Save Family Farming Vice President and Skagit dairy farmer Jason Vander Kooy issued the following statement in response to the Skagit Irrigation and Drainage Districts Consortium’s criticism of the Skagit Project FERC relicensing settlement proposed by Seattle City Light:
“What we have here is a proposal granting Seattle lawyers and elected officials the authority to land grab Skagit County by condemnation. Let’s call this what it is: an audacious power move by an energy company 80 miles away that thinks it has the right to seize rural farmland under the guise of a fish recovery plan they wrote without even involving the people most affected.
“Farmers and tribes have advocated side-by-side to add fish passage for the Skagit River dams, and we’re encouraged that Seattle City Light has apparently finally agreed to it in the proposed settlement for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s relicensing of City Light’s Skagit Project. But despite this huge win for the tribal and farming communities, Seattle City Light’s proposal remains unsupportable by the farming community due to the deep harm it would inflict to the Skagit farming community.
“The proposal threatens to remove more than 1,300 acres of productive farmland from use, with no clear benefit to fish or the environment and no local buy-in. Worse still, they’ve refused to rule out using condemnation—government-sanctioned land seizure—to do it. Seattle City Light’s proposed settlement is not aligned with the 2005 Skagit Chinook Recovery Plan, which prioritizes strategic, locally-led processes for salmon restoration. This proposal isn’t about salmon recovery—it’s blatant, offensive political manipulation that comes at a devastating cost to the agricultural community.
“Save Family Farming stands with the Skagit Consortium and the Board of Skagit County Commissioners in demanding that condemnation authority be removed from the agreement. Wiping out 1,300 acres of productive farmland would be a gut-punch to our already-stretched-thin local food producers, not to mention the rural agricultural community and economy they work so hard to support. Anything less is a betrayal not just of Skagit farmers, but of the principles of fairness, transparency, and local leadership that Washington’s rural communities deserve.
“Taking valuable farmland the local community has worked so hard to protect is unacceptable. The Skagit Chinook Recovery Plan is about restoring salmon, but Seattle City Light’s proposal is about taking farmland for political points, potentially under the threat of eminent domain. It is neither strategic nor locally-led, as the Skagit Chinook Recovery Plan demands.
“We urge the Seattle City Council and Mayor Harrell to reject this reckless overreach. Until the threat of farmland condemnation is removed from the dam relicensing settlement, the farming community in Skagit County and across Washington state cannot support this proposal.”