Talk of stock water lawsuit, biodiesel balk

GUEST EDITORIAL

OLYMPIA — Things aren’t exactly quiet on the Schoesler homestead between eradicating weeds, lining up help for harvest, freeing the bawling bull that got caught in the fence, and so on. But there has been some time to hit the road either for legislative duties or to see what’s going on in farm country (and sometimes both).

I hope your summer is off to a pleasant, healthy and productive start the way it is for our cherry growers. I can vouch for this year’s crop, having liberated about 40 pounds’ worth at a U-pick on my way back from the wheat growers’ legislative tour – too many for us to use ourselves but enough to share!

Stock watering headed to court

I suppose it was inevitable. Having bounced around between the executive and legislative branches of government – the state attorney general, the Legislature, a county water conservancy board, and the state ecology department – this issue now has landed in the judicial branch, in the form of a lawsuit recently filed in Thurston County Superior Court (where lawsuits against state government are filed, because the county is home to the state capital).

In early April the Franklin County Water Conservancy Board supported the transfer of a water right requested by Easterday Ranches, which wants to build a cattle feedlot north of Eltopia. The proposed transfer had generated enough controversy that several bills were filed for the 2009 legislative session.

Rather than tackle the definition of stock watering directly, through a separate bill, lawmakers in late April added language to the new state budget directing the Department of Ecology to convene a work group to examine the issue. From Section 302, subsection (17) of House Bill 1244:

(a) “The department shall convene a stock water working group that includes:  Legislators, four members representing agricultural interests, three members representing environmental interests, the attorney general or designee, the director of the department of ecology or designee, the director of the department of agriculture or designee, and affected federally recognized tribes shall be invited to send participants.

(b) “The group shall review issues surrounding the use of permit-exempt wells for stock-watering purposes and may develop recommendations for legislative action.

(c) The working group shall meet periodically and report its activities and recommendations to the governor and the appropriate legislative committees by December 1, 2009.”

On June 11 the Department of Ecology went along with Franklin County’s decision, for the most part. Less than three weeks later Ecology and Easterday were sued.

The Center for Environmental Law and Policy is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Rachael Paschal Osborn, CELP executive director, is a member of the stock water working group. The work group has yet to meet, but may have its first get-together in late July or early August, in the Olympia area.

I have two questions:

How appropriate is it for someone knee-deep in the lawsuit, who is on record saying the Ecology decision is a “bad interpretation,” to serve on the working group?

How much sense does it make for the work group to meet while this lawsuit is hanging out there?

Working groups can be effective, and I have faith in the Republican legislators on the stock water group (Sen. Bob Morton of Kettle Falls; Sen. Jim Honeyford of Sunnyside; Rep. Bruce Chandler of Granger, and Rep. Judy Warnick of Moses Lake). But the filing of this lawsuit and the fact that a work group member is tied to a plaintiff certainly puts a different spin on things.

Governments balk at biodiesel

Three years and about three months ago the governor was in Moses Lake signing legislation that mandated production of biodiesel and created a market for it. From her March 30, 2006 news release:

“We are moving Washington forward as a leader of a dynamic, 21st century industry,” said Governor Gregoire. “Alternative fuels will help bridge the rural and urban divide in Washington: we can grow these crops in eastern Washington, crush the seeds in places like Moses Lake and ship them across the Cascades for use in busses in Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia.”

The law would create a market by requiring state agencies to use a minimum of 20 percent biodiesel as of June 1, 2009.

That was the bait — now for the switch. The new transportation budget that went into effect this month gives Washington State Ferries — the largest fuel consumer in state government, at about 18 million gallons of diesel annually — an exemption from the 20-percent biodiesel requirement.

 Why? The powers-that-be in transportation decided the ferry system, which relies primarily on gas tax revenues just like roads (ferry routes are considered to be “marine highways”) and is hard-up for cash, can’t afford the cost of making sure one-fifth of the fuel in its tanks comes from something other than dinosaurs.

 And I haven’t seen it, but word is the state’s Department of General Administration reports the rest of state government needs another year to reach the 20-percent mark.

The law setting quotas for state consumption of biodiesel certainly had its critics in Olympia a few years ago, but no one saw this twist coming. The flip-flop by the state — which encouraged entrepreneurs to get into the industry and has now put a good part of the market out of reach — leaves a taste worse than used deep-fryer oil.

 Then there’s King County, which announced with great fanfare in March 2006 that it would quadruple its use of biodiesel, to 20 percent. Yet two months ago the county completely stopped using canola-based biodiesel because of the cost.

I can understand the cost issue, but now the city of Seattle has announced it is looking for a “greener” biodiesel because of concerns that crop-based biodiesel is harmful from a climate-change standpoint. Does that mean it’s OK to grow canola to make the oil used in restaurants, which can then be used to make biodiesel, but it’s not OK to grow crops strictly for making biodiesel? It’s hard to believe that an alternative fuel is drawing criticism.

Climate change bill safe for cattle

While farmers in Ireland and Denmark worry about whether they’ll be hit with a “cow tax” due to the gases their animals produce, Americans with cattle aren’t being targeted by the climate-change bill sent over to the United States Senate last week after its passage by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009’ makes only one mention of “enteric fermentation,” which is the long name for the gas cows belch – and it’s to specifically exempt “sources” of such gas from the list of things generating significant amounts of methane.