Jason Vander Kooy, Skagit County dairy farmer and Save Family Farming Vice President, issued the following statement regarding the Thurston County court ruling staying the Washington Forest Practices Board’s new expanded Western Washington Type Np Water Buffer Rule while the farm forestry community’s appeal of the wrongheaded plan moves forward
“The entire Washington state farming community stands to suffer if the bullies in the state’s Departments of Ecology and Natural Resources are allowed to force through this harmful plan for expanded stream buffers on fishless streams in working forests.
“It’s a plan absolutely disconnected from their own evidence. This is not subjective speculation. The state’s own analysis documents enormous economic harm, while describing the downstream benefits to fish as negligible to minor.
“This wrongheaded new rule would set a dangerous precedent, not only for forestry, but also for farming in the lowlands. Bureaucrats in Olympia must not be empowered to make policy changes that cause vast harm to entire communities without demonstrating any significant environmental benefit.
“We fully support the forestry community’s effort to appeal this harmful rule change, and we applaud the judge’s pause on the new rule’s rollout while the appeal moves forward, which will protect many small family foresters from immediate disaster.
“But the court’s stay alone won’t be enough–the appeals court ultimately must reject not only the expanded rule, but also the bankrupt process that bureaucrats wielded to push it forward.
“The state agencies that pushed this bad plan through failed to consider its sweeping harms, and hijacked the collaborative spirit that had brought so much success in the past. Their wrongheaded approach must be challenged, and this flawed rule must be scrapped before it sets a farm-killing precedent across the state.”