Welcome to the Floating Homes Association

Over 100 people turned out for the 47th FHA annual meeting on April 22nd at the Puget Sound Yacht Club on the north shore of Lake Union.

On 4/2/09 the FHA received a policy paper from DPD regarding floating homes, accompanied by a matrix or table which attempted to combine conforming and non-conforming floating homes regulations.  Bob Bowman and the SMP Workgroup responded with the following comments on 4/21/09.  See the our SMP Revsion page for more information

I want to thank Maggie and the DPD staff for meeting with Floating Homes Association representatives on two occasions to give us their initial proposals and to listen to our issues and concerns. From DPD's Policy Paper it is clear that they responded to some of FHA's concerns, particularly the proposed requirements to reduce float size at time of replacement and to create standards to regulate the maintenance of floats. At the same time, FHA still has serious concerns about several proposed regulatory changes and some specific language in the Policy Paper. We strongly oppose the proposal to combine the conforming and non-conforming regulations and ask that Table 1 be withdrawn. I will provide feedback on our specific concerns below.

Sharing an Urban Lake

Introduction

James Fallows, in his article Saving Salmon, or Seattle? pointed out that people who are interested in protecting the salmon use different goals to describe that protection. "…At least three different goals: protecting the fish themselves… against threats to their existence as a species; maintaining fisheries, whose purpose is to allow fishermen to catch and people to eat the fish; and preserving the wild natural environment in which the fish spawn." 8  

Today there is what might be described as a fourth goal, a plan to create a natural habitat for the migrating Chinook salmon from the highly manipulated Lake Washington Ship Canal.