EDMONDS – For many Meadowdale area residents, it was like a storm that blew over.
The Edmonds City Council decided on Tuesday to postpone adopting new rules for construction in landslide-prone areas of the city, particularly the steep slope in the north Edmonds area facing Puget Sound.
Several months in the works, the rules are aimed at making construction safer while making the permitting and building process easier, city officials said.
Council members said they wanted to wait for the city to purchase new, sophisticated mapping technology in 2005 before setting the rules in motion.
Many residents and property owners in the Meadowdale area have been fighting the plans, saying they unfairly stigmatize their neighborhood as a slide zone. About 15 people spoke against the rules at a public hearing Tuesday.
“Why is Meadowdale being singled out?” asked resident Dan Morrison.
Slides occurred in the area in the 1940s and 1950s, city officials said, and again in the winter of 1996-97, when several homes were damaged. In the 1980s, the city began requiring that anyone building in a certain mapped area on the Meadowdale slope provide information about slide hazards on the site to prospective buyers.
Residents argued at the hearing that other areas in the city have steep slopes and should be subject to the rules as well. City development services director Duane Bowman said the rules do apply to any other area that meets the city’s criteria for a potential landslide zone. No maps have been drawn for other parts of the city.
The regulations have not been updated since 1988, one of the reasons for proposing the new rules now, city officials said. A simplified Meadowdale map was proposed, but with boundaries unchanged from the current one.
The rule changes include requiring building permit applicants to supply a map showing potential hazards in and around the site; requiring increased inspections on buildings under construction; making applications good for two years rather than one; and development of a hazard-zone cross section as an informational tool .
The laser mapping technology costs an estimated $35,000, Bowman said. It will be part of the city’s upcoming budget discussions for 2005, Mayor Gary Haakenson said.
The city originally proposed expanding the hazard zone by 200 feet to be on the safe side until the new technology could be used. But a showing of about 200 residents at a meeting at the Meadowdale Clubhouse in May helped persuade the city to scrap that idea.
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