Raising taxes to save the salmon?

After more than a decade of costly, bitter legal battles, elected leaders in Skagit County have a new idea for saving salmon: raising property taxes.

A proposal announced Thursday and headed to the county's voters in the summer would cost the average homeowner about $25 a year. The county commissioners say raising public money to buy land from willing sellers would not only preserve land along the river and streams and boost salmon survival, but it might even help endangered orcas.

It's an approach that might protect thousands of acres as buffers for fish along Puget Sound's premier salmon bedroom, the Skagit River.

"There is nothing like this in Washington," said County Commissioner Don Munks.

But Skagit County isn't just salmon country. It's also farm country. And it's Indian Country. And so far, farmers, and some tribal leaders, are far from pleased with the idea.

"That is like a robber asking someone to voluntarily hand over the money," said Dan Wood, director of local affairs for the Washington Farm Bureau.

A voluntary approach

Cold and fresh, the Skagit flows from the Cascades in British Columbia, delivering more than 20 percent of the fresh water that enters Puget Sound. The river is home to all five species of salmon. It's so vital that some scientists have suggested that money now spent trying to save dying urban streams might better be diverted here.

Preserving land for buffers as wide as 150 feet could help Puget Sound chinook, a threatened species. And that, in turn, might help endangered orcas, which depend on chinook salmon for their primary food.

"If Puget Sound chinook and the orca are going to be saved, it's going to start here in Skagit County," said Ken Dahlstedt, a county commissioner.

The proposal, called the Salmon Heritage Program, would be funded with a property-tax levy of 10 cents per $1,000 of assessed value ($25 on a $250,000 house), with a minimum of $1 million a year going into the program.

The county would use the money to buy land for the buffers from landowners willing to sell for fair market value.

In all, the county hopes to preserve about 5,400 acres in the Skagit and Samish watersheds by the end of 2012. That could include 1,000 acres of farmland that would be taken out of production.

Buffers would range in size, depending on their locations. Landowners could decide to fence the buffers, control noxious weeds or plant trees before selling, with a higher value paid for the property if it is enhanced for salmon. If the landowner doesn't make those improvements, the county would.

Salmon need cool, clean water, and preservation of land alongside rivers and streams, called riparian zones, is important to their survival. But Skagit County has resisted creating mandatory buffer zones to protect water quality and still seeks to avoid them, through its proposed voluntary program.

The program is also intended to end more than 10 years of litigation among the county, tribes, environmentalists and others over buffer zones.

"We got tired of paying the lawyers," County Commissioner Sharon Dillon said.

"And we are trying to take Skagit County's fate into our own hands."

Farmers, tribes unconvinced

But farmers wield a lot of clout in Skagit County, where agriculture is still one of the most important businesses. The program is intended to meet them halfway in creating buffers by offering a market-based approach.

Whether the proposal, headed to a countywide vote this summer, will ever make it into law is yet to be seen. The program is already taking fire from farmers who say it goes too far, and tribal leaders who say it doesn't go far enough.

Farm interests take particular umbrage at language that would make the buffers mandatory in areas where preservation goals aren't met through voluntary sales.

"Skagit farmers are very upset because this is setting a model for other jurisdictions," said Wood, of the Farm Bureau.

"This is bad not only for Skagit but for the whole state. It's not good policy to threaten to take land from farmers."

But that same mandatory-buffer language could be killed by future county commissioners. And that's the rub for some, including the Swinomish Tribe, which has treaty rights to Skagit salmon. The tribe has been battling the county in court on behalf of the salmon for more than a decade.

"They got it half right," said Marty Loesch, spokesman for the tribe, near La Conner. Rather than voluntary measures, the tribe wants mandatory buffers now.

"If they are really going to do this," Loesch said, "why not just do it?"

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com