Rural Character
by Lucas Henning
A dimly lit vessel loaded with 16 cars slowly accelerates beneath afternoon rain clouds as it leaves Gooseberry Point, Lummi Indian Reservation’s southwest tip. After a five-minute trip across Hale Passage, the Whatcom Chief ferry reaches its small blue terminal. Cars unload onto Lummi Island where they fade away into the fog. Here — nearly eight miles west across the bay from downtown Bellingham — the roads are as quiet as the surrounding waters and sometimes the only things moving are trees leaning with the wind. When the sky is clear, views of snow-covered Mount Baker to the east and the San Juan Islands to the west highlight the 360-degree scenic horizon.
Stoplights, Starbucks and sprawl are absent on this island. Except for Scenic Estates, a subdivision of closely gathered houses, Lummi Island’s southern half is nearly uninhabited. Most of the residents live on the northern half, which is flatter and lower in elevation. Yet, the island’s population is growing and changes are taking place. Wells run low in the summer, ferry lines can take hours and, as more housing is built, many residents say the island is losing its rural character.
For the past year and a half, the Lummi Island Planning Committee has been revising the island’s 1979 plan for growth management, known as the Subarea Plan. The committee is aiming to improve groundwater protection, limit population growth and density and preserve the island’s rural character. As the committee approaches the final steps of the planning process, community opposition to the plan has increased because of a perceived lack of
community representation.
Before settlement, Lummi Indians occasionally visited the island to pick berries, dig clams, fish and hunt deer, according to historical research compiled by islander Beth Hudson. In 1871, Captain Christian Tuttle, a whaler and California gold miner, canoed to the island from Whatcom, the first European settlement on Bellingham Bay, and became the first permanent resident. On their 320-acre plot of land, Tuttle and his wife, Clara, raised seven children.
Soon after, people traveling west joined them and the island’s population began to grow. Before the turn of the century, the island had a salmon cannery,
fertilizer plant and a shingle mill. After WWII, many people built summer homes on the island.
Eleven-year resident Bob Busch remembers spending summers on the island with his parents in the 1940s. Upon his retirement in the early 1990s, he moved to the island permanently. Since those long-past summers with his parents, Busch has watched the growing population change the island.
“It’s getting a lot more crowded out here and nobody likes that,” Busch said. “But there’s nothing you can do. If people want to move out here they have the right to.”
Busch is a member of the Lummi Island Planning Committee. In September 2003, committee members completed the revised draft of the 1979 Subarea Plan. Members of the committee decided the original plan was outdated because of population growth.
In the new draft, the committee members propose downzoning the minimum lot sizes. The downzone would decrease density by changing minimum lot sizes from one house per three acres to one house per five acres. According to the draft, this downzone would better follow the Washington Growth Management Act’s rural element requirements and help preserve the rural character of the island. By lowering density, the downzone would also ease the demand on the island’s water supply.
Much of the community disagrees with the downzone, but the opposition has been poorly represented, said Art Thomas, an islander who resigned from the planning committee in October.
“I feel the plan reflects the desires of the committee and not the community,” Thomas said. “There was no dialog between the community and the committee. During public comment periods in meetings the comments were of frustration towards the process rather than ideas about the plan.”
The new draft also suggests limiting the number of annual building permits to allow a 1.9 percent growth rate, or about 12 houses per year during the next 20 years. Committee members recommended this growth rate, based on water studies from 1979, until new studies are able to more accurately determine groundwater quantity and quality and the island’s carrying capacity.
Ronald Schmidt, a hydrological consultant, conducted hydro-geologic studies on the island in the late 1970s for the 1979 Subarea Plan, but was only able to create an estimate of the island’s north end carrying capacity, according to the new draft. Schmidt estimated the north end could sustain 2,380 people based on the assumption that the water-use levels were near 100 gallons per person per day (gppd). According to the new draft, 150 gppd is a more accurate amount of daily water use. After recalculating Schmidt’s estimates, committee members projected the island’s north-end carrying capacity to be 1,587 people.
“The majority of the community wants to find out about the water first, before downzoning,” Thomas said. “The committee says ‘better safe than sorry,’ and wants to downzone before water studies because they’re afraid studies will find that there is even more water (than Schmidt estimated.)”
If new studies find that the island’s carrying capacity is greater than what Schmidt estimated, water wouldn’t be a valid reason to downzone or limit the growth rate, Thomas said.
“Some people have the notion that a water study answers everything, but if they knew anything about hydrology they would understand how complicated it is to form a water budget,” said Wynn Lee, islander and planning committee member. “We have objective data from the Department of Health that shows we have a water problem and the Growth Management Act requires that we take a ‘no risk approach.’”
Currently, the year-round population is more than 800 residents and in the summer the number nearly doubles, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.
Groundwater is the only source of water on the northern end. During the summer, many residential wells at this end run low, requiring residents to conserve water. Saltwater leaches into many shoreline wells and some wells have high levels of arsenic, according to the draft. Exposure to arsenic can cause cardiovascular disease, diabetes, nervous system damage and several forms of cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.
