WRIA 8 Salmon Recovery Council Meeting Summary 1/20/11
WRIA 8 Salmon Recovery Council
Meeting Notes
Bellevue City Hall
January 20th, 2011
Members Present
Dr. Don Davidson, Chair (Mayor, Bellevue); Joan McBride, Vice Chair (Mayor, Kirkland); Eric Adman (Sno-King Watershed Council); Eileen Barber (Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery [FISH]); Layne Barnes (Councilmember, City of Maple Valley); Diane Buckshnis (Councilmember, City of Edmonds); Bruce Dodds (Councilmember, Clyde Hill); Chris Eggen (Councilmember, Shoreline); Ted Frantz (Councilmember, Hunts Point); Dave Garland (WA Dept. of Ecology); Don Gerend (Mayor, Sammamish); Brian Goodnight (Alternate, Snohomish County); Lisa Jensen (Councilmember, Newcastle); Bill Knutsen (King Conservation District); Kirk Lakey (WA Dept. of Fish and Wildlife); Bart Masterson (Councilmember, Mill Creek); Larry Phillips (Councilmember, King County); Sue Rooney (Friends of the Cedar River Watershed); Carl Scandella (Councilmember, Yarrow Point); Gary Smith (Water Tenders); Cleve Steward (Sustainable Fisheries Foundation); Frank Urabeck (Citizen).
Others Present
Rika Cecil (Shoreline); Peggy Campbell (Snohomish County); Laurie Devereaux (Bellevue); Eric Doyle (Citizen); Diana Forman (Portage Bay Coalition for Clean Water); Roy George (Alderwood Water District); Sandy Kilroy (King County); Terry Lavender (Bear Creek, alternate for Gary Smith); Frank Leonetti (Snohomish County); Jason Mulvihill-Kuntz (Puget Sound Partnership); Keeley O’Connell (People for Puget Sound); Kit Paulsen (Bellevue); Jon Spangler (Redmond); Linda Grob (WRIA 8 Administrative Coordinator); Scott Stolnack (WRIA 8 Technical Coordinator); Jean White (WRIA 8 Watershed Coordinator).
Introductions
Don Davidson opened the meeting and invited attendees to introduce themselves.
Public Comment
Keeley O’Connell, People for Puget Sound, announced that Environmental Lobby Day in Olympia is coming up on February 15. 400 activists representing 30 groups from around the state are involved, and will be focusing on four environmental priorities: Budget solutions for the environment; Coal free future for Washington; Clean fertilizers for healthier rivers and lakes; and the 2011 Clean Water Jobs Act. She said it is a wonderful event, with bus transportation, lunch, and an after event party provided.
Frank Urabeck reported that in the January flooding on the Cedar River we took some major hits on sockeye, probably losing 90% due to high flows at 6,000 CFS. We probably also took a hit on Chinook redds – we’ll know in the spring.
Approval of Meeting Notes for September 16, 2010 Meeting
The Salmon Recovery Council unanimously approved the meeting notes for the September 16, 2010 meeting.
Updates & Announcements
Jean White, Watershed Coordinator, provided the following updates on recent events and topics:
▫ Changes on the WRIA 8 Team: Mary Jorgensen, Actions and Funding Coordinator, is taking a planner position on Maui. Don Davidson said we will miss her. Cleve Steward mentioned that he really appreciated what she did. Mary has a great personality, and was always ahead of the curve. Jean reported that she expects to announce the position soon and to fill it as quickly as possible. She asked that WRIA 8 partners to share the job announcement with good potential candidates.
▫ Green Shorelines: WRIA 8 received a $50,000 contract from the Department of Ecology (DOE), and will be hiring a part-time Green Shorelines outreach person who will work for the whole year. As part of a pilot project the Governor’s Office of Regulatory Assistance is also getting funding to help shoreline property owners with permitting, and the King Conservation District (KCD) is getting a funding to provide technical assistance. Jean reported that we did not receive the Community Salmon Fund grant, but will be applying for the state round in February.
