Ecology meeting with BoCC

Yesterday, continuing my research on the upper county well moratorium, I went to the meeting between the Board of County Commissioners and Tom Tebb, Director of the Department of Ecology's Yakima office. On the phone from Olympia was Ecology's attorney.

Everyone seemed to be on their best behavior. I was interested in the tone of the meeting, since the primary election is coming up, and some of the commissioners (especially Mark McClain) have been quoted as having said some fairly intemperate things about this issue.

The takehome message of the meeting was basically the same as the Daily Record's editorial yesterday: don't spend any money on building unless you have legal access (in addition to practical access) to water.

Action by the county in the past weeks had complicated the situation, but no one wants a homeowner to have spent money on construction only to find they can't have the water they need. Here's Ecology's web page, "How to Request Water Budget Neutral Determination."