“My main concern on the island is water,” said Victor Armfield, Lummi Island Water Resource Team chairman. “People have to be careful where they are building because the water supply is not evenly spread on the island.”
Armfield, a 16-year island resident and member of the planning committee, is working together with Kent Nielson, island resident and part-time ecology professor at Western Washington University, to study runoff and groundwater levels on the island.
“We’re really only now beginning to get a picture of how much water is in the ground and where it is exactly,” Nielson said. “The Schmidt studies from 1979 were based on estimates. Now we’re getting quantifications of run-off and recharge.”
Although the water resource team is coming up with numbers of how much rainwater is staying on the island and how much is leaving, it remains unknown how many people the island’s water supply can sustain. Nielson estimates the north end of the island, starting at the base of Lummi Mountain, has enough groundwater to sustain nearly 3,000 people at 250 gppd.
“We’re trying to be as objective about this as possible,” Nielson said. “But we are finding what seems to be a significant amount of water on the island.”
Armfield and Nielson arrived at their estimate by measuring rainfall and calculating the number of gallons that fall on the island per year. Assuming 60 percent evaporates, they estimated 5 percent to 7 percent runs off the island and 33 percent to 35 percent stays in the ground. By estimating that 50 percent of the groundwater is recoverable, Nielson calculated the number of gallons of groundwater on the north end of the island and how many people that number could sustain. Nielson’s estimate is nearly 1,500 people more than what the committee estimated as a sustainable number of people on the north end.
Since the summer of 2001, hydrologist Robert Mitchell, a professor at Western Washington University, has been supervising graduate student Bill Sullivan’s thesis characterizing the hydrogeology of the northern half of Lummi Island.
“We’re just not at a point in our scientific study to predict how much water is available,” Mitchell said.
Sullivan’s research is expected to be finished in June 2004 and is aimed at providing the best available science for making planning decisions, Mitchell said. Mitchell stressed that their job is to characterize what is going on it terms of water resources, not to decide if there is enough water.
While the revised draft of the Subarea Plan addresses the importance of protecting the water on the island, many islanders were disappointed to see that it didn’t focus on the ferry. According to the Public Works Department, the ferry might not be able to handle much more growth.
“I think that the ferry is going to be the limiting factor on growth before water,” Nielson said.
During the summer, drivers sometimes wait in line for hours to catch a ferry. The ferry has been serving the island since 1962. In 2001, it transported more than 381,000 passengers.
According to the August 2001 Phase-One Report of a 20-year plan for the Lummi ferry service, the ferry system is near overload and will need to be replaced if island growth continues. The report also stated that a greater demand for vehicle passengers has increased the number of daily runs and created more wear on the ferry.
Typically, the ferry runs according to schedule, providing about 38 roundtrips each weekday and fewer than 20 on Saturdays and Sundays. During the morning and afternoon rush hours and on summer weekends, the lines have been so long that the 18-car-capacity ferry must make extra trips in order to get all of the vehicle passengers on and off the island.
“There are a lot more people coming and going these days,” ferry captain Fred Nyland said. “During the winter the ferry is alright, but in the summer lines get too long and people have to wait a while.”
Nyland, who has been piloting the ferry since 1980, said he would like to have a new, larger ferry. Yet, many islanders don’t want a new ferry because it would increase growth and access to the island.
“It’s hard to see the island change and grow,” islander Torrey Joyce said. “The ferry lines used to be a bunch of old pick-ups and beaters. Now you see all of these people with their BMWs and Mercedes.”
To avoid long ferry lines, Joyce leaves her car in the Gooseberry Point parking lot and walks on and off the ferry. Many islanders take the bus once on the mainland and others carpool. For people who can’t walk to the terminal and have to commute long distances to work, waiting in the ferry line is the only solution, Joyce said.
According to the 20-year plan, changes in ferry service will depend on what islanders’ projections of growth and transportation conclude in the revised Subarea Plan. Some alternatives include replacing the ferry with a larger boat, adding another ferry to run in tandem or improving park and ride possibilities. The alternative that is chosen will depend heavily on whether or not the new Subarea Plan is approved by the Whatcom County Council. If the plan is approved, its restrictions will permit less growth than the 1979 plan. If the growth rate slows on the island, it will be longer until the ferry issue needs to be resolved, Nielson said.
After three public hearings, the county planning commission brought public testimony to a close in February. The commission then held a workshop, closed to public opinion, to sort through the plan and come to an agreement on whether it needed changes.
“My concern is the fairness,” said Bob Wiesen, Whatcom County planning commissioner. “It appears that one group got a hold of the issue and then another group, who wanted to play, didn’t get to play.”
At the time of publication, this matter had neither been sent to the county council nor had the planning commission resolved it.
Growth continues to change the island, commuters wait in ferry lines and an increasing number of islanders take interest in the future of Lummi Island. For now, the rural character is intact and heavy winter rainfall is preventing wells from running low.
The curving roads are quiet this time of year and seldom lead to stop signs. Island homes seem to have blended into the landscape with time. And as the future brings change to Lummi Island, residents will continue to look after the island they call home.
