Watershed Wisdomby Peter Moulton, For the SPEECH Board of Directors Conventional wisdom in these parts holds that water, or the lack thereof, will become the first barrier to growth in South Puget Sound. But our current planning psyche rarely recognizes natural limits to human expansion. With enough engineers and attorneys, it's amazing what we can justify. A more likely and immediate challenge to growth will be the fiscal constraints posed by an expanding and aging infrastructure, especially our transportation grid. There's nothing like an escalating tax bill to spark revenge in the hearts of the electorate. In part, that's why the Thurston Regional Planning Council, fueled by slow-growth advocates such as the Carnegie Group, has decided to limit their analysis of growth impacts to the comfortably confines of economic feasibility. Local comprehensive plans developed under growth management harbor no confusing discussion of natural limits to human expansion, no exploration of the carrying capacity of our environment. But when we do hit a natural barrier, it won't be the slow evaporation of open space and species diversity, hazier air or lack of buildable ground, not even loss of our much treasured "quality of life." It most likely will be water. We've only recently begun to recognize limits to our groundwater, the massive aquifers coursing through the complex layers of glacial deposits which underlie our region. How do they interact with surface flows needed by fish and wildlife, how far and fast will contamination spread, and who gets to use what's left? The last question has arguably been the natural resource issue before state government in the last two years. One of the few water bills to survive the last session, Senate Bill 2054, is a modest little number designed to get a handle on the situation. It calls for water resource planning within a watershed context, and in so doing solidifies a number of important policy directions. A one-day seance on the bill's ramifications, hosted in Tacoma last month by the Rivers Council of Washington, brought together a diverse crowd of agency heads, state and federal policy wonks, tribal and local government staff, eager consultants and a surprising number of citizen activists. Many took the stage to pledge allegiance to the new watershed paradigm, and nearly all recognized it as the best available path out of the paralysis over water resources allocation. Two of the more telling pronouncements came from recent arrivals on the regional scene. Ecology's new director, former Thurston County CAO Tom Fitzsimmons, anointed watershed planning as a statutory reality and clearly outlined his vision for locally driven, inclusive and comprehensive efforts with the state as an equal partner. Bill Bradbury of the nonprofit For the Sake of the Salmon, which recently doled out federal funds for nine watershed coordinators in the Northwest, stated his goal of underwriting 100 more in the next few years. Together, these directions represent the effective process and administrative stability needed to make watersheds more than the latest planning trend. And plan we will in the years ahead. The 62 WRIAs (Water Resource Inventory Areas) of Washington are already the functional default for integrated resource planning. State water quality programs now follow a five-year planning cycle thanks to the EPA, and water resources is about to sync up. Fisheries, which came up with the WRIA designations in the 1970s, has brought wildlife into the picture with their merger. And the Department of Natural Resources' watershed assessment work continues to implement better management practices on both state and private forestlands. Of course, the Tribes in the region have always lived and managed resources within a watershed perspective. And with the impending ESA listings of Northwest salmon stocks, a variety of federal agencies are getting ready to weigh-in. Sounds promising, like we actually might witness a little efficiency and effectiveness by planning within a common context - and a natural one at that, one which transcends arbitrary sociopolitical borders to manage natural systems based on ecological principles. But will adjusting state and local management boundaries to match natural ones significantly help to resolve the resource wars? For that matter, will hiring a bunch of well-meaning liberal arts graduates to lead diverse groups of "stakeholders" in the Barney Song do much to halt environmental decline? The key element in successful, long-term watershed planning - a deep knowledge and appreciation of place - is as fluid and illusive as our aquifers. With so many residents defining community by employment, schools and the closest mall, watershed planning must invite us to celebrate and nurture uniqueness in our natural world. This doesn't mean (just) hugging trees, it means building watershed wisdom by understanding the geological and meteorological forces which formed soils, learning the evolution of plants and animals. and just as importantly, knowing the history of people. It means listening to the stories of those whose families worked the land, and in so doing become part of the landscape. Allowing a little watershed wisdom to seep into conventional wisdom is an important step if we're to move beyond resource arbitration to effective, proactive stewardship. Without it, watershed planning will simply be a more civil means of divvying up what's left of the natural, "unmanaged" world.
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