my name is john karpinski i'm here on behalf of clark county natural resources council and comic con of the it's my first chance that first opportunity to be before you and thank you for that opportunity i'd like to reserve eight minutes for rebuttal of my years the washington department policy said you didn't need to get this permit and gave the clark county repeated extensions c c n r c sued said vo we the washington state agency didn't have the authority to expand an act of congress twenty two major exceptions and less than standards and they did in a way that really sort of jumbled things about made it very hard to track it took a six months to be able to send out the sixty day notice to track all of that permit requirements that in medium we can sue them for violating their permit the only in my opinion and it's just my opinion the only reason why that letter exists was to try to cover the counties whether they satisfied it or not because washington state doesn't have any procedures that says once you submit this here's here's we're going have a public hearing on this and there's no procedure whatsoever the only reason this letter exists is because there's lots of between the the county standards and what deal we did that we moved for summary judgment and let me just focus on one because i think it's the clearest one and it your strongest i'm going to give my strongest one and i'm alternative discharge locations you have to look at natural water storage you have to look at infiltration opportunities to get a lot of stuff ok what is the county ordinance say you cannot cause significant degradation of the hydro period so in other words all these things all the alternative is just you don't have to do the natural water storage you don't have to do or even look at the infiltration opportunities you don't have to do or look at it you don't have to maintain it means the balance in the natural vegetation and the county allows that to be removed i can go through a lot of these other things and maybe this is this is my new take a but to my organization and to protecting wetlands protecting water quality all of these things are important and the cumulative effect of all these changes ours are significant and that's why we're here and that's why we have concerns they simply ex there's a lot of issues there that we think need to be looked at the county says that they've done some other things that are better we think they're just actually wrong on that and we'll just rely on our briefing on that  in any of those cases we think you still have to reach the merits basically i've always considered deference as sort of a tie breaker and you know how close you have to be in order to to get to that point but even in analysis is is that word ambiguous in our mind equivalent is not ambiguous there's no real debate here whether it is or is that not and you don't grant that friends unless it is  some level to determine their own their own document and getting real close to the amount of time i reserve let me just finish this deference point trying to taking a little less reserving a little less time but here is the factors that we think that we should look at in out maybe it's a total coincidence but it looks a little fishy fishy to to to me the letter has no substance i mean normally you give deference to some sort of reason interpretation it basically i making another issue is that this same agency has already been found in violation of the clean water act for this same issue and you know i don't have a case on that now admit that but to me that's got to factor in there somewhere these people already said more or less we don't care if you market the term and now we're supposed to give them deference in terms of how the part of the permits done maybe you don't have a problem with that but i've got a problem with that and i think that's an issue  and that's a concern in terms of the deference but no matter what test you use and some of the cases talk about bold tests are you still reach the issue of is it plainly erroneous and we think cutting down twenty four trees where you're supposed to keep naturally vegetative buffers is plainly erroneous thank you very much and i was of the rest of my time problem potter represent our county in this matter before i get into the administrative law issue i think that there is a threshold issue as to whether the plaintiff millet's burden of producing competent evidence that the county violated the condition to establish any element on which it has the burden of proof specifically in this case the question is did the plaintiff produce evidence that the net effect of the differences between the county ordinance those differences but he did not produce one shred of evidence and the trial court and what the effect of those differences are receiving waters nothing examine the record there's nothing there opinion was that the differences pointed out by c c n r c do not affect the equivalency of the county's ordinances or the protection that they provide receiving waters the trial court correctly determined that there weren't factual disputes in this case in fact it was a little remarkable here's the record before the department of ecology it was the same record that was before the trial plant didn't produce competent evidence of what he fact is of those differences it did not prove a violation of the condition of the permit and summary judgment was properly granted to the county permits and to cite for violations of the permit so i think there are there is an express delegation to the state agency of us already and i i don't think that it's significant whether it's a state agency or a federal agency  i doing the bone of contention in this case is whether or not the county comply with the condition of its permit requiring it to adopt ordinances equivalent if you just don't think we'll agree on that or wh clean water act does not provide any definition of what is and then i reduce them to the maximum extent practicable rather the same section of thirteen forty two three it provides that the administrator or the factor right but the skidmore factors don't come into play where you're talking about an agency's interpretation of its own regulations and i think that would be if you do that public opinion this case  involving statutory interpretation which are chevron skidmore or no deference and regulatory interpretation where the agency interpretations that is entitle to controlling w just a one sentence you're good it does acknowledge that they review the challenges that they do acknowledge that there are differences but that those differences don't affect equivalency which is defined as the  here we have nothing i thought about russian river and how that is different the fact that there was a trial and that case and it's i think it's an important case because it doesn't solve an court said that that determination was entitled to controlling weight another case that i didn't cite i should of was area dictionary research treatment again that was a case involving whether or not zoning was subject to title to the a court look dead the department of justice this technical assistance manual specifically provide i think it did it provided you think that this case involves a statutory interpretation i think the chevron standard would be what you would apply because clearly this is a situation where congress did delegate to the agency  interstate basically what we wanted was our gain core our opportunity to say the spaniards were wrong and we didn't really get that we didn't get an analysis is a letter and what he had is this was the letter from the agency the only declaration that was part of was his declaration saying we got this letter so there was really no expert testimony  means of any kind now none whatsoever unless you want to consider the latter submitted to be an expert comment but it but it wasn't even a formal declaration it was simply a declaration nothing can be that i do way i look at it and again maybe i'm wrong and this is like a facial challenge you compare the two on its face is it equivalent is it not equivalent and i think the re hoc rationalization and we think that that's simply it was plainly erroneous and in any case to go ahead and say that these big changes coming down twenty