Comes now buffer guidance intended to “…assist local government planners…” in meeting requirements of the Shoreline Management Act and the Department’s SMP Guidelines, drawing on “a vast body of scientific knowledge”. Having spent several years reviewing some 4,000 references on buffering and related subjects, and several decades in the company of buffer research, I would like to be impressed by DOE’s present command of tidewater buffer science, informed by the agency’s antecedent attention to wetland buffer scholarship. I’m disappointed; here’s why.
Chapter 11 is “Vegetation Conservation, Buffers and Setbacks”, whose scientific foundation is, in my opinion, ill-derived and misleading to the point of absurdity.
Read more comments on Chapter 11 of the Department of Ecology’s new SMP Handbook by Donald F. Flora, PhD below.
DOE and, for that matter, the City and County make a fundamental error in logic and science by using percentages of pollutants removed by the size of buffers for agriculture and applying those buffer sizes to low-density residential uses, like Bainbridge.
One of the sources for buffer sizes are studies on feedlots and agriculture pollution. A feedlot with 136 cows that produce 37 lbs of nitrogen per acre per day needed a 70-foot buffer to remove 98%, and allow .74 lbs to enter the water. A residence with two people produces only .05 lbs per day, which goes into the septic or sewer system. It is not logical or science, as we know it, to assume that a residence needs a 70-ft. buffer to protect the Sound from nitrogen.
Gary Tripp
206-383-2245