▫ Salmon SEEson: Salmon SEEson just wrapped up for the fourth year, with record numbers of people attending the Cedar River Salmon Journey days and the viewing days at Piper’s Creek in Carkeek Park. Jean reported that one reason for the increase was a higher sockeye salmon return, so there were more salmon to see. We also added two kokanee viewing sites for the first time, and we got great photos from King County’s professional photographer.
▫ Funding Mechanisms: There have been two cross-WRIA funding mechanisms meetings since the Salmon Recovery Council (SRC) met in September. WRIA 9 has hired two consultants, Jan Glick and Nancy McKay (former director of the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority) to facilitate the discussions which have made the meetings very productive. The next cross-WRIA funding mechanisms meeting is February 2, 10 a.m. – 1 p.m., at Renton City Hall. Jean said we are hoping to scrape together money to keep the consultants on board.
▫ Reallocation of Salmon Recovery Funding Board (SRFB)/Puget Sound Acquisition and Restoration (PSAR) Grant Funding: $300,000 of PSAR funds that were awarded to the South Lake Washington DNR Shoreline Restoration project are being shifted to three other projects due to the project getting mitigation funding from the 520 Bridge project. Projects now receiving additional money are:
· South Lake Washington Habitat Restoration, City of Renton ($20,000 for additional large wood);
· Mapes Creek Mouth Restoration, Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) ($123,559 for design completion); and
· Little Bear Creek – 132nd Ave Barrier Removal, Adopt-A-Stream Foundation ($156,441 to complete construction.
▫ Puget Sound Report: Puget Sound Watershed Leads are collaborating on how to promote value of PSAR funds and discussing Projects of Regional Significance. We were asked to narrow our list of potential projects of regional significance to three. We included: large scale Cedar River Acquisitions and Restoration, improved fish passage at the Locks/Salmon Bay and improved Issaquah Fish Passage. We worked with WRIA 7 to include restoration of the WRIAs 7 and 8 Nearshore (addressing Burlington Northern tracks) on their list of three projects.
▫ Committee Updates:
· Technical Committee: Scott Stolnack, Technical Coordinator, reported that the committee met several times to work on preparation for the WRIA 8 Summit. The next step is further documenting the information presented at the Summit on water quality, land cover change, spawner data, and juvenile migration trends. Recently the National Marine Fisheries Service’s request for comments on the Chinook Harvest Plan and the proposed prioritization of Chinook populations have been hot topics at the Technical Committee. They also discussed their 2011 work program. Scott went over the river conditions due to recent flooding: the Cedar did get up to stage 4, cresting January 17, coming back down to stage 2, and possibly going up again in the next few days. Don Davidson inquired how proposed dredging on the Sammamish River will affect salmon. Scott replied that it depends where the dredging occurs, and said he will look into it.
Other announcements:
▫ KCD: Bill Knutsen reported that there will be on-line voting for the KCD Board elections for the first time, with instructions for voting on the KCD web page. People need to get pin numbers by March 13 to vote online, or will have to vote in Renton at the KCD headquarters. He said this is planned as a way to involve a lot more people in the election then we’ve been able to do in the past. Bill also announced that last week the Washington Supreme Court heard the KCD lawsuit filed in Mason County. A split decision is expected. One side thinks that a per parcel assessment for conservation districts much prove a direct benefit to each parcel, while the other side thinks it’s acceptable for a per parcel assessment to have an indirect benefits to parcels throughout the county (a friendlier view to the conservation districts). He said we will hear the final decision by September.
Update on WRIA 8 State Legislative Priorities
Jean White presented the 2011 State Legislative Priorities, updated from the September SRC meeting. The state priorities are:
▫ Support $15 million for PSAR funding in the Governor’s budget: This is half the amount we received before, but in this tough budget time and Jean said we are happy we to get something. WRIA 8’s share would be $732,000, would fund Cedar River Acquisitions and Issaquah Creek Fish Passage, and provide $48,978 operating funds for watershed capacity.
▫ Continue Lead Entity funding in 2011-2013: The amount has never been increased since 2000. Jean said we heard the funding might take a 10-20% cut. If it is only a 20% cut, the Salmon Recovery Funding Board has reserved funding that could be used to fill the shortfall.
