It’s no surprise that during a dry summer, people are talking about water issues, including many that involve the farming community.

Ben Tindall, Save Family Farming’s Executive Director, joins Dillon for an update on the advocacy work the organization is focused on currently and into coming weeks and months.

State leaders have said they would provide support for the 30,000-plus water users it has sued in its Whatcom water rights adjudication court case as they navigate the extremely complex issues the state has forced on them.

But Bill Clarke, Olympia-based attorney for the Ag Water Board of Whatcom County, tells Dillon that various aspects of the funding to support water users and the court processhave been either reduced, cut entirely, or vetoed by Gov. Bob Ferguson.

This, despite the fact that the state continues to fully fund the other side of the lawsuit: its own Washington State Department of Ecology.

State leaders are going back on decades-old agreements with farm foresters with a troubling new plan that would force larger forest buffers on streams without fish.

The proposal has farmers worried they could be targeted with similar stringent rules, forcing massive amounts of farmland out of production statewide.

Tom Westergreen, a small family forest owner in Whatcom County, along with Washington Farm Forestry Association Executive Director Elaine Oneil join Dillon with details on the scientifically-unsupported plan and the devastating blow it would deal to family foresters.