PORT ANGELES — A state Department of Ecology representative will clarify water rights law for Port of Port Angeles commissioners today after the department found that the port should not have permitted use of water in its retention pond for sprint boat races.
“It’s going to be ‘Water Law 101,’” said Mike Gallagher, Ecology’s water resources department manager.
He said he will speak to commissioners about how the port may and may not use water on its property to prevent future mistakes.
The meeting will begin at 9:30 a.m. at port headquarters at 338 W. First St., will be open to the public.
Ecology’s report is scheduled for 10 a.m.
In September, the port allowed the use of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water held in a port stormwater retention pond to fill a sprint boat race track nearby.
“We believed we could authorize the reuse of the stormwater for the sprint boat championship,” said Jeff Robb, port executive director, in a press release.
The water was used to fill the Extreme Sports Park, constructed by Port Angeles businessman and sprint boat pilot Dan Morrison, head of A2Z Enterprises, which owns the sports park.
The sports park’s inaugural sprint boat race in September was the U.S. Sprint Boat Association’s championship meet, which attracted an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 spectators to the new arena.
The sprint boat track holds as much as 750,000 gallons of water when full, Morrison said in September.
The port had used the pond’s water in the past for irrigating a Christmas tree farm and believed it still had the rights to use the water, Robb said.
The Dry Creek Coalition and Center of Environmental Law and Policy, which represent interests for the Dry Creek watershed area, questioned whether the pond was part of a wetlands area or part of the Dry Creek watershed and asked Ecology to halt the transfer of water and return it to the pond.
An initial finding in September indicated that the port might be fined for the water use, but after further investigation, the port has been told it will not be penalized, Robb said.
Ecology told the port that water rights expire five years after last use, and it had been 10 years since the port had used the water.
A2Z will need to apply for water rights for the pond water if they want to fill the track with pond water at a future date, Gallagher said.
The group would also need to apply for a permit to remove water from the track, now that it’s there, he said.
CELP’s primary concern, as stated in its complaint to Ecology, was that the loss of the water would damage salmon habitat and was in the middle of a wetlands area.
The pond is not a usual contributor of water to Dry Creek and is designed to prevent extreme water runoff from flooding the airport runways, Gallagher said.
It releases water only into Dry Creek, filtered through a crushed stone medium, during “extraordinary events,” he said.
Even when it does feed the creek, there is no effect on salmon, Ecology found.
“Staff from Ecology’s Water Resources and Shorelands and Environmental Assistance Programs investigated CELP and Dry Creek Coalition’s concerns and determined that there is no evidence that this pond is located over any previously existing wetlands and that dry creek is not considered to be a salmon-bearing stream,” the port said in a statement.
“We were aware that a 43-foot-high cliff and other significant fish barriers prevented salmon from using Dry Creek and that we had no intention to create any environmental impacts when allowing the reuse of the stormwater from the pond,” Robb said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