▫ Support the Secure Medicine Take-Back Bill (SB 5234, HB 1370): Jean said we have been asked by King County Hazardous Waste to write a WRIA 8 support letter.
Don Davidson remarked that it does help all cities to be lobbying on the same page, so when we do make the “ask” it comes from lots of sources.
Debrief WRIA 8 Summit and Powerful Next Steps
Jean White went over highlights from WRIA 8 Summit presentations, which include:
▫ We appear to be holding the line on salmon trends and forest cover in rural area;
▫ We need to increase productivity and diversity of juvenile Chinook by doing more mainstem Cedar River restoration;
▫ We need to focus on protecting and restoring riparian areas in both urban and rural areas
▫ We are doing the right habitat projects in the right places, but we need to do more. We have only implemented 14% of Start List projects, and are behind where we would like to be (we should be at 50%).
▫ Many high priority programmatic actions are getting a high level of implementation. We need to monitor the effectiveness of those actions to see if they are having the desired outcome. She gave the example that all WRIA 8 cities reported having tree ordinances, but that she went to a conference last year on tree ordinances where several cities reported on the weaknesses of their tree ordinances.
▫ We also have 7 high priority programmatic actions that we need to increase the level of implementation on.
▫ We are falling short of the funding goals in the WRIA 8 Plan. We need to look at the viability of WRIA 8 as an organization.
▫ We are powerful when we speak with one voice, and are even more powerful if we speak in unison with our neighboring watersheds.
▫ We need to look for opportunities to work collaboratively on actions and to partner more with non-profits.
Jean reported that 108 people attended the Summit, and about 30 took the evaluation survey. Generally the survey results were very positive. She said that we didn’t reach a clear consensus on what our next powerful steps are, so it will be something we need to work on this year as a follow-up to the Summit.
Discussion:
▪ Don Davidson commented that the Summit was extremely well organized and presented, but it did fall short on our direction for the future. He said his goal was to get everyone on same page, and it takes more time to get a diverse group together and focus on the future.
▪ Carl Scandella called the Summit extremely valuable. It provided an overall picture of what WRIA 8 is doing, and the big picture came out very nicely in the Summit. Missing was the picture of what we still need to do to accomplish our mission.
▪ Ted Frantz said he enjoyed the Summit very much, and took away new energy of why we are doing this, particularly from the café conversations. He said sees salmon recovery as is proxy for working on our environment.
▪ Gary Smith suggested we should look at other species as well. The same way salmon are an indicator of the state of the environment other species are indicators for salmon. Don Davidson responded that we do look at some of the other salmon species, like kokanee, but our focus is on Chinook. Don Gerend commented that we did have a couple of kokanee projects on the Start List, and there is a lot of support in Sammamish for saving kokanee.
▪ Eileen Barber said she attended Summit with Mayor Frisinger, and enjoyed it very much. She mentioned that we are doing a kokanee project at the Issaquah Hatchery. She asked if there any collective resources for programmatic actions like tree ordinances. Jean White said that she isn’t aware of collective resources for tree ordinances, but talked about how jurisdictions were working collaboratively on stormwater issues. Diane Buckshnis remarked that Edmonds just approved tree ordinance, and got a lot of good information from the internet.
▪ Kirk Lakey reported that a recent ruling in Kitsap County allowing the use of best available science from freshwater areas and applying it to marine areas when updating Shoreline Master Plans (SMPS). This ruling that should be helpful to jurisdictions updating Shoreline Master Plans (SMPS). All the cities having the exact same problems with citizen groups opposed to updating SMPS.
▪ Chris Eggen mentioned that cities really do need help justify ordinances. Groups opposed to SMPS can throw around a lot more money than a city can. It would be helpful to know good tree ordinance components, especially when you get down to trees and views.
▪ Bill Knutsen proposed that perhaps KCD could provide information on tree ordinances. There is a $10,000 open-ended grant for urban forestry, and the money needs to be spent quickly.
▪ Don Davidson said monitoring is important so we can see if we are investing our money wisely and doing the right things, the things the Technical Committee says will get the fish back. We need monitoring not only salmon, but also on what the effectiveness of our actions.