I honestly don't know why, but my client is shipping plants and aparently there are different regulations for shipments to WA which require higher handling fees. I can find out for you if you want to know.

As for code changes, I am no PHP programmer, but can hold my own in C. So I think that armed with a PHP manual and the source code, I could potentially make some changes to the code.
Can you point me in the right direction?

I guess I need to find out if the area code starts with 8 and if it does, add a constant to the handling fee.