I for one don’t want to be tossed under the astronomically expensive regulations — up to $18 billion in new expenditures between now and 2020 according to a Jan. 15 Seattle P.I. article — of a regional governance entity controlled by the dictates of what’s best for the fish.

But that’s exactly what you and I within the boundaries of Water Resource Inventory Areas are scheduled for under the Puget Sound Partnership legislation found in House Bill 1374 currently under consideration in at least three separate House committees in Olympia. (Order HB 1374 through the toll-free legislative hotline, 1-800-562-6000. Read all 21 pages but pay special attention to pages 3 through 5 and 8 through 13.)

It’s not only the saltwater areas, plus their uplands, that come under this all-powerful, seven member “leadership council” appointed by the governor, but also all the freshwater rivers and streams and their uplands that lose their local control and fall under this new regional governance.

The leadership council also serves as “the regional recovery organization . . . for Puget Sound salmon recovery.” What are the odds that this council, appointed by an environmentalist governor formerly the head of the Department of Ecology, will enact the maximum critical areas buffers hundreds of feet wide along with connecting corridors, such as King County’s critical areas ordinance?

Call your legislators and whatever groups you belong to, Farm Bureau, Grange, Rotary, etc., to lobby against and kill HB 1374. We already have protective new statewide stormwater runoff regulations and strong shorelines management and growth management rules that at least ostensibly leave control with local government. We neither need nor want regional governance.

Maxine Keesling

Woodinville