A Seattle law firm, leading a state-funded study, tentatively recommends Washington use eminent domain to forcibly buy farmland if voluntary programs fail to meet goals for enlarging riparian buffers.

The law firm, Plauche & Carr, included eminent domain in a preliminary report on encouraging and requiring landowners to maintain strips of vegetation along waterways to filter pollutants and shade salmon-bearing waters.

A final report is due June 30. The recommendation will be refined, but will keep eminent domain under consideration, Peter Dykstra, a partner in Plauche & Carr, said.

The law firm convened a “roundtable” with tribes, environmentalists and farm groups to help develop the recommendations.

“I think what we’re trying to do is bring a broad group of people together and in doing that not everyone is going to get what they want and some folks will get things they don’t like,” Dykstra said.

Lawmakers appropriated $554,000 for the study and have queued up another $775,000 for Plauche & Carr to study implementing the recommendations.

Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Kevin Van De Wege said the report should drop eminent domain as an option to conserve riparian habitat.

The threat of eminent domain will weigh down volunteer programs, said Van De Wege, a candidate for public lands commissioner.

“I think those words are lightning rods for farmers,” he said. “That’s a really difficult direction to go in. A lot of people are really sensitive to those two words.”

The final report due at the end of this month could put off to the next study a firm recommendation on compulsory measures. Other options include building moratoriums and mandatory buffers.

In Minnesota, landowners must maintain 50-foot wide buffers along lakes, rivers and streams, and 16.5-foot buffers around ditches. The buffers are intended to filter out pollution and cool fish-bearing waterways.

Lawmakers rejected Gov. Jay Inslee’s bill in 2022 to require buffers on farmland. Inslee blamed the defeat on indifference to salmon. Some lawmakers said the governor should have tested public support first.

The roundtable was directed by the Legislature to come up with voluntary and regulatory actions to improve salmon recovery through restoration along rivers and streams, a governor’s spokesman said in an email.

Skagit County farmer Jason Vander Kooy said taking farmland out of production won’t go far in recovering salmon. “It’s frustrating that we have to fight year after year to protect farmland,” he said.

“We don’t have to make the choice between farmland and fish recovery. It’s not necessary. We can have both,” Vander Kooy said.

The preliminary report recommends setting targets for buffer widths, acres of vegetation and miles of protected banks. If a watershed doesn’t meet the targets, taking as much land as needed to meet the targets could be the next step.