PORT TOWNSEND — Wording of a strategy to protect the city’s water right was hotly debated Monday night, with one councilman claiming the objective of the council majority is to limit growth in Port Hadlock and Irondale.
“You saw it here tonight,” said an angry Geoff Masci following a six-hour-long meeting at Fort Worden State Park.
“They’re using the water issue to limit growth in the Tri-Area (Port Hadlock-Irondale urban growth area).”
At the center of Monday night’s controversy was the phrase “and supporting the need for further groundwater development in the Chimacum Creek basin.”
In the end, council members voted 4-3 to eliminate the phrase from its guidelines for negotiations for setting minimum in-stream flows within Water Resource Inventory Area 17, which covers East Jefferson County.
Kees Kolff, Freida Fenn, Michelle Sandoval and Mayor Catharine Robinson favored the changed language, while Masci, Frank Benskin and Laurie Medlicott wanted to keep the Chimacum Creek issue in the guidelines.
‘Failed to recognize’
Growth in the Port Hadlock-Irondale area was on Fenn’s mind.
“The county absolutely failed to recognize the water issues (in planning the urban growth area),” Fenn said.
She said the size of the urban growth area — 1,320 acres about five miles south of Port Townsend — was a concern as was having no restriction on the maximum size of commercial lots.
