County critical areas planning continues

The following article appeared in the October 4, 2006 edition of the Port Townsend and Jefferson County Leader.

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County critical areas planning continues
Volunteer advisory group seeks extension

By Kasia Pierzga
Leader Staff Writer

Just about a month after they began hashing out ideas for revising a county ordinance designed to protect critical areas such as wetlands, the members of a volunteer advisory committee are asking for six more months to complete their work.

The committee was initially expected to come up with a list of recommendations by the end of September, with the Jefferson County commissioners considering a final draft of the ordinance in January.

The commissioners received the time extension request on Sept. 25.

In an e-mail to the county commissioners Sept. 6, county planning commission member and Critical Areas Ordinance Committee Chairman Jim Hagen wrote, "We have reached agreement that the importance of the  proposed ordinance is such that to rush the process would not do the end result justice."

Despite the request for more time, Hagen said he's happy with the committee's progress so far.

"I think it's going very well," he said, adding that the committee had already reached agreement on several topics that should help it begin the process of developing recommendations.

"Everybody would like to see this get done without rushing it," Hagen said.

But not everyone on the committee thinks things are going well.

Committee member Jill Silver, a habitat biologist, said getting the 17-member group to agree to a list of recommendations would probably be a bigger challenge than most committee participants realize.

The different perspectives are valuable in developing a list of recommendations, but without a shared understanding of the basics of the guiding science and planning and growth-management issues, it's hard to have a conversation in which everyone is in agreement on what is at stake.

"We aren't even a tenth of the way through," she said.  "We've only dealt with agriculture so far, and we're not yet in agreement on that."

Among the members of the committee, Silver said, "there's a huge range of understanding of basics about landscape processes and the ecologic and economic value of protecting our shared water resources. Then there are varying degrees of understanding of the critical areas ordinance itself."

During a committee meeting two weeks ago, Silver proposed that members of the committee take coordinated field trips to see for themselves what different kinds of wetlands and their buffers look like.  That way, she said, they can better understand what a buffer might look like, and how it might be applied.

"Many people, including me, don't know what it's going to look like to put it [the ordinance] on the ground," she said.

Silver also said she would like to see the county develop a map of wetlands and water resources in rapidly developing East Jefferson County, not only as a way to protect them but as a way to provide property owners — and prospective buyers — with some degree of certainty as to how the land can be used, and to develop buffers that protect water storage, flood control and filtration of pollutants.

Despite the committee's slow progress, Silver said the dialogue among people representing such a broad range of perspectives — including farming, building, real estate and the environment — is important to develpo9ing critical areas protections that everyone can live with.

"Maybe we're setting up a process to get at the rest of the ordinance more easily," Silver said.  "I'm seeing a benefit from sharing ideas with everyone at the table."

Common ground

Josh Peters, the lead planner at Jefferson County Department of Community Development, said members of the county's planning staff have been asked to attend the committee meetings and provide information and resources as needed.

"We;re going to help them frame the problems they're trying to solve and lay out the issues for consideration so they can develop a list of recommendations to present to the planning commission," he said.

Peters said the county could choose to develop its own wetland guidelines, but doing so carries considerable risk.  The process would not only be time-consuming and expensive, but it would also leave the county vulnerable to a legal challenge.

If the county chooses not to adopt the Department of Ecology's guidelines, "are we going to come up with our own scheme?" Peters wondered.  "if so, how would we come up with it, and how are we going to prepare to defend our decision?"

Addressing agriculture

So far, much of the discussion has focused on the proposed ordinance's exemption for agricultural land.  The exemption allows development of site-specific buffers on some agricultural land, but critics worry that the exemption won't cover land that has ben out of production for a while or that has only recently been converted to farming.

Some committee members advocate the use of farm plans instead of relying on the agricultural exemption — a strategy that was recently approved for use in Island County by the Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board.

Developed with the help of resource conservation professionals, the plans outline a farm's natural resources as well as how to protect them and how to maximize the farm's economic profits.

Developing a farm plan costs about $2,500, according to Al Latham, manager of the Jefferson County Conservation District.  The cost is usually covered through state conservation grants and county funding.

Latham said he has his doubts about the value of making farm plans mandatory.  The conservation district has had a lot of success with getting farmers to take care of steams and other critical areas on a voluntary basis, he said.

"Once you tell them they have to do a farm plan, it changes their feelings about the process," he said.

Besides that, Latham said, farm plans are not designed to be used for regulatory purposes.

"Who is going to go out and monitor each farm?  We don't want to do that," he said.  "it would change our whole relationship with farmers if we were a regulatory agency."

Making farm plans mandatory also would mean that the agency would have to hire more conservation planners, Latham said.

"If there was a deadline given by which everyone had to have a farm plan, I'd say we'd need three more people, at least, for at least the first year,"  Latham said.

Planning for the future

Silver said she hopes the long-term solution will take into consideration not only the needs of current residents of Jefferson County but also of those yet to come.

"I'm looking ahead 20, 30, 50 years from now," she said.  "I want to know we have the natural system in place to support whatever developing is going to take place in this county."

The availability of water also is key to maintaining the economic value of land, Silver said.  Educating people about the value of wetlands not only as wildlife habitat but also as the source for replenishment of water supplies is key to gaining acceptance for land-use regulations designed to protect them.

"I want people to understand why we need to protect water," she said.  "If we just ram it down their throats, they're just going to fight against it."