Background on DRMT members
The following are profiles on Dungeness River Management Team members:
“It’s most important function is a forum for discussion of issues that impact the Dungeness River watershed,” Tharinger said, “a place where both government agencies and citizens get together and address the issues affecting the watershed.”
Tharinger became chairman of the team when he became District 1 commissioner in last November’s election; he was involved with it earlier as a member of the county planning commission.
Tharinger says that as a riverfront property owner himself, he is sensitive to development issues facing other property owners in the wake of ever-tightening land-use regulations.
Seiter has been with the team since its 1988 inception.
“My long history with the group has provided a continuity within the group,” Seiter said, referring ng to the team’s changing composition over the years.
Representatives leave, other groups come in, and the consistent tribal presence provides the team with a strong institutional memory.
Moore has been on the team since 1995. Moore owns 32 acres of property, much of it river and creek frontage, near the Hurd Creek hatchery on Fasola Road. A retired Los Angeles firefighter, Moore moved to Sequim 11 years ago.
“When I moved here, it was just water to me,” he said. Moore has worked extensively to improve his personal part of the river by stabilizing its banks, recently adding four “woody debris” jams to improve salmon habitat. Moore admits the process of river restoration is slow but said he has faith in its eventual recovery.
“It’s just a slow process,” Moore said. “But it’s gonna get done eventually.”
Mike Jeldness, 54, Dungeness Agricultural Water Users Association coordinator and Agnew Irrigation District manager
As Water Users Association coordinator, Jeldness represents the association’s four irrigation districts and three water companies. Jeldness is also manager of the Agnew Irrigation District, the largest of the watershed’s four irrigation districts.
“I’m like a liaison between all of the (water) districts and other governmental agencies,” Jeldness said. In his role as coordinator, Jeldness monitors all the water taken out of the river by irrigation companies, and produces the annual water-users report agreed upon in the Dungeness-Quilcene Plan. Jeldness has served on the team since 1996. He moved to Sequim in 1969 and has worked with the Agnew Irrigation District for 22 years.
“My role on the team is basically as an advocate for sport fisheries,” Blendermann said. “We are part of and support projects and approaches that will increase the number of fish in the river, at the same time maintaining its cultural and environmental values. É Sport fishermen would like to have fish to catch.”
Blendermann retired in 1989 from the aerospace industry in California and is vice president of the North Olympic Salmon Coalition, a volunteer organization devoted to salmon enhancement.
Randy Johnson, 48, Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist
Johnson, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife habitat biologist, has been with the team from its late 1980s beginning. “I’ve seen enormous strides made in water conservation,” Johnson said. “There are some really good people working enormously hard to get what they need and make sure there’s still a lot of water left in the river for fish.”
Johnson has worked with the department for 24 years, 23 on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Virginia Clark, 71, Watershed/Dungeness-Quilcene Planning
Clark has been on the team since its reactivation in 1995 but began her involvement with watershed studies as a member of the group that wrote the Dungeness-Quilcene water management plan in 1994. Clark, who holds a doctorate in biostatistics, retired as a professor of biostatistics from the school of public health at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Biostatistics, Clark explained, involve the “application of statistics to life forms. É the effect of smog, for instance, on respiratory diseases.” Clark said she represents the average resident. “I’m trying to represent the broad citizenship,” Clark said.
Cynthia Nelson, 48, watershed planning coordinator, state Department of Ecology
Nelson represents the state Department of Ecology on the team. Nelson joined in 1995, shortly after it was reactivated. “I’m the lead of the state caucus for the watershed planning effort funded by HB 2514. É I’m the bureaucrat,” Nelson said.
Nelson describes herself as the link between the state and the team; she has worked for Ecology for 16 years and lives in Olympia.
John Beitzel, 61, Sequim City Council member
Beitzel is the team’s newest member. A retired geophysicist, Beitzel replaced city council member Trina Berg on the team in July. Beitzel said he is there to look after the city of Sequim’s interests in the watershed.
“Salmon, land use, economic development,” Beitzel said, “É all this stuff ties together.”
Bell Creek, for instance, lies almost entirely within city limits and is historically among the first to flood in severe storms. Beitzel retired to Sequim five years ago from Houston.
Eloise Kailin, 81, president, Protect the Peninsula’s Future
The Washington Environmental Council named Kailin a hero last November for her efforts to protect the environment. Kailin, a retired physician, has been involved with the team off and on since its inception, but as for specifics, “time gets blurred,” Kailin said. “I have attended a majority of the DRMT meetings since their inception in 1988,” Kailin said.
She has been a member of the Peninsula conservation group since 1973, and brings her extensive experience as a steward of the environment to every meeting.
“My particular charge is the environmentalist’s view,” Kailin said, explaining that her concerns extend beyond fisheries management to the ecosystem as a whole: wetlands, estuaries, salmon and stream flows.
Kailin is perhaps best known for her efforts in persuading the city of Sequim, with a law suit, to upgrade its wastewater treatment facilities. The water reclamation facility on Blake Avenue is the result of that battle.
Les Sandison, 83, North Olympic Land Trust representative
“My primary interest is the propagation of fish,” Sandison said, “to get the salmon going again.”
The land trust has been actively involved in the acquisition of river property, both through the purchase of development rights, the purchase of conservation easements, and the outright purchase of land itself. The land then goes into a trust, which is legally bound to preserve the land “in perpetuity,” or indefinitely.
“Our group has acquired a lot of land along the river,” Sandison said. Sandison grew up in Port Angeles, where he lives today. He retired from the bakery business nearly two decades ago. His focus on the team is restoring the wild salmon runs. “Years ago,” Sandison said, “we could have walked across the river on the backs of humpies.”
from Sequim Gazette
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