PORT TOWNSEND — Friends, neighbors and farmers packed a courthouse meeting room Monday to support longtime Chimacum dairy farmer Roger Short, who voiced frustration with bureaucracy in his bid to build Jefferson County’s first organic cheese processing facility.
Short, who called for the firing of new county Environmental Health Director Dan Bruce, gave county commissioners a week to come up with a solution or he will pull out of his partnership with cheesemaker Will O’Donnell.
“They could have said, ‘It will happen, we will not be a roadblock and we will not be a hindrance,”‘ Short said of the commissioners after the Monday morning hearing on his creamery plans.
After fellow Chimacum dairy farmer and commissioners’ chairman Glen Huntingford told Short he could be hurting his own cause by giving the commissioners only a week to act, Short responded:
“I’ve been dealing with this for 1½ years and it has to move forward.”
Huntingford assured Short that the commissioners would do whatever they can to make his project happen.
However, Huntingford said: “The county’s role is public health, and we do have to respond to make sure this is addressed along with everything else.”
Nutrient management plan
At issue, said Short, is the possibility that the dairy may need a new nutrient management plan and a new water system that will cost upwards of $10,000 for engineering.
An option is piping Jefferson County Public Utility District water 6,000 feet to the farm, but Short said that would cost $450,000.
Short said he and O’Donnell had every intention of running a clean operation with clean water.
“Cheese-making is a specialized process,” he said, “that if you have the wrong bug in it, it won’t work.”
Short added that he has produced milk since 1970 “and nobody’s gotten sick.”
He demanded that Bruce have no more role in the county permitting process, “otherwise I’m out.”
