URGENT CALL TO ACTION on
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Your voice is urgently needed to:1) Oppose the immediate, devastating threat to the future of fish and farmland in Whatcom County posed by a damaging scheme pushed by powerful interests in Olympia, and
2) Support, instead, the positive plan embraced by many environmental experts and family farmers to bring our community together around protecting fish and farmland. Salmon recovery work and the future of Whatcom County’s hundreds of family farms are both in doubt because of this harmful ploy that power brokers right now are trying to get the state to pay for. The influential people pushing the antiquated process, called water rights adjudication, falsely claim the 19th-century procedure is the only way to solve the Nooksack Basin’s water supply confusion. But numerous experts are clearly showing the process, in reality, would not solve problems, but create new ones, deeply harming fish recovery and local food by creating conditions causing rapid, widespread urbanization that would gobble up our community’s precious farmland and open spaces. How would it cause this irreversible damage to fish recovery and local farming? By suing each and every one of the basin’s water rights holders, including the local tribes who hold senior water rights, as well as hundreds of family farms, forcing everyone into a conflict-riddled court process that would pit neighbor against neighbor for decades. Our community’s smallest and newest farms would be hurt the most. The huge costs and uncertainty this brings will force many farms to shut down, leaving vast areas of our community vulnerable to accelerated urbanization, stalling urgently-needed salmon recovery work and harming fish with increasing new urban pollution. Only high-powered lawyers would benefit, while fish, farming and our whole community would suffer. At the same time, people who understand the deep threat this adjudication scheme poses to fish and farms are instead supporting a positive plan to address water supply concerns, restore salmon runs and protect local food. Their vision would accomplish so much more, in a way that brings the community together around the collaborative solutions that an adjudication will never achieve. Tell our leaders right now to say “no” to the harmful adjudication proposal pushed by powerful interests, and tell them to instead support the collaborative process that our community wants and needs. |