NORTH BEND – Freedom from the building moratorium in North Bend looks to be at least another six months away. Give or take 50 years, if you listen to the state Department of Ecology.

The North Bend City Council discussed an ordinance that would allow construction only at existing properties located within the neighboring Sallal Water District at a work study following its Tuesday, April 2, meeting.

The ordinance would further prolong the building moratorium the city has been under since April 1999, when it realized it was using more water than it had rights to.

Since then, the city has been trying to find a solution to the problem that has essentially stopped any growth from occurring within city limits. North Bend revisits the moratorium every six months to make changes and discuss how the city is progressing in solving the problem.

The last ordinance, passed in October 2001, allowed development of any property that could secure water rights from the Sallal Water District.

Only a handful of properties along North Bend Way fall into the Sallal district. They include Alpine Fitness, NAPA Auto Parts, Crystal Rental and Equipment and Transmissions Plus.

The ordinance discussed at the latest council work study would allow development to occur, but it would be limited to construction that didn’t increase the amount of water used.

Council members asked City Attorney Mike Kenyon to draw up additional language that would protect already vested projects that have secured Sallal water rights, such as the A.F. Evans apartment project planned for the area.

Although the ordinance would still prohibit most growth, some council members were cautious about letting growth go beyond what they think the city is capable of handling.

“I don’t like to see us poking holes in the moratorium,” Councilman Jack Webber said. “We need to update the infrastructure before we start building again.”

Options for a long-term solution to the moratorium are still in the works. North Bend City Administrator Phil Messina said officials will meet with the Department of Ecology (DOE), which is responsible for handing out water permits, in the coming weeks to discuss plans for obtaining more water rights, including the possibility of using a well the city dug that has been potentially operational since 1995.

But Jerry Liszak, a hydrogeologist with the DOE water resources program, said the well would probably be denied approval since it would take too much water out of the Snoqualmie River. The DOE requires that rivers meet a minimum-flow requirement at least 114 days a year in order to take water out of their basins, which rules out the Snoqualmie River.

Messina said North Bend is developing a plan, however, that would put water back into the river as well as take it out. Water could be drawn from the Snoqualmie River during the high-flow winter months and stored in the well, so the city wouldn’t have to take out as much during the low-flow summer months.

Even if the city could come up with a plan that would pass the DOE, the cost to have it approved would be high. A 70-percent staff reduction in 1994 drastically cut the amount of permits the DOE could process.

Liszak said the department does not have the staff to process new water-rights permits, only changes to existing ones.

“It could be 50 years before anyone gets any new water rights,” Liszak said.

Since North Bend needs a new water-rights permit, it would have to pay the DOE to contract someone to process the permit for the city. In the past, some municipalities that faced a similar dilemma were able to share the fee with others that wanted to use the same water supply.

But since North Bend is the only one in the queue for the well it wants to use, no one is likely to help with the payment anytime soon.

Should that fail, there are few prospects left. Seasonal withdrawal from the well could be approved in the winter months, but water would then have to be turned off in the summer. Some water rights could be secured if a large enough business left the city, thereby freeing up some water for another developer.

Councilman Ed Carlson said during the work study that Sallal will probably not give any more water than it has already agreed to with the properties in its district.

Dan Swenson, section superintendent for the water resources program in DOE’s northwest regional office, believes that another city’s water may be the best hope for North Bend.

“Seattle has a lot of water rights,” Swenson said. “The closest one they [North Bend] could tap into is Seattle’s, but they are a long way away from it.”

The ordinance extending the building moratorium will have a second reading at the next City Council meeting on Tuesday, April 15.