Last week, my colleagues wrote about the Whatcom County v. Hirst decision by the Washington Supreme Court. As a consequence of Hirst, if public water is not available to serve a development, a county must independently verify that water from wells is available before it issues permits, even for single-family or small-development construction that, in the past, relied on permit-exempt wells. No longer can a county assume an adequate water supply, even if the Department of Ecology has not closed the basin to new development. This decision could interject uncertainty, delay, and cost into the land use permitting process.