04/07/2008: "Aquatic Reserve Meeting Off To Bad Start"

(Public meeting in Friday Harbor on the Aquatic Reserve proposal)

When the County Council agreed to send a letter of intent supporting the nomination of San Juan County into a SJAR (San Juan Aquatic Reserve), there was concern expressed, and the question asked "Will SJC Lose Control To DNR?" if the nomination is accepted and the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) designates parts, or all of. SJC as a SJAR; and what would it mean for the citizens who live and work here?

Last week the San Juan Marine Resources Committee (MRC) and (DNR) invited the public to three open houses, one on each of the main islands, that were billed as an opportunity to learn about a just released Draft Plan that sets out the boundaries of a proposed Aquatic Reserve (file is large).

Rawson said that last year the DNR came to the MRC and “presented their proposal for a solicitation for an Aquatic Preserve.”

Rawson said Marine Managers from state and local agencies, such as Land Bank, SJC Parks , SJ Lead Entity for Salmon Recovery, NOAA, National Park Service, Washington State Parks, People for Puget Sound, University of Washington Friday Harbor Labs, Friends of the San Juans, The Nature Conservancy, and The Whale Museum, are all proponents of the plan.

Rawson said some of them also worked with the MRC staff to develop a “pre-proposal we sent to DNR last fall” to support a SJAR.

Rawson said the MRC believed the SJAR would be a good fit with the Marine Stewardship Area that was adopted by the County Council in 2004. Rawson said the MRC, which is an advisory committee to the County Council, is now the “lead agency” for San Juan County in the proposal to have an aquatic reserve for the county.

Rawson said the basic idea is to develop goals and Strategies for DNR to review and follow as they “excise their authority” in the county.

As for the Draft SJAR, Rawson said that the next step would be to come up with a management plan for the SJAR, and they wanted public input as to what it should be.

Rawson introduced a speaker from DNR to continue to explanation of the proposal, when a member of the public, Lew Dickinson, questioned the current process, and expressed concern that the draft had just been released, with little time to digest it, and stated that now is the time for “public input, not a government ‘output’; and if you wanted public input, you should have presented the information earlier; we only got it (the draft) yesterday”.

Rawson interrupted Dickinson, and then the meeting began to spun out of control. with Rawson fighting to not completely lose his temper, and escorting Dickinson outside to continue the discussion.

Dickinson statements opened up the floor, and questions came quickly. It was obvious there were many with many questions, but when Rawson and Dickinson returned, Rawson kept trying to return the meeting to a presentation of the program, and for short time was successful, but the audience continued to have questions and wanted to ask them.

The DNR representative said the review process would be based on criteria set up by DNR, and once recommendations from the technical review committee were made on which proposals should go forward, and which not, the committee may make changes to the boundaries. They could be increased, or decreased.

The next step would be a “management planning process”, and then the head of DNR would decide if the plan should be adopted. The fact that it would not be the County Council, but the head of the state Department of Resources that made the final decision did not sit well with some of the members of the public.

Rawson then called on Dickinson again, who said it should be the public and the County Council that decide these questions, not DNR. “DNR should be neutral in this process”. Another member of the public said “we need to know if the County Council even want to vote to do this”.

Dickinson’s concerns on how quickly the process is moving through the public input process were not alleviated when it was revealed the deadline for public input was April 20th, and the date for acceptance of the Draft Plan is April 30.

Another member of the public said he believed the regulations would effect land far inland from the shoreline, since the argument will be made that uplands effect what happens on the shorelines and the Sound, so it is not correct to say the Reserve would only deal with shoreline and saltwater inside the bounties of the reserve

If the plan is put into place, it will have a sunset date of 90 years, and the County Council cannot withdraw from the plan, only the DNR has the authority to remove a Reserve designation.

( Click here to access a Gordy Petersen column on the meeting)

The first meeting was held in Friday Harbor, and things did not go very well. Kit Rawson works for the Tulalip Tribes, and as current chairman of the MRC, started off the meeting with a history of how the draft came to be.