By Dan Richman

drichman@whidbeynewsgroup.com

The county’s Clean Water Utility, a program charged with addressing concerns over water quantity and quality, last year complied with the law creating it and underspent its budget, said a watchdog group’s report set for release today.

“After review, (we are) pleased to advise the citizens that the utility is in compliance with the ordinance,” wrote the Water Resources Advisory Committee in a four-page report.

But it added that it is concerned some projects are slipping behind expected completion dates.

The 12-person committee is a volunteer citizens’ group in charge of supervising the county’s water-resources program.

Among its responsibilities is monitoring the utility.

The county released the utility’s 2014 expenditures only in April, and reviewing them took time, the committee said. The utility collected $1,467,000 in fees during 2014 and had $351,000 unspent from 2013, so it had a total of $1,818,000 to spend in 2014, the report said. It actually spent $1,345,915 during the year, leaving $472,085 unspent.

The main reason it failed to spend its total budget is that “public works flood-control projects were not fully implemented,” the report said.

Flood-control projects make up Phase 1 of the utility’s plan. These are expensive and complex, the report noted. Phase 2 will consist of watershed planning, low-impact development and shellfish project, the committee said.

The committee “is concerned that because the accomplishments of the utility’s Phase 1 are behind schedule, Phase 2 continues to slip into the future,” it said in the report.

“Phase 1 has taken quite a bit longer than expected to complete,” said Matt Zupich, a county water-quality specialist who provides staff support to the committee. “There are a lot of shoreline permits to acquire, and those are hard to come by.”

There actually is no schedule dictating when Phase 1 should yield to Phase 2, acknowledged Coupeville’s Don Lee, the committee’s co-chairman.

“There is no timetable, but our committee assumed it wouldn’t take this long,” Lee said. “It has been five years since the utility was created.”

The utility went under-budget in several areas. It was budgeted to spend $1,017,000 on flood-control programs but spent only $633,968. It was supposed to spend $150,000 on groundwater projects but spent only $149,940. It was budgeted to spend $230,000 on surface-water projects but spent only $220,907. It was budgeted to spend $222,000 on sewage-system maintenance and operation but spent only $214,289.

The utility went over-budget in only one area. It was supposed to spent $70,000 on code-compliance issues in environmentally sensitive areas, but it spent $105,983.

The Board of Island County Commissioners created the utility in December 2010. It collects fees from property owners to fund its water-related projects. Most of the money it collects — 42 percent — is allocated toward stormwater drainage projects, according to its web site. Another 13 percent goes toward ensuring septic systems are constructed and maintained properly.

Some 12 percent goes toward monitoring the quality of surface water (water on the earth’s surface) and groundwater (water under the surface).

Lesser percentages are allocated toward code compliance in sensitive areas, shellfish protection, salmon recovery, low-impact development and watershed planning.

The advisory committee plans to perform a similar review of this year’s utility spending and accomplishments, it said.