Those who own property on lakes, streams and wetlands in unincorporated Snohomish County face tougher restrictions on how they can develop their property under a proposal rolled out by the county last month.
Saying they want to avoid the firestorm of controversy that erupted when King County released similar rules earlier this year, county planners are now asking private property owners to help them put the finishing touches on the new rules.
| Snohomish County wants rural property owners to comment on a regulation that could limit what they can do with their property. Three public meetings on the county’s draft critical-areas ordinance will be held over the next two weeks, including one this week. All the meetings will be from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.: * Tuesday at Heatherwood Middle School, 1419 Trillium Blvd. SE, Mill Creek; * July 27 at Monroe Junior High School, 1408 W. Main St., Monroe; * July 28 at Post Middle School, 1220 E. Fifth St., Arlington. |
“We learned from their mistakes,” said Craig Ladiser, director of the county’s planning and development services. “We’re going to do the right thing. The right thing is going to be in the eyes of the citizens.”
Ladiser is talking about the ongoing effort to update the county’s critical-areas ordinance, a state requirement that counties outline how they are will protect waterways as private property is developed.
Rural property owners lambasted King County when the rules were rewritten there, at one point driving a caravan of 50 trucks and horse trailers through downtown Seattle to protest the regulations.
Snohomish County’s draft ordinance is full of tougher restrictions on developing private property, the product of new state rules that require counties to use better science when they revise such ordinances every seven years, Ladiser said.
Under the draft rule, all property owners who live next to a lake will be restricted from building between 150 feet to 50 feet from the water’s edge. The current rules only restrict new lakefront development if there are endangered salmon or trout in the lake.
Currently, property owners along streams and rivers must have a buffer between 25 feet to 100 feet from the stream’s edge. Under the new plan, those buffers will increase to a minimum of 40 feet to as much as 225 feet.
Buffers around wetlands – small bodies of water or wet areas with wildlife value – will mostly stay the same except for those around the smallest, most marginal wetlands, which will increase from 10 and 25 feet to 50 feet.
Knowing that such restrictions are highly controversial, Ladiser said the county proposed the buffers because that’s what the latest scientific research suggests is necessary to protect those areas. State law now requires the county to incorporate such science into the ordinance, he said.
Ladiser said the county wants input from landowners to help the county adjust rules to make a better fit when the new ordinance is finally adopted next spring.
In the end, it will be the County Council that has the final say on what the new critical-areas ordinance will look like.
At this point, it appears several council members question whether all of the rule tightening is necessary.
“If it isn’t broke, we don’t need to fix it. They’re going to have to show me that the science requires these buffers,” said council member John Koster, who is heading up the committee overseeing the critical-areas ordinance revision.
No matter what size buffers are adopted, they will not be used to prevent a landowner from developing their property, Ladiser said.
He said the county would meet with individual property owners to find a solution that works, allowing a landowner to ease a buffer by agreeing to make other improvements on the property. Something as simple as agreeing to plant trees alongside a pond could offset the impact of building closer to the pond than the buffers would normally allow, he said.
“We know one size doesn’t fit all,” Ladiser said. “What we would do is find a way to make it work for you.”
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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