EVERETT — Critics of the 144-acre Eastview Village development will argue in Skagit County Superior Court on Friday, claiming Snohomish County wrongly exempted the project from environmental review.
On Nov. 13, Skagit County Superior Court Judge Heather Shand initially denied the petitioners’ appeal against the development’s exemption from Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act, commonly referred to as SEPA.
The petitioners, which included the neighboring Greenleaf HOA, the nonprofit SaveBothell and its sister branch SaveCathcart, and over 20 additional residents, chose to file their overarching land use appeal in Skagit County. Land Use Petition Act appeals can be filed in the county where the discussion occurs or in adjacent counties.
The appeal also covers petitioners’ claims that the project did not fulfill complete and accurate transportation reviews and could cause future safety hazards to nearby school children and residents.
Shand’s initial decision against the SEPA exemption appeal did not discuss the merits of the petitioners’ claims, but instead focused on procedural technicalities that the appeal was filed too late, said Bryan Telegin, the attorney for the petitioners.
Telegin said he still plans to argue against the environmental review exemption during the hearing covering the petitioners’ overarching land use appeal, stressing that if the court upholds its previous decisions, it will set a dangerous precedent going forward.
Snohomish County officials declined to comment on matters pertaining to the litigation. In court documents, the county insisted the development qualified for the exemption because it was a certain kind of mixed-use development, dubbed “infill development” in county documents.
Pacific Ridge Homes, the developer behind Eastview Village, did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
The case comes at a time when the county is facing mounting pressure to increase housing, and some former county employees have voiced concerns about county executive decisions involving new development.
‘They deserve someone in their corner’
D.R. Horton, the country’s largest homebuilding company and owner of Seattle-based developer firm Pacific Ridge Homes, plans for the finished Eastview development to include 1,311 residential units — a mix of houses and apartments — plus 61,000 square feet of commercial space.
The 144-acre project, equivalent to the size of roughly 110 Seattle city blocks, lies east of Mill Creek on the south side of Highway 96.
The area is dubbed the Silver Firs Gap in the county’s comprehensive plan, a document required by the state’s Growth Management Act.
Former Snohomish County engineer David Irwin, who was the lead transportation reviewer on Eastview before resigning from his position, has criticized the project since the application was first submitted in 2022, alleging county leaders pushed the project through on the developer’s behalf despite it not meeting state and county standards.
“Whether I have a County badge or not, I am a public servant to my core. I gave my all as an employee, but even without a badge, they deserve someone in their corner,” Irwin said of the public in a text on Monday. “The only way the public has any fighting chance is if I use my knowledge and battle it on the outside.”
Countryman, formerly a long-term planner for the county and most recently the county’s senior policy analyst, also submitted testimony after leaving his almost three-decade career at Snohomish County, claiming the project breaks codes he helped write during his employment.
Countryman, who grew up just a couple of miles from the Eastview site, said the ever-progressing development of the area spurred him to pursue a career in public planning. He provided testimony for the petitioners’ appeal, which he submitted from his new home in Pennsylvania “out of concern for the public safety and welfare” for the county where many of his loved ones still live.
“I don’t think it’s reality that most people working in government are necessarily truly public servants,” Countryman said in an interview on Nov. 20. “I wish that was the case, but my experience has taught me otherwise.”
‘Despite decades’ worth of planning’
The previously forested area, now transforming into Eastview, was clear-cut earlier this fall, becoming a massive dirt lot that flooded nearby neighbors when the first seasonal rains hit on Oct. 12.
The incident triggered the Washington Department of Ecology to investigate whether Pacific Ridge was complying with stormwater permit requirements.
The investigation was still ongoing as of Monday.
Neighbors like Mike Putt were frustrated by the flood, which brought an inch of silt down the residential street and covered yards, but he also voiced concerns about the future traffic the development could cause.
“We understand there’s a shortage of housing and everything, but the county is doing nothing in a slightly intelligent way,” Putt said on Oct. 16, after the flooding incident.
In Countryman’s testimony, which will be argued on Friday, the former policy analyst claims that Eastview is too large for the area’s existing infrastructure, including roads, and approving it without the environmental review breaks the state law.
In the county’s latest comprehensive plan, adopted in December 2024, the county accounted for 2,331 new housing units to be built in the Silver Firs Gap between 2020 and 2044.
However, by the time Pacific Ridge submitted the Eastview application in 2022, pending development permits put the area at 106% of the planned growth, a staff report from when Countryman worked as the county’s policy analyst showed.
In the county’s Dec. 12 court brief, it stated Eastview was excused from SEPA review because it met the size standards of a 2022 ordinance that Countryman said he was the primary author of that created exemptions for certain mixed-use developments.
But the exemption doesn’t apply to Eastview because the Silver Firs Gap was already exceeding growth targets, Countryman said. By overshooting the growth the county had accounted for, the county won’t know how impacts to the natural and built environment, as well as residents, will unfurl, Countryman said.
“Despite decades’ worth of planning for development in that area, there was never adequate thought given to the road network and what kind of improvements would be necessary to support the development at Eastview Village,” Countryman said. “The area has lots of traffic problems already, and those are going to get made worse because the executive branch chose to ignore the impacts of development that was clearly going to happen.”
County executives knew development would happen since Snohomish County was the owner of the parcels before it sold the land for development, county tax records show.
‘The county can change its mind’
In her ruling, Shand told the petitioners that they missed the deadline for appealing the environmental exemption for Eastview Village.
Because the SEPA exemption is part of the petitioners’ overarching Land Use Petition Act appeal, the county has argued that the deadline for issuing an appeal was 21 days after Sept. 7, 2024, when the county issued its SEPA determination.
“The public receive information about appeal opportunities and timing in the Notice of Application,” county staff said in an email on Tuesday.
In the Sept. 7 notice issuing Eastview’s SEPA exemption, the document states, “There is no appeal opportunity for this application at this point in the process. Additional notice will be provided of any future appeal opportunities.”
The county said it could not comment further on the matter, citing the active litigation.
“It is not a 100% legally dispositive point, but boy, doesn’t it feel wrong for a county to tell its people you have no appeal opportunity at this time, and then three years later, tell everybody, oh, you should have appealed that three years ago,” Telegin said.
The petitioners have also pointed to language in the state and county laws that they believe directly refute Shand’s decision regarding the time limit for filing appeals.
“The department has the option to withdraw a determination that a proposal is exempt based on new information or further review of existing information,” Snohomish County code states.
From his position representing the appeal, Telegin said this means that a SEPA determination can be rethought at any point during the development process.
“The county can change its mind at any time, not even just based on new information, but simply going back and looking at the existing project file and realizing, ‘Hey, we made a mistake,’” Telegin said.
The petitioners also argue that the environmental exemption was incorrect in the first place due to Eastview exceeding the county’s comprehensive plan growth targets and failing to provide the required traffic studies and mitigation.
“This issue is really important because if the county is right then they can continue issuing these categorical exemptions, or under the law, they don’t even have to document it. They can just think it,” Telegin said. “So members of the public will have to figure out when a county or a city decides to think a categorical exemption into existence. It gives the public no ability to challenge these things or to make sure that their governments are actually following the law.”
The hearing will take place at 1:30 p.m. on Friday before Skagit County Superior Court Judge Mary Crandall. A link to the Zoom meeting can be found at https://www.skagitcounty.net/Departments/SuperiorCourt/videocourt.htm.
Eliza Aronson: 425-339-3434; eliza.aronson@heraldnet.com; X: @ElizaAronson.
Eliza’s stories are supported by the Herald’s Environmental and Climate Reporting Fund.
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