Capital press. (Salem, OR) 19??-current, July 14, 2017, Image 12

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Newspaper Page Text12 CapitalPress.com July 14, 2017 Economic incentive to turn farmland into wetlands alarms some WETLANDS from Page 1 Wetland banks in Washington 1 “We saw a new industry, the wetland banking industry, starting up,” Rozema said. “It was a business model to essentially make money off converting farmland to anoth- er use.” Skagitonians opposed the Clear Valley bank at the county level, arguing the plan would violate the state Growth Management Act’s goal of conserving farmland. Eventually, the Skagitonians and Clear Valley made a deal. The deal depended on county commissioners ban- ning more wetland banks on farmland. Also, Skagitonians will get $6,000 for every cred- it Clear Valley sells. Skagito- nians anticipate eventually getting about $1.5 million to spend on buying development S k ag Colum 2 3 17 Chelan 1 4 6 5 River 2 Seattle Spokane 7 Wenatchee 3 Moses Lake Olympia WASHINGTON mbia C ol u 11 Yakima r Ri v e im a Ri v er Le w 12 Kennewick 4 13 Portland Wetland mitigation banks m C olu bia Don Jenkins and Alan Kenaga/ Capital Press Value of farmland Approved Banks Banks under review 7. Springbook Creek • Owner: City of Renton; cooperated with Washington State Dept. of Transportation • Acres: 129 2. Skagit Environmental Bank • Owner: Clear Valley Environmental Farm • Acres: 396 8. Weatherwax • Owner: C ity of Ocean Shores • Acres: 120 3. Nookachamps • Owner: Nookachamps, LLC • Acres: 310 9. Chehalis Basin • Owner: TransAlta Centralia Mining • Acres: 176 12. Coweeman River • Owner: Privately owned • Acres: 320 13. East Fork Lewis • Owner: Privately owned • Acres: 113 14. Terrace • Owner: Privately owned • Acres: 113 15. Columbia River • Owner: Port of Vancouver • Acres: 115 5. Skykomish Habitat • Owner: Privately owned • Acres: 260 10. North Fork Newaukum • Owner: Natural Resources Conservation Service; Washington State DOT • Acres: 230 16. Moses Lake Three Ponds • Owner: City of Moses Lake; managed by Washington State DOT • Acres: 12 6. Snohomish Basin • Owner: Privately owned • Acres: 225 11. Long Beach • Owner: Privately owned • Acres: 76 17. Meadowcraft • Owner: Privately owned • Acres: 13 rights to farmland to keep it in agricultural uses. So far, the group has re- ceived about $44,000 from the 7.38 credits sold for $963,090 to the Port of Skagit for an airport project. Rozema said that if the money was piling up more quickly, that would mean the countryside was being de- veloped more quickly. “In an ideal world, there would be no money going into it,” he said. To the Skagitonians, a bet- ter outcome would have been no wetland mitigation bank at all. But a potential, less at- tractive alternative was more housing developments. Plus, the settlement meant not hav- ing to ﬁ ght future banks and provided money for farmland preservation. “It was a good deal. I think it sets a model for how we want to operate in the future,” Rozema said. The county’s ban doesn’t shut the door entirely on new wetlands. The ban applies to land of “long-term commer- cial signiﬁ cance for agricul- ture.” A landowner can also apply to have the property rezoned. “We’re trying to be respect- ful of people’s private-party Sources: Washington State Department of Ecology; Capital Press research er R iv 14 15 1. Lummi Nation • Owner: Lummi Indian Reservation • Acres: 1,945 (three sites) 4. Paine Field • Owner: Snohomish County • Acres: 59 a Sn is Longview Ya k *As of March 2017 er litz Rive r Cow R iv 9 10 16 ke 8 River ‘New industry’ r ive it R Banks’ history Federal agencies originat- ed wetland mitigation banks in the 1980s to allow devel- opment, including highway construction, without a net loss of wetlands. Many states, including Oregon, Idaho and California, have wetland banks. Most are usually cre- ated on land historically used for agriculture. Washington, a relative late- comer to the practice, has 17 banks, with at least four more in the works. The Morgan family’s wetland mitigation bank would be Washington’s largest on non-tribal land and more than double the size of the next largest bank. About 250 cows graze there now on bottom land where the Lewis River ﬂ ows into the Columbia River in Clark County. The Ecology Department praises wetland mitigation banks for their environmental beneﬁ ts and economic incen- tives to create wetlands. But that economic incen- tive to turn farmland into wetlands has alarmed some pro-agriculture groups, in- cluding Skagitonians to Pre- serve Farmland in Skagit County in northwestern Washington. Although only 4 percent of Washington’s cropland is west of the Cascades, agri- culture remains an important industry in Skagit County. Holding on to that industry has local political support. “We’re an anomaly,” Skagi- tonians Executive Director Allen Rozema said. A decade ago, Clear Val- ley Environmental Farm, a California company, pro- posed converting 396 acres of farmland in the county into wetlands. The proposal came soon after another California company had created a 310- acre bank in the same area. r ve Bellingham i The price depends on the demand. Credits are often broken up and sold by the square foot. One credit can reportedly sell for anywhere from a