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--></style><title>Re: [Vision2020] Re: Trolly on old Railroad Tracks
& P&Z h</title></head><body>
<div>Tom,</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Following is my Town Crier column of last week which goes into
the Hawkins issue. To the best of my knowledge, Hawkins has
resubmitted a SEPA application to Whitman County that is different
from the one they withdrew a month or so ago in two respects only:
some additional detail on traffic and wetlands issues. Nothing on
where the water supply would come from.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Mark</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><u>Town Crier II, Mark
Solomon</u></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><u><br>
</u>Just the other day I was working with my chainsaw thinning and
pruning my daily quarter-acre of tangled cedar and grand firs in the
draw below our house when the sky suddenly went black. I hiked
quickly to within sight of the house and the sheet of rain approaching
getting inside just as the rain and hail came hammering down. A
torrent of water poured off the roof disappearing quickly and quietly
into the soft forest ground where it will nourish the trees and feed
the streams and aquifers below.<br>
<br>
On the ridges of Moscow Mountain the connections between water, rocks,
soil and life are naked, exposed. In town, one has to look
beneath the surface of things requiring a commitment most of us
don't have time to make. We end up relying on our leaders to
educate themselves and make the right decisions to balance the
community's need for new development and the availability of water
to support it.<br>
<br>
Unfortunately, very little of this discussion has been taking place in
the forum created for it, the Palouse Basin Aquifer Committee (PBAC),
even though it has been meeting monthly for over 15 years. PBAC
members appear to prefer process to product. The committee
recently made the decision NOT to discuss the effect a major 220-acre
commercial development in the Pullman/Moscow corridor would have on
our groundwater supply. PBAC remains silent on the
now-under-construction WSU golf course and all other major development
proposals in the Moscow/Pullman area.<br>
<br>
Fortunately, not everyone is remaining silent on proposed development
and its effects on our aquifers. Moscow citizens are speaking by
changing their lawn watering habits making last year the first time in
a decade that Moscow met its PBAC Agreement pumping goals. The Palouse
Water Conservation Network (PWCN), in their testimony to the Moscow
City Council on the Thompson rezone, presented an analysis they termed
the "unfunded water liability". PWCN counted all the lots in
Moscow that have already been approved for development but not yet
built upon. Using current city per capita water use rates, they
calculated that the City is committed to providing another 140 million
gallons of water per year - a 17% increase over the volume pumped in
2005 - when those lots are turned into homes and businesses. Meeting
that commitment will take us well beyond the agreed to PBAC limit. The
Thompson rezone would have required another 62 million gallons per
year.<br>
<br>
Proponents of the east side commercial development keep saying that if
we don't allow big boxes to be built there then they will be built
in Whitman County starting with the Hawkins Companies proposal just
across the state line. What they fail to factor into their thinking is
the difficulty of securing water for that development.<br>
<br>
Washington State has had a de facto moratorium on issuance of new
water rights while they complete a statewide assessment of their water
resources. Once that analysis is completed, sometime in the next
few years, there's a backlog of new water right applications they
estimate will take another five to ten years to process. The
Hawkins Companies could acquire and transfer an existing water right,
but there's a catch: the water right in question has to draw from
the same "source" as the new diversion or well.<br>
<br>
We know quite a lot about the nature and extent of the groundwater
"source" in the vicinity of the Hawkins' proposed development.
The Washington water rights database reveals that if every existing
commercial water right in the source area, mostly in the corridor,
were acquired and transferred, Hawkins would be only half way to
meeting their water demand. Acquiring and transferring all the water
rights would preclude any other development in the corridor. They
could collect the water that falls on the development's roofs, build
and pay for a huge reservoir and a treatment plant but even that would
only net them less than half of what a 750,000 square foot retail
development typically requires.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
Water and development. Development and water. They are not mutually
exclusive but they are sequential. The water needs to be there first.
Seattle doubled its population over the past three decades, but only
by instituting an intensive and effective citywide conservation
program. Seattle now uses less water, in total, than they did twenty
years ago. It can be done in Moscow and Pullman, too, but it won't
happen until PBAC, our community's leaders, developers, and citizens
make connections and get real about conservation.<br>
</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>At 3:35 PM -0700 6/13/06, Tom Ivie wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>I agree about the water thing. We
haven't heard much lately about the proposed mall on the Washington
side of the border and the water issues with that. Does anyone
know what is going on with that? Also, have the County
Commissioners ever weighed in on the water issue and actually taken
any steps (proactive or reactive)?<br>
<br>
<br>
<i><b>Nils Peterson <nils_peterson@wsu.edu></b></i> wrote:<br>
<blockquote>There was a thread here recently about a rail-based
shuttle from Moscow to<br>
Pullman. That strikes me as more interesting and valuable than a
interal to<br>
Moscow trolly -- there isn't much track left in town.<br>
<br>
ALSO-- the reason there is less track is that several of the railroad
using<br>
businesses are going or gone. There is a P&Z hearing on 3 parcels
of<br>
industrial land (grain elevators at the south end of Main) to convert
them<br>
sites to Central Business District.<br>
<br>
I hope to go to the hearing Wed nite, to support the idea. Moscow
growth in<br>
the CBD and mixed use ways that these sites suggest is MUCH more
interesting<br>
to me than generic motor business growth on the edge of town. If
the<br>
buildings can be re-used in some way, that would be cool also (but
this<br>
hearing in about zoning, not a specific use).<br>
<br>
Besides, I want to go to one of these hearings and speak for the
proposal,<br>
rather than against it.<br>
<br>
My one reservation is water. We still need to come to grips with
having and<br>
balancing a water budget.<br>
<br>
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