees,” Warnick said.
Builders, lenders, real es-
tate agents and farm groups are
rallying grass-roots support for
the Senate bill. The Washing-
ton Farm Bureau, Washington
Association of Wheat Grow-
ers and the Washington State
Grange joined the coalition,
called Fix Hirst.
Rail bill aided by state
Farm Bureau passes
Environmental
group warns about
losing farmland
By DON JENKINS
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Workers tie nursery trees to white fiberglass stakes at Helios
Nursery near Quincy, Wash., on April 12. From the distance it looks
like a white sea.
Nursery switches to
white fiberglass stakes
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
QUINCY, Wash. — It
looks like a white sea off
Whitetrail Road, southeast of
Quincy.
As you get closer you see
heads and shoulders of a few
workers. Get even closer,
and you see they are tending
young fruit trees next to white
stakes.
It’s the home 60-acre op-
eration of Helios Nursery,
which also grows trees on
100 acres near Othello and
rootstock in greenhouses in
McMinnville, Ore.
The workers are tying and
adjusting stake ties of apple
and cherry trees budded to
rootstock last year and now
growing for digging this fall
and winter storage before
shipment to orchards next
spring.
The stakes help the Pre-
mier Honeycrisp, Wildfire
Gala, Aztec Fuji and several
varieties of red cherries grow
straight and serve as support
in wind.
There are other nurseries
in the area but what makes
this one stand out is the white,
fiberglass stakes. The others
have bamboo or steel.
“We went to fiberglass be-
cause the quality of the bam-
boo from China over the last
10 years keeps going down,
down, down,” said Tye Flem-
ing, Helios owner.
Helios produces more than
1 million trees annually so it
needs more than 1 million
stakes. Bamboo stakes cost
$70,000 per million and once
lasted two years.
But the bamboo is being
cut younger and greener and
newer Geneva rootstock is re-
quiring more moisture so the
stakes are only lasting a year,
Fleming said.
Fiberglass stakes cost sub-
stantially more but are sup-
posed to last 15 years. Flem-
ing figures they will pay for
themselves in three to five
years.
Cameron Nursery in Elto-
pia, between Othello and Pas-
co, uses fiberglass stakes and
they’ve been used in Willa-
mette Valley ornamental nurs-
eries for years, Fleming said.
Field work has been de-
layed more than a month this
spring by snow and rain caus-
ing ground to be too wet to
work, he said.
“But we’ll start planting
this week and it all evens out,”
he said.
Capital Press
OLYMPIA — State law-
makers have approved relax-
ing restrictions on industrial
development near short-line
railroads in rural Eastern
Washington, a move the
Farm Bureau says will help
farm communities.
House Bill 1504, which
has yet to be signed by Gov.
Jay Inslee, would allow
rail-dependent industries to
locate on land that may now
be off-limits because of the
state’s Growth Management
Act. The act calls for agri-
cultural land to be preserved
and for industrial develop-
ment to occur in areas with
urban services.
The legislation stemmed
from a dispute over indus-
trial development in Clark
County in southwest Wash-
ington. Lawmakers expand-
ed the bill to apply to coun-
ties east of the Cascades.
The bill still applies only
to Clark County in Western
Washington.
The bill’s most outspoken
opponent, the environmental
group Futurewise, argued
that the legislation would
lead to urban sprawl and
allow farmland to be paved
over for industrial develop-
ment.
The Farm Bureau, how-
ever, joined business and
labor groups in supporting
the bill. The Washington As-
sociation of Wheat Growers
also backed the bill.
“We appreciate what this
bill brings to the rural areas
of the state,” Farm Bureau
Courtesy of Clark County Public Works
A train travels on the publicly owned Chelatchie Prairie Railroad in Clark County in southwest Wash-
ington. A land-use dispute there led to legislation that could open more land in rural Eastern Wash-
ington to industrial development. An environmental group warns that farmland is at risk, but the state
Farm Bureau and Washington Association of Wheat Growers back the legislation as good for farm
economies.
associate director of govern-
ment relations Mark Streuli
said. “We understand there
are times some of this rural
land has to be used to facili-
tate getting our commodities
to the short-line railroads.”
Futurewise remains con-
cerned the bill will decrease
farmland, the organization’s
state policy director, Bryce
Yadon, said Thursday.
“This bill is a way to
de-designate farmland for
other purposes,” he said.
“We question why we’re
taking the one thing a grow-
ing industry (agriculture)
needs.”
Although some Dem-
ocrats opposed the bill, it
passed by a comfortable
margin in the Democrat-
ic-controlled House, as well
as the Republican-led Sen-
ate. The bill won final ap-
proval from the House on
Wednesday.
Washington has 23
short-line railroads, includ-
ing several that cater to
farmers and food proces-
sors in Eastern Washington.
House
Environment
Committee Chairman Joe
Fitzgibbon,
D-Burien,
said the bill will create
opportunities to increase
their use. “It will bring
industrial
development
in places that need it,” he
said.
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