OLYMPIA — Legislation advanced by Gov. Jay Inslee and Washington tribes calls for mandatory riparian buffers, with $10,000-a-day fines for landowners who don’t plant trees along creeks and rivers crossing their property.

Senate Bill 5727 directs the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to set and enforce “riparian management zones.” The sponsor, Sen. Christine Rolfes, D-Kitsap County, called the legislation a “Marshall Plan” to save salmon.

“This is kind of our moment. I hope people will engage constructively,” she said Friday. “It’s a critical issue for the entire state to talk about what we need to do for salmon.”

Farm groups said the buffers could take a lot of farmland out of production.

“It’s pretty strident,” Washington Farm Bureau director of government relations Tom Davis said. “This can and will likely put some farmers out of business.”

Inslee and tribal officials broadly outlined the proposal at a media event in December. At the request of the governor, Rolfes filed the bill this week detailing what the governor and tribes agreed upon.

Rep. Debra Lekanoff, D-Skagit County, has introduced the legislation in the House.

“The bill works to protect what’s left and restore what we can to ensure we help salmon recover and be more resilient to climate change and warming stream temperatures,” a governor’s spokeswoman said in an email.

The top-ranking Republican on the Senate and Natural Resources, Judy Warnick of Moses Lake, said she learned about the bill after it was introduced.

“Apparently, nobody knew it was coming,” she said. “A bill this big needs all the stakeholders involved. There will be lot of concern about the taking of private lands.”

Titled the Lorraine Loomis Act, after the late chairwoman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, the bill calls for buffers as wide as the height of old-growth trees.

Old-growth conifer canopies range from 100 feet to 240 feet in Washington, according to a Fish and Wildlife report, which the bill designates as “the best available science.”

Fish and Wildlife habitat program director Margen Carlson said the buffer could be smaller in some areas where trees grow 75 to 80 feet. The department has not estimated how much land would be converted into riparian zones, she said.

The bill would not apply to parks or land with buildings, roads or trails. If a buffer would take up more than half the land, the parcel would be exempt.

Fish and Wildlife would give landowners who don’t plant buffers a list of “corrective actions.” A landowner couldn’t remove or degrade a riparian management zone.

In addition to fines by Fish and Wildlife, the Department of Ecology could levy another penalty to landowners for water-quality violations, according to the bill.

Farmers who lost productive land would be eligible for compensation at least equal to USDA’s conservation easement program for up to 10 years, according to the bill.

The land would have to be taken out of farm production forever.

“They give you 10 years to get out of Washington,” Washington State Dairy Federation policy director Jay Gordon said.

“This will appeal to absentee landowners, but not people who have to make a living or who have employees who have to make a living from the land,” he said.

Planting buffers would cost landowners, though the state would pay at least 70% of the cost for mulch, fertilizer, seeds, labor, trees, fences and other expenses, the bill states.

The state would help pay maintenance costs, but for only five years.

The state Growth Management Act currently requires cities and counties to protect fish habitat. As an option to strict GMA rules, many counties embrace the Voluntary Stewardship Program.

Farm groups also support VSP, which helps fish though conservation projects by willing landowners. Mandatory buffers will “blow up” VSP, farm groups warn.

Rolfes said she supports VSP. “That’s an important program that works. The intent of the bill is not to undermine that,” she said.