Island County is finally nearing the end of the years’ long controversy over farming near environmentally-sensitive areas such as streams and wetlands.

Island County commissioners approved new rules covering farming near “sensitive areas” earlier this week, and the board will adopt “findings of fact” that lay out the legal basis for the new rules on May 1.

The county was under a court order to revisit the rules after the Whidbey Environmental Action Network challenged the county’s regulations on farming near critical areas in the late 1990s.

The WEAN challenge has wound its way through a growth board review, through Superior Court, and the Court of Appeals. Island County lost, and was facing a May 1 deadline to fix its regulations.

Controversy has followed the rule revision since the big push came last year to resolve the case.

While WEAN has complained that the new regulations do not go far enough to protect the environment, farmers have repeatedly said that additional regulation of their agriculture operations will push them out of business.

Under the new rules, all farmers will have to complete farm plans; landowners with agriculture operations that have been defined as “medium” or “high intensity” must complete custom plans. During earlier public hearings, farmers bitterly opposed the requirement for farm plans.

That requirement, however, was subject to a twist late in the game.

After WEAN requested farm plans from the Whidbey Island Conservation District under the state’s open records law, farmers said that their privacy was being violated and lawmakers in Olympia voted to make farm plans exempt from disclosure.

WEAN, however, had already received the farm plans and found that many plans did not include requirements that would put no-go zones around streams and wetlands.

Earlier this week, Keith Dearborn, the county’s consultant on the revision to the farm rules, said the county would now not be able to review the farm plans it was requiring farmers to complete.

“This isn’t something we created,” he said.

Even so, Dearborn said the county had two safeguards put into place. The conservation district will submit a report to the county detailing the farmers who have completed a farm plan. And the district will also file a second report that will say how the farm plans are being followed.

“We don’t know what else we can do under the circumstances,” he said.

“I just simply don’t see what more we can do here.”

Under the new rules, farmers will have 18 months to complete custom farm plans.

County officials said they will be able to see if farm plans are protecting the environment once monitoring efforts begin under the county’s new surface water monitoring program.

County commissioners unanimously adopted the program Monday; baseline monitoring of watersheds begins this year. The monitoring effort will cover about 42 percent of the watersheds in Island County over the next five years.

Dearborn said the new rules — which require farmers to apply “best management practices” to their agriculture operations — will cover farms that have been in operation for years; new farmers will have to abide by stricter rules within the county’s “sensitive areas ordinance.”

“We believe the water quality monitoring program will provide the indicator of whether agricultural practices are in fact working or not,” Dearborn said.

Education is key, he said.

“People are going to do the right thing if they know what that is,” Dearborn said. “Owners of property in Island County who have horticulture or livestock are dedicated to good husbandry.”

The county’s revised rules were the best that could be expected, he said, given the state law that keeps farm plans secret.

“I just simply don’t see what more we can do here.”

“We are talking about people who have been practicing farming in this county, in some cases, for generations,” Dearborn said. “And they are at least as best we can tell, for the most part, the reason we have rural character in this county. they are our rural character. And they are a character that people prize and want to see stay in place.”

Erickson, though, said WEAN’s review of farm plans showed that few farms had plans that included provisions to protect streams and wetlands with adequate buffers.

He doubted the new regulations would work.

“If the plans are secret, nobody will know,” Erickson said.

“How will the county know if the plans are being followed?” Erickson asked.

“This is secret government. It doesn’t work,” he added.

A growth management hearings board is scheduled to review the county’s rewrite of its farm rules on June 24.