PORT ANGELES — A controversial water-management plan for Clallam County may face a final public hearing June 17, county commissioners decided Tuesday.
The Elwha-Dungeness Watershed Plan, also known as Water Resource Inventory Area 18 or WRIA 18, has been five years in the making but only about nine months in belated public scrutiny of its provisions.
Required by the state Department of Ecology, it seeks to undo decades of damage to salmon habitat while meeting water needs of the rapidly developing area between Sequim Bay and the Elwha River basin.
Following the hearing, Clallam County commissioners may adopt it or send it back to county and state planners for revision. If commissioners fail to approve it at all, the state will impose regulations that may have no local input.
WRIA 18 attracted little attention until last fall, when critics packed a hearing — plus two meetings subsequently scheduled — to say it unfairly limited real estate development, especially in the Sequim area.
Since then, it has undergone additional public comment, plus suggestions solicited from Realtors, developers, irrigators, well drillers and other interested parties.
Regulatory framework
If adopted, the plan would form a framework for state and county regulations on private and public wells and water systems, sewers and septic tanks, storm runoff, and irrigation — all aimed at restoring salmon runs into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
The entire plan, including its latest revisions and a huge body of public comment, is online at the county Web site, www.clallam.net.
In a related action Tuesday, commissioners approved a $65,000 addition to a Department of Ecology grant studying stream flows in WRIA 19.
WRIA 19 largely comprises Clallam County from the Elwha basin along the Strait and Pacific coast to Ozette. There are 62 Water Resource Inventory Areas in the state.
