By Cindy Beckett
EPA certified Watershed Manager, WSU certified Master Watershed Steward

Why are we still losing our water resources in this county?  “They” claim we must build housing fast enough to meet the need – to be precise, our share of the claimed 1.1 million homes the State says we (all counties together) need to add in the next 20 years, according to the WA Department of Commerce. “The department has created new tools for localities to use as plans are updated over the next few years, to identify how much housing is needed for each bracket and to ensure sufficient emergency housing.” 

Well, let’s see.  How many counties are in the entire State of WA? The U.S. State of Washington has 39 counties.  My math comes out to 25,153 housing units per county ***divided by the next 20 years! That’s 1,257 per year per each county, (25,153 per county divided by 10 cities in Pierce = 2515 then divided by 20 years = 1257 per year), then divided by the below list of cities in Pierce.  Should be 1257 divided by 10 cities = 125.7 houses per year per city in the entire county!!!!. 

How is building 125.7 houses per year in each of the 39 counties, including Pierce, adding up to what they are doing here?  Or even match the “forecasted” numbers from the state office of commerce?  It doesn’t match at all. This poses the question, why all this development push here because “they” claim we HAVE to take all of this?  Who is “they”??  If the entire of Pierce County needs to take only 125.7 housing units per year, what’s going on here?  Especially when this county cannot even guarantee to continue to provide water or any services to all these houses.

Most of our aquifers and their recharge areas are destroyed or seriously damaged and overdrawn already, 100% caused from developing on top of their recharge areas, even though the LAW forbids that and even though the GMA itself forbids it.  The question remains – why?  Why are all our irreplaceable water resources being destroyed just for the sake of building more housing than we are even required to build while we still have no services to support all this population, and few jobs here so most have to go outside the county for work? 

Very little attention has gone to economic development here, nearly all on housing and nothing else.  We have nowhere near enough police, public transportation, poor roads, few services.  That’s not how it’s supposed to be done, even according to this GMA.  It is not a law to do this.  The growth management act is not an enforceable law.  No one goes to jail for not building on every acre of land across the entire county no matter what resources of the people are forever lost including our irreplaceable water supply.  

Do we really have to wait until all water resources of the people are forever lost before we finally firmly say stop doing this?  Remember that this “act” was in fact written by the “master” builders, as was confirmed to me by the White House.  It is not a Federal law.  There is, however, a Federal law to protect our water resources.  Pierce County is just one county in the U.S. state of Washington.

As of the 2020 census, the Pierce County population was 921,130, up from 795,225 in 2010, making it the second-most populous county in Washington, behind King County, and the 60th-most populous in the United States. The county seat and largest city is Tacoma. 

There are 10 cities in Pierce County.  They should be taking this development, not our underserved UGA and not at the expense of our irreplaceable water supply!  Those cities are…Tacoma, Auburn, Lakewood, Puyallup, University Place, Bonney Lake, Enumclaw, Edgewood, Fife & Sumner.  They are supposed to take their equal share of this “projected” development, not put a huge share of it into the vastly underserved Pierce UGA, and absolutely not at the loss of our irreplaceable water resources.