Letterbox - LWWSD Commissioners Respond, LED Lights

Sewer and Water District Commissioner Contends State Did Not Ignore Water Law

Dear Watchers:

In the September and October 2008 publications of the Whatcom Watch, g.h. kirsch wrote a lengthy two-part article which posed the question “Did the State Ignore Water Law?” The gist of the piece is that the Department of Ecology has erroneously provided the Lake Whatcom Water and Sewer District (LWWSD) with a groundwater permit to provide water on the north shore of Lake Whatcom. The following is an abridged version of the information he has presented.

In 1974 Duane Johnson put in an exempt well on his property on the north shore of Lake Whatcom. Soon after, the LWWSD offered to purchase the well and applied for a water right to supply some additional 2,000 new residences, which were expected to be built in the area. From this starting point, Mr. kirsch rambles through a long recitation of dates and legal opinions. He finally acknowledges that in December of 2002 Ecology recommended that the LWWSD be allowed to move the point of withdrawal from the Johnson well to Agate Heights along with the excessive (remaining) inchoate right originally granted by this permit. Much of the article is devoted to Mr. kirsch’s interpretation of Washington law regarding water rights.

On October 2, 2008, an attorney for the Squalicum Valley Community Association wrote a letter to Ecology’s Northwest Regional Office. The letter contains many of the arguments from Mr. kirsch’s article and requests that Ecology answer three specific questions related to groundwater permit G1-22763P, which gives the LWWSD the right to draw water from the Agate Heights well. In their response of October 15, 2008, Ecology replies (entire letter in right column) as follows:

• Is the permit void because it has expired? — Ecology says it has not expired. The application for change was approved in 2002 and allows the district until 2013 to complete development of the project and until 2020 to put the water to full beneficial use.

• Has the district relinquished the permit to the extent it has gone unused over the past five years? — Ecology says no because the permit is an inchoate (unperfected) right and therefore is not subject to relinquishment. The relinquishment provisions of chapter 90.14 RCW apply only to perfected or certificated water rights, not to inchoate rights (emphasis from Ecology’s response).

• To what extent is the permit still valid? — Ecology says that no portion of the permit has been relinquished.

So it appears that Mr. kirsch has failed to make a proper differentiation between “inchoate” and “perfected” rights and, according to Ecology, the LWWSD does hold a valid permit for use of the Agate Heights well.

Dear Watchers:

Regarding your article on LED lights, having been in the energy efficiency business for over 30 years, I’ve the following observations:

1. There’s a lot of money to be made in our transition to a greener society.

2. It’s very easy to sell everything for nothing. For example, I propositioned the manager of the B’ham Towers to change from incandescent to compact fluorescent lights thereby saving him many thousands of dollars which Puget Power (now Puget Sound Energy) paid for with a grant; Puget Power, being a business, was out to make as much profit as possible and their energy being limited, needed to raise their rates which they were more able to do if they could get their customers to be more energy efficient.

3. LEDs are definitely the wave of the future especially when their price comes down. They are to CFs as CFs are to incandescents.