Report from the trenches A summary of Local Meetings of Interest from February 26th to March 2nd 2018

Also on Tuesday Februrary 26th Whatcom County Council meeting, From
10:30 AM Tuesday until 1:15 AM Wednesday Morning

Included:
An hour presentation by attorney Brown of Cascadia Law Services reporting to the Council on how to limit Cherry Point industries AND avoid legal entanglements brought about by the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution.
The Council extended the Cherry Point moratorium again, limiting expansion and growth of Phillps, Alcoa and British Petroleum.
DNR(Dept. of Natural Resources) gave a presentation on their plans for an ORV( Off Road Vehicle) trails and park on some of their thousands of acres of DNR Timberland. This led to an open hearing in the evening that lasted many hours, many ORV users for and many other residents against, The Council turned down the ORV plan presented by DNR.
On Wednesday, February 28th the Planning Unit met:
State Department of Ecology reminded everyone that there were about 300 days per ESSB 6091(Hirst Fix), to come up with a Water Plan Update, showing no impact on the Nooksack Basin, from exempt wells for next 20 years. The Planning Unit passed out a flowchart showing how the update process will proceed through the Planning Unit… and directing the Staff Team to provide technical resources and help.
A flow chart of the work process was modified and passed by consensus. Governance and Funding Committee (sub committee of The Planning Unit) will meet on March 14, at BIAW.
Thursday, 3/1, the new Watershed Management Board met, This is a board set up of people who supply water to residents…
The Lummi Tribe, emphasized they were interested in Fish and their ‘water rights’ and not in ‘exempt wells’, the flow chart passed WMB also.
It was not a productive meeting, the ‘bright spot’ being that County Executive Jack Louws kept the meeting focused and it lasted only one hour
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