SEQUIM –– The state has funded a $2.05 million proviso for the purchase of water mitigation fees and water storage conservation projects in the Dungeness River basin.
The measure was included in the state’s biennial budget signed by Gov. Jay Inslee last Sunday.
A portion of the Legislature’s funding will continue to fund the expansion of a water bank, from which new water users obtain water for a fee to mitigate what will be taken from the river.
Water rights will be purchased for the bank, and new residential water users can use that if they obtain a $1,000 mitigation certificate.
Those obtaining the certificates will continue to be reimbursed by the state, using a portion of the $2.05 million.
“We thought it was very important to keep that in,” Clallam County Commissioner Jim McEntire said.
“If we’re going to require users pay this, we shouldn’t make it more onerous for them to build.”
Application for the mitigation certificate is made through the county Department of Community Development.
Water use in the basin was restricted by the Dungeness Water Rule, a measure instituted in January by the state Department of Ecology with the aim of preserving water in the river for both human use and for aquatic species when its flow diminishes in dry summer months.
The rule covers the eastern half of Water Resource Inventory Area 18, from Bagley Creek to Sequim Bay.
The water bank is managed by the nonprofit Washington Water Trust of Seattle.
Amanda Cronin, water trust project manager, said last month the bank had 604.9 acre-feet of water, of which new water users had requested 0.0904 acre-feet.
Cronin and Gary Smith of the Sequim-Dungeness Water Users Association said the two sides likely will finalize next month a contract in which the trust would buy 175 acre-feet of water from the valley’s irrigators to the bank.
Most of the funding will pay for projects to store water for summer use and to recharge groundwater supplies.
“A lot of it is going to be moving dirt, laying pipe — the actual mitigation part of this whole thing,” McEntire said.
Dan Partridge, spokesman for Ecology’s water programs, said projects will be picked from a list of 21 put together in 2011 by a group of local water interests.
The group, Partridge said, will be called again this spring to prioritize which projects the new state funding will be funded.
“We’ll have a strong hand in helping determine how this money is spent,” McEntire said.
McEntire thanked members of the state Senate on Monday for re-instituting the funding.
“We had a lot of guys work awful hard down there to help get this to us,” McEntire said.
Proposed by Inslee, the funding was left out of various versions of the budget prepared by the Democrat-controlled state House.
In particular, McEntire thanked three senators for convincing the House to include the funding.
Among them is Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam who represents the 24th District, which covers Clallam and Jefferson counties and part of Grays Harbor County.
The other two senators are Republicans Jim Honeyford, representing the 15th District, and Andy Hill, representing the 45th District.
Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Joe Smillie can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or at jsmillie@peninsuladailynews.com.
