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The Department of Health and the Department of Ecology have updated our Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and Joint Review Procedures for coordinating and reviewing water system planning and engineering documents. The MOU and Joint Review Procedures outline the roles and responsibilities the agencies have in this process.
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Department of Health administers the water system planning program and makes the determination on the status of a submitted water system plan.
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Department of Ecology reviews water rights associated with the water system during the planning process. Ecology provides assistance to all water right holders.
While the requirements for plan review haven’t changed since the last amendment in 2007, we have updated the review process to be more efficient and effective. The new procedures promote consistency, transparency, and improved communication. These updates also reflect our commitment to building common understanding with water systems about their water rights. This helps ensure safe, reliable drinking water while protecting senior water rights and the environment.
The MOU describes the general roles and responsibilities of each agency in this process, while the Joint Review Procedures detail agency implementation. Together, these documents describe the procedures that the two agencies will use to review and process these plans, but they are not intended to describe policy.
These documents are bi-lateral agreements between the two agencies. Therefore, we are not soliciting public comment on these documents. However, we are always open to hearing feedback on ways we can improve our processes. Going forward, we plan to update these procedures more frequently to ensure continual process improvement.
You can read the final documents using the following links.
Feel free to reach out to John Freitag with any questions.
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