HB 2248 — Water availability/Hirst
HB 2248 was introduced in the 2017-18 Washington legislative session by Springer. It never received a public hearing and did not become law.
Dying without a vote is the ordinary outcome for a Washington bill, not a scandal and not a failure of any one person. This page shows where it stopped, who was recorded, and what the record does not say.
- 2017-18 session
- House
- Did not become law
- No public hearing
- Sponsor: Springer
Source Washington State Legislature web services: legislation, hearings and roll calls · as of 2026-08-12 · introduced 2017-07-20
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Where it stopped
Died
- Last recorded action
- Referred to Agriculture & Natural Resources.
- Position
- H Ag & Nat Res — the Legislature's own location code
- Public hearing
- None on record — a public hearing is where testimony is taken; an executive session is where a committee votes
This bill was never given a public hearing. It was introduced, referred to committee, and the session ended without testimony ever being taken on it. That is the ordinary fate of 44% of the bills that die in Washington — it is not evidence that anyone blocked it, and we do not know who decided.
Last checked 2026-08-12
Source WA Legislature legislation service · as of 2026-08-12
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What it would do
The Legislature’s own description. We do not paraphrase legislation.
Addressing water availability issues by addressing the Washington supreme court decision in Whatcom County v. Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board, also known as the Hirst decision, solely by providing immediate and temporary relief to landowners affected by the Hirst decision by ensuring that a water well report for a groundwater withdrawal exempt from permitting and not prohibited by an applicable water resources management rule adopted by the department of ecology may serve until July 1, 2019, as evidence of an adequate water supply for a building necessitating potable water, and allowing cities and counties to rely until July 1, 2019, on water resource management rules adopted by the department of ecology in providing for the protection of surface water and groundwater r
Legal title AN ACT Relating to addressing water availability issues by addressing the Washington supreme court decision in Whatcom County v. Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board, also known as the Hirst decision, solely by providing immediate and temporary relief to landowners affected by the Hirst decision by ensuring that a water well report for a groundwater withdrawal exempt from permitting and not prohibited by an applicable water resources management rule adopted by the department of ecology may serve until July 1, 2019, as evidence of an adequate water supply for a building necessitating potable water, and allowing cities and counties to rely until July 1, 2019, on water resource management rules adopted by the department of ecology in providing for the protection of surface water and groundwater resources except in certain water resource inventory areas, and by creating a task force that may consider, in addition to water availability issues relating to the Hirst decision, water availability issues relating to the Washington supreme court decision in Foster v. Washington State Department of Ecology;
Source WA Legislature legislation service · as of 2026-08-12
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The votes
Recorded floor votes. Committee votes are in the hearing record below.
No recorded floor vote. The bill never reached the floor of either chamber, so no member is on record for or against it.
Last checked 2026-08-12
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Sponsors
Who put their name to the bill. The Legislature records a prime sponsor on the bill status; the full co-sponsor roster appears only in the introduced bill text, which we have not ingested.
Prime sponsor
Springer
as printed the sponsor line on the bill status record · introduced in the House. A committee substitute prints the committee here, with the originating member in parentheses.
The co-sponsor roster is not on this page. We hold the prime sponsor the Legislature prints on the bill status, not the list of co-sponsors, which is published only in the introduced bill text we have not ingested. A co-sponsor count here would be a number no record we hold contains.
Source WA Legislature legislation service · as of 2026-08-12
05
The hearing record
Every committee meeting where this bill appeared on the agenda. Public is where testimony is taken; Executive is where the committee votes.
This bill never appeared on a committee agenda. It was introduced and referred, and no committee ever scheduled it. Roughly half the bills that die in Washington die this way.
Last checked 2026-08-12
06
What changed between versions
Only one version on file. The bill was never substituted or engrossed, or the legislation service returns only the surviving version for this session — for completed biennia it usually returns the latter.
Last checked 2026-08-12
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What this page will not compute
Each of these is a number a reader might reasonably expect. None of them follow from the records we hold, so we do not publish them.
- Who killed it
- We can say a bill was never scheduled for a public hearing. We cannot say who decided that. Chairs control agendas, but the record does not attribute a non-decision to a person, and we will not infer one from a committee roster.
- Why it died
- Withdrawn, superseded by its own companion, folded into a budget, or simply never taken up — all four look identical in the data.
- Whether lobbying affected it
- Washington collects lobbyist compensation and employer registrations, but none of those filings name a bill. There is no documented link between a lobbying report and a bill number, so we publish none.
- What changed between versions
- We hold the version list, not the text of each version.
- How a member would have voted
- Only recorded votes appear here. A member absent from a roll call is recorded as absent, not as opposed.
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Common questions
- What happened to HB 2248?
- HB 2248 did not become law. The 2017-18 session ended without it passing both chambers, so it is not law.
- Who sponsored HB 2248?
- The prime sponsor of record is Springer, as printed on the bill status. This page does not list co-sponsors — that roster is published only in the introduced bill text, which we have not ingested.
- What would HB 2248 do?
- In the Legislature’s own description: “Addressing water availability issues by addressing the Washington supreme court decision in Whatcom County v. Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board, also known as the Hirst decision, solely by providing immediate and temporary relief to landowners affected by the Hirst decision by ensuring that a water well report for a groundwater withdrawal exempt from permitting and not prohibited by an applicable water resources management rule adopted by the department of ecology may serve until July 1, 2019, as evidence of an adequate water supply for a building necessitating potable water, and allowing cities and counties to rely until July 1, 2019, on water resource management rules adopted by the department of ecology in providing for the protection of surface water and groundwater r” We quote the official language rather than summarising, because a paraphrase of legislation is an interpretation.
- Was there a recorded vote on HB 2248?
- HB 2248 never reached a recorded floor vote in either chamber, so no member is on record for or against it.
- Did HB 2248 get a public hearing?
- No public hearing is on record for HB 2248. Testimony was never taken on it, which is the ordinary fate of most bills that do not advance — not evidence that anyone blocked it.
Cite this page
This is public-records reporting. Use it, and say where it came from.
“HB 2248 — Water availability/Hirst,” WashingtonIndependents.org, data as of 2026-08-12, accessed 2026-09-14. https://washingtonindependents.org/bill/2017-18-hb-2248/
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How this page is built
Every figure above is read from a primary source and rebuilt on a schedule. Nothing here is modelled or inferred; where a source is silent the page says so rather than filling the gap.
- WA Legislature legislation service
- Bill id, titles, sponsor, introduced date, and the history line and location code we render as its status.
- WA Legislature committee hearing records
- Every committee agenda this bill appeared on, and whether each was a public hearing or an executive session.
- WA Legislature roll call service
- Recorded floor votes, member by member.
- Outcome
- Derived, not published by the Legislature. Enacted means a chapter number or effective date is on record; died is only ever assigned once a session has ended; a sitting session yields pending and no death is asserted.
- Not loaded
- Bill text, amendments, committee votes as individual member records, testimony, and fiscal notes.