Crisis at Eastsound Water District could jeopardize Orcas Island Fire & Rescue fire protection rating

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, June 24, 2026

Mounting dysfunction inside the Eastsound Water Users Association has grown serious enough that a fire safety leader and a longtime county attorney both now warn the utility’s failures could endanger the island’s fire protection rating, even as residents flooded a June 16 board meeting with demands that the entire seven-member board step down.

About 50 members packed the Orcas Island fire hall, where speakers were held to three minutes each from a sign-up list. General Manager Dan Burke did not attend in person, appearing remotely as the board absorbed wave after wave of criticism over staffing losses, financial secrecy and a governance structure many said was no longer capable of managing the utility.

The sharpest warning came from Brian Ehrmantraut, who prefaced his comments to the board, “I’m speaking for myself only but informed with the benefit of my experience with both organizations.”

Ehrmantraut, who served on the EWUA board for more than a decade, including as its president, and now chairs Orcas Island Fire & Rescue’s Board of Fire Commissioners, told the board that the Washington Surveying and Rating Bureau, which sets the fire protection ratings insurers use to price homeowners’ coverage, already lowered the island’s score in its most recent review.

Roughly 35% of that rating, he said, depends on water supply, hydrant flow capacity, hydrant location, testing, maintenance and recordkeeping — functions controlled entirely by EWUA.

“It is critical that Eastsound Water engage and collaborate with Orcas Fire on this for the 2027 WSRB evaluation,” Ehrmantraut said, asking the board to designate a liaison and confirm that hydrant maps and maintenance records are current.

Water supply carries the heaviest weight of WSRB’s four scoring categories at 35%. In the October 2024 evaluation, the water system earned only 32% of available credit, reflecting weak scores in fire flow adequacy (44%), hydrant inspection and condition (43%), and system maintenance (50%). Because water supply is weighted so heavily, shortfalls in flow capacity, hydrant testing or maintenance records directly raise insurance-rating costs for every property in the district, underscoring why closer coordination between East Sound Water and Orcas Fire & Rescue matters for the next evaluation cycle.

That concern was echoed independently by Randall Gaylord, a retired San Juan County prosecuting attorney with 28 years of experience in government and employment matters across the county and a fire commissioner with Orcas Island Fire & Rescue, in an interview with the Islands’ Sounder.

Gaylord said he had “seldom experienced a more long-lasting public dissatisfaction of organizational dysfunction” in his career, and said that pattern typically points to “a leadership problem at the very top among the board of directors and usually also at the top of the administrative staff.”

He noted that EWUA, though it functions as a quasi-public utility, is a private nonprofit not subject to state auditor review or the open-records and ethics rules that bind public agencies, leaving residents with no independent check on its conduct.

Asked specifically about fire risk, Gaylord said the fire department does not operate the water system and relies entirely on EWUA to deliver water to hydrants at adequate pressure. Any lapse, he said, “would be detrimental to the service that we can provide,” and a sustained problem “could affect our ratings” — the same rating Ehrmantraut referred to.

Gaylord also argued the board’s structure feeds the dysfunction, calling a seven-member board “extraordinary” for an organization of EWUA’s size, noting that San Juan County’s other major boards — the fire district and the county commission — operate with five and three members.

The Sounder reported on May 22 that the EWUA board had agreed to a third-party investigation during its last community meeting, held May 19. Board President Teri Nigretto reiterated that agreement at the June 16 meeting but refused to authorize an outside investigation into workplace and financial complaints until a pending union contract is ratified, telling the room a forensic financial review alone could cost $30,000 to $50,000, and a workplace investigation could approach $100,000 — costs she did not want layered onto ongoing labor talks.