Well System Proposal Pt 1
From the Ag Information Network, this is today’s Fruit Grower Report. The Washington State Department of Health is proposing a new regulation for shared wells that could leave many farmworkers without affordable on-farm housing.
Save Family Farming’s Dillon Honcoop says the proposal would require farmers to follow a costly, complicated, and unnecessary approval process every five years …
HONCOOP … “The fear is a lot of farms may say, sorry, this is just too much for us to deal with. We aren’t going to be able to provide housing anymore. We can’t afford to do that. It’s already expensive for us to provide that as a benefit.”
This comes, Honcoop says without any input from the farming community …
HONCOOP … “We’re saying that’s what needs to be called out and talked about here. You know, we can talk about all these other good ideas, but if ultimately results in less affordable housing access for the farmworker community, it’s not a good move and we need to take another look at the right way to go about this.”
Honcoop says it may not seem like a big deal, but …
HONCOOP … “To someone who doesn’t know what the background is, it just seems like a small administrative level change and I think a lot of people would just say, no big deal. But this represents another example of someone in the bureaucracy going ahead and making a change that appears small that actually has sweeping consequences for entire populations of folks.”
Tune in tomorrow for more on this proposed regulation for shared wells.
