A governor-appointed Washington state task force continues to forge ahead with recommendations for forcing wide, forested stream buffers on farmland, despite fundamental flaws in the process.

That’s right – some top state leaders haven’t given up on the large, inflexible and government-mandated buffer idea, despite the fact it’s been handed political defeat after political defeat over the last several years.

After outgoing Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s 2022 attempt at legislation to force the concept failed, he quashed a more collaborative approach that stakeholders and lawmakers had initiated.

Instead, Inslee convened his own buffer ‘roundtable’ group, to further his more heavy-handed approach, under the guise of seeking more stakeholder input. Not surprisingly, this task force has continued to further plans for punitive measures to force inflexible buffers on farmers and landowners while minimizing constructive input from representatives of the farming community.

Kara Rowe, Policy Director at the Western Washington Agricultural Association, joined host Dillon Honcoop on the Dec. 14th edition of The Farming Show with the latest on the Washington Riparian Task Force’s recommendations.

“There’s a few things that we’re very concerned about, and all of Washington residents should be concerned about,” Rowe said, “the biggest thing is the funding of this.” She said fully implementing the plan would cost billions of dollars at a time when state coffers already have billions in shortfalls.

Rowe also voiced concerns about the proposal’s sole reliance on Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife science, when experts and other more-influential agencies’ science disagrees with WDFW’s conclusions.

“This is not the best available science,” said Rowe, “they need to look at other science, including NRCS standards, and others as well.”

Troubling government measures to force landowners to give up significant swaths of land for stream buffers, such as the state using the power of eminent domain to seize the land, continue to be a major concern as well, Rowe said. The plan even lists the possibility of officials declaring a landowner’s refusal to comply to be a “nuisance,” and then use the power of state law to take over the land to “abate” the nuisance by forcing a buffer to be installed.

“We’ve been reaching out to as many legislators [as] will listen, getting some really good feedback from them of, ‘this just doesn’t make sense on a whole lot of levels,’” she said.