County Council Steps Back From Lake Protection

Tom Pratum is a Lake Whatcom resident who is very concerned about the future of the lake.

On August 13, in front of a well-organized and angry crowd of Building Industry Association (BIA) disciples, the Whatcom County Council voted to rescind the changes to Title 20 of the Whatcom County Code which were passed on an interim basis on June 18.

This ordinance originally passed by a six-to-one vote (Sam Crawford opposed), and appeared to face little opposition until the past month or so. Title 20 contains county-wide development standards, and the interim changes apply to the water resource special management areas of Drayton Harbor, Lake Samish, and Lake Whatcom.

The change that appeared to make the building industry the most unhappy dictated seasonal clearing restrictions that prohibit any activities exposing more than 500 square feet of soil between the dates of October 1 and April 30. The purpose of this provision is to prevent exposed soil and sediment from washing into our most valued water resources during the rainy season.

This is a sensible requirement, and for the Lake Whatcom watershed, it merely applies restrictions already present in the part of the watershed that is inside the City of Bellingham (see article by John Watts in this issue) to the rest which lies in Whatcom County (a small part of the watershed is also in Skagit County).

Being an interim ordinance, it was expected that further input would be obtained during its six-month duration, and any changes would then be incorporated into the final version adopted at that time.

While there was some indication of unhappiness from the building industry expressed to Whatcom County