The county approved the Critical Aquifer Recharge Area Ordinance on Nov. 18, a Critical Area Ordinance that is as difficult to understand as it is to pronounce.

I am a professional hydrogeologist, and I support aquifer protection, but I don’t support sloppy legislation that contains mistakes, especially when those mistakes may be used by unqualified people in irresponsible enforcement actions.

I won’t even get into the hard stuff. Let’s keep it simple. The definition of an aquifer is wrong. It is not consistent with federal or state definitions, nor accepted professional definitions. Based on the definition, every clay layer in the county is an aquifer. Heck, even wet cement probably meets the definition.

The next time the stormwater people come after you for impervious surfaces, tell them they’re wrong. You’ve probably got aquifers instead, since virtually everything has some permeability; just point them to the county definition.

And the ordinance also makes some statements that are just plain foolish, such as saying that the aquifers of San Juan County are “sole source aquifers.” While that statement may seem innocuous, it’s an eye-popping error to me.

Sole source aquifers are a federal designation granted after petitioning the EPA. Several islands in Puget Sound have done exactly that, but not San Juan County. We found the easy way out. We just proclaimed ourselves to be a sole source aquifer in the CARA without ever doing the legwork. In reality, the county can no more declare itself to be a sole source aquifer than it can declare itself to be a Nobel Prize winner.

I suppose one benefit of the ordinance is that it is no more confused than usual. I guess its primary illusory benefit is that it checked the box for keeping the ever-present bogeyman (aka the Growth Management Act) off our backs for the time being. But it didn’t actually do the hard work of aquifer protection, and the language is sloppy and unprofessional. Who knows how it will be misinterpreted by unqualified people at the county when it comes to enforcement actions?

The county has become a bully on so many everyday matters for the average homeowner. My concern is that this flawed CARA tool will be used in new ways to erroneously beat people up without ever addressing authentic environmental problems. The county has latched onto enforcement as its raison d’être.

In the same council meeting, there was a briefing about the Puget Sound Partnership, which is the new State agency responsible for cleaning up Puget Sound by 2020. It is impressive and hopeful stuff. It is visionary. During the briefing, County Administrator Pete Rose had only one question for the executive director. Will there be money for monitoring and enforcement?

We’re smack in the middle (literally and figuratively) of the grandest estuary protection and restoration initiative in our nation’s history. Does our county administrator ask for money for local education programs or outreach? Does our administrator ask for money for technical assistance programs for homeowners? Nope. He asks whether there will be money available to watch people so we can beat them up.

Not good. Not good at all. Give the county a vision, and they’ll give you an enforcement order. If that’s the approach of county government, then the local environmental battles here will only get worse, not because people hate the environment, but because people hate the approach the county takes to governance.