November 3, 2016 Wendy Harris
The council agenda for next Tuesday is out.
Want to see how seriously the county really values restoring Lake Whatcom? It is proposing $50,000 for a homeowner incentive program that will go into retrofitting watershed homes to achieve better on site infiltration and reduce stormwater run-off.
At the same time, the parks department requests authorization for the County Executive to make application and enter into a grant agreement with the WA State Recreation and Conservation Office (RCO) for funding through the Nonhighway and Off-Road Vehicle Activities Program (NOVA) in the amount of: $200,000 for the development of non-motorized recreational trails at Lookout Mountain Forest Preserve and Lake Whatcom Park.The county will be responsible for matching funds. These are activities that may have harmful impacts on the watershed, because, at a minimum, they will be result in loss of habitat and biodiversity without an inventory and review. I have only seen the parks department plan to protect, sort of, marbled murrelet and that just doesn’t cut it.
BTW, the Parks Department was given a 14.5 million dollar budget, which is 14% more than it was provided last year. All those trails that fragment habitat and harm wildlife are costly. But we need a levy to pay for EMS Service? Something is wrong here.
noisy waters northwest 