Consider the water unit, or, as it is commonly known, the water share.

Within Vashon’s Water District 19, possessing a water unit makes the difference between having to drill a well to develop your property, and being able to connect to the district’s water mains and outsource that basic need to our professional staff.

In some cases, the size of a parcel, adjacent property uses, or the scope of an owner’s ambitions make it impossible to proceed without the guarantee of water from our public utility.

That’s why we were gratified last year that the state approval of our Water System Plan made it possible to offer new water units to potential customers. In 1996, the district imposed a moratorium on issuing new water units because of concerns that demand would outstrip our reliable supply. We’d even closed the waiting list to new requests.

But by 2022, the track record of steady production from our wellfield (near Open Space for Arts and Community), combined with more judicious use of water by our 1,500 existing customers, confirmed that we could release 14 units annually for the next five years.

Once we had cleared the quarter-century-old waiting list, we prepared to offer new units for sale, and invited district property owners to enter a lottery for 28 available units (the 2022 and 2023 releases). Interest exceeded our expectations, with 46 people requesting 66 units between them. We held the lottery, informed the lucky entrants, and sold them the water units they’d sought.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the water meter.

In the 18 months since the lottery, only three successful applicants came to us for the paperwork they’d need to seek a county building permit. Perhaps the rest had applied “just in case,” or in the hopes of increasing the value of their land for future sale.

Whatever their motivations, the result meant that other applicants — with more immediate intentions of putting the water to use — had been iced out. We’d sold water units in the hopes of meeting actual human needs, but most of those units were sitting in someone’s back pocket.

That made my fellow commissioners and me decide to “press pause” on the process. Before selling any more water units, we’d like to restructure the process so the district’s limited water resources are more apt to improve the public good. We’re considering three main changes, and we are also open to other ideas that would increase the social benefit we provide.

First, we would no longer sell new water units as soon as we release them. Instead, we would earmark them for the successful applicants while they proceed through permitting and construction. They’d have to stay on a timetable to keep that earmark. Only when their project was complete would the water unit be assigned to them permanently.

Second, we’d allot some new water units to a pool for priority uses. District policy already puts public agencies such as the school and fire districts first in line if they need a new water hook-up. Affordable housing projects, or emergency connections where someone’s well has failed, could be added to that priority list.

Finally, we’d offer new avenues to buy back idle water units. More than 100 units are held by property owners who might want to use them someday, but are not connected to our system. That “paper demand” makes it hard to anticipate actual future consumption. We’d offer to buy their water units for the priority pool if they prefer, so they’d know the water unit they were giving up would support a pressing island need.

All of these ideas aim at one overarching goal: to ensure that the precious aquifer and supply infrastructure we hold in common helps increase our community’s well-being.

It isn’t our role to determine where housing should be built and how dense it should be — the county planning process does that. But we don’t want an arcane water allocation system to stand unnecessarily in the way.

We’re convening a special meeting — at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, at the Land Trust building — to hear from islanders what they think about these ideas. We hope that if you’re interested, you’ll join us there for the conversation.

Seth Zuckerman is the president of the Water District 19 Board of Commissioners.