little under $200,000 to more than $1 million. “The prices for credits are all handled by the private marketplace,” Ecology shore- lines program manager Gor- don White said. “These are private transactions.” rights,” Rozema said. Rozema said he won’t be surprised if more wetland banks are created in other Western Washington counties as the economy and popula- tion grow. “Being in the business of wetland mitigation banking is probably a good business,” he said. “It would appear to me to have a big future.” ‘Wants to be wet’ But the future might not be that big, said Victor Wood- ward, the owner of Habitat Bank and the entrepreneur be- hind several wetlands mitiga- tion banks in Western Wash- ington. Woodward created West- ern Washington’s ﬁ rst pri- vately owned wetlands bank in 2006 in Snohomish Coun- ty, which is wedged between Skagit County and Seattle and growing even faster than Clark County. The previous banks were set up by public agencies seeking to offset their projects that were built on wetlands. Woodward said that 30 of the bank’s 140 credits have sold so far. The demand is limited, he said. The credits must be bought in the same watershed as the development. Plus, govern- ment agencies must issue per- mits to ﬁ ll in wetlands in the ﬁ rst place. “The demand (for credits) is really controlled by the issuance of permits,” Woodward said. A credit in rural Clark County, where Woodward has also created a wetland bank, sells for about $170,000, he said. He said he anticipates credits for wetlands he’s de- veloping on 91 acres in the city of Redmond in King County to be worth around $1 million each. The property is known locally as the Keller Farm, a former dairy now in a city with a population of 60,000. Woodward said that he’s worked with dairy farmers “desperate” to get out of the industry and expects to be involved in more wetland banks, including in Clark County. “We do need to eat, but I don’t see where we’re going to have that much of an im- pact,” he said. Woodward said he once gave a presentation to skepti- cal farmers, concerned about the effect on agriculture. Af- Pending mitigation banks 1. Blue Herron • Owner: Port of Everett • Acres: 344 2. Keller Farm • Owner: City of Redmond • Acres: 91 3. Port of Tacoma • Owner: Port of Tacoma • Acres: As many as 152 (distributed over 19 sites) 4. Wapato Valley • Owner: Privately owned • Acres: 876 terward, one approached him about converting his land into a wetland bank. “It can work in some cases, but with very limited cases. I can’t emphasis enough, you have to have the right kind of property because you can’t pay too much for the land or for restoration because you might not get the payback for 10, 20 years,” he said. “You want to ﬁ nd a site that was wet, wants to be wet and is easy to restore to wet- lands,” Woodward said. “I do see where farmland is being converted, but I think they tend to be wet, wet situations, where it’s difﬁ cult to keep farming.” Morgan farm In Clark County, the Mor- gan family farm has been in- undated by at least three ma- jor ﬂ oods in the past 70 years. David Morgan’s grand- parents, Aubrey and Con- stance Morgan, bought the farm in 1941 and named it Plas Newydd, Welsh for “new place.” They had a dairy un- til the ﬂ ood of 1948 wiped it out. The Morgans then raised Angus cattle, but the ’56 ﬂ ood helped end that, David Mor- gan said. The pastures had ‘They’re just buying ... all wheats now, which probably isn’t really sustainable’ WHEAT from Page 1 Dark northern wheat general- ly has a high percentage of pro- tein — more than 14 percent — and soft white wheat has a lower percentage of protein, usually below 10.5 percent. Higher protein generally in- dicates higher gluten content. High gluten content is important for baking light, yeast-leavened breads. Nearby DNS futures prices are higher than futures prices later on, said Clark Johnston, a marketing consultant in Ogden, Utah. “That’s because the demand is outrunning the supply,” he said. “The market is saying, ‘We need your wheat right now, we’re not going to give you an incentive to hold it until after the first of the year.’” The DNS price increase prompted speculators to move into the other wheat classes, said Dan Steiner, grain merchandis- er for Morrow County Grain Growers in Boardman, Ore. Soft white wheat ranged from $5.50 to $5.60 per bush- el in Portland this week. That’s up from $4.40 to $4.60 a bushel in April. Hard red winter wheat ranged from $5.51 to $6.20 per bushel, up from $4.97 to $5.17 a bushel in April. “For soft white, six months ago, you’d have thought, ‘This would be a great price,’” Steiner said. “But when you’re looking at $9 wheat (for DNS), it’s like, ‘Gee, can we have some more of that?’” “They’re just buying ... all wheats now, which prob- ably isn’t really sustainable in Chicago futures because soft wheat and dark northern spring wheat are two com- pletely different things,” Behne said. Lower protein soft white wheat has less gluten than DNS and is used in Asian noodles, cakes, pastries and flat breads. “I don’t really see this ending well for soft wheat unless we end up with a corn problem later on,” Behne said. Corn prices would need to in- crease to pull excess soft wheat supplies into livestock feed channels and boost demand, Behne said. Wheat futures were nearly $2 over corn futures, making the spread too high for farmers to buy it for livestock. “We have a big soft white crop coming again this year,” Behne said. “Without some feed- ing going on, I don’t know how we’re going to chew through that.” Wheat needs to trade at roughly $4.95 per bushel to be viable for feed, Steiner said. Steiner isn’t sure how long the higher prices will last. “I had no idea this rally was going to be this big, that it was going to go this far, or how long they’re going to push this,” he said. Behne and Johnston both ex- pect an eventual drop in prices. But weather forecasts indicate heat will continue in the spring wheat production areas of the Northern Plains, Behne said. to be restored again after the 1996 ﬂ ood. The land has a distin- guished history. The farm’s two-story house was built circa 1850 by Columbia Lan- caster, Washington territory’s ﬁ rst delegate to Congress. The farm also has a barn built in the 1880s. The house and barn are both on the National Reg- ister of Historic Places. The farm is just a few miles west of Interstate 5, not far from a new tribal casino and expanding subdivisions. “The rest of the farms in Ridgeﬁ eld are really stress- ing, watching homes go in,” Morgan said. “The whole family doesn’t want to turn this into houses.” In June, Ecology also certiﬁ ed a 113-acre wetland mitigation bank in Vancou- ver, south of Ridgeﬁ eld. The privately owned land was historically a mint farm. Corn harvested in 2014 was the last crop grown there, according to the bank’s records. Johnston advises farmers to look for futures bids that are in keeping with current cash prices, and contract their wheat now before prices begin to de- cline, particularly in the other classes. If DNS gets to be too expen- sive, some end-users won’t want it, he said, which will impact cash markets. “There’s been a 90-cent spread between the high and the low of the day,” he said. “When that kind of stuff happens, I start to get a little nervous about this market.” In recent tenders, Russia sold wheat to Egypt at $5.80 per bushel and Romania at $5.75 per bushel. France of- fered wheat at $6.10 per bush- el, while U.S. wheat prices were $8.03 per bushel, Steiner said. “We’re not remotely close to being competitive on the world market,” he said. “(Prices are) spectacular, but probably a sell- ing opportunity (for farmers), I would guess.” Clark County Farm Bu- reau President Bill Zimmer- man said he once leased land in the area to grow vegetables. “Beautiful soil there,” he said. “It would grow just phenome- nal crops.” Zimmerman said public ofﬁ cials are too dismissive of farmland’s beneﬁ ts to the en- vironment. “When the farmer owns the land, it’s not worth any- thing. If it’s wetlands, it’s worth something,” he said. “We hear all the time that the only value agricultural land has is as a land bank for future development.” Some 96 percent of Wash- ington’s cropland is east of the Cascades. The two East- ern Washington wetland mit- igation banks total 25 acres. Woodward, however, said he is interested in creating more. Demand for credits would probably be less than in West- ern Washington, but convert- ing 100 to 200 acres could mitigate for construction proj- ects over a large geographical area because of the size of many of the region’s water- sheds, he said. “I’m sure there would be a lot of skepticism from farmers in Eastern Washing- ton,” Woodward said. “But compared to the land being chopped into 5 acres or 20 acres for housing develop- ment, this is a drop in the bucket.” At Plas Newydd, creating wetlands will involve remov- ing levees, ﬁ lling in drainage ditches and moving dirt to turn pastures into ﬁ sh habitat. Portions of the land, ac- cording to a notice from Ecol- ogy and Army Corps, “have been degraded by cattle graz- ing and agricultural activities.” Morgan said that he hopes he can still graze some cows on the property, though that’s yet to be decided. The tree farm on the prop- erty will remain in produc- tion, and the land will stay in the family, he said. “I get to retain ownership of the property,” Morgan said. “It takes all the development pressure off.” OWRD’s method challenged in past SHUTDOWN from Page 1 Mallams’ lawsuit is not the ﬁ rst time that OWRD’s method of gauging groundwater pumping impacts on surface water has pro- voked controversy. In 2014, lawmakers proposed several bills requiring the agency to prove that individual wells were affecting surface ﬂ ows before taking enforcement action. The proposals were divisive in the agricul- tural community, with some irrigators arguing they’d disrupt Oregon water law while others claimed they’d protect water rights. According to OWRD, the new testing re- quirements would have cost the agency $80,000 per well. Ultimately, the bills died in committee. Aside from Mallams’ petition, the agency’s decision to restrict irrigation in the Klamath re- gion is facing several other lawsuits this year. Reacting to a “water call” from the Klamath Tribes — which have the most senior “time im- memorial” water rights — OWRD has issued orders halting irrigation on roughly 300,000 acres of land. Since early June, irrigators have ﬁ led four lawsuits disputing the agency’s rationale for en- forcement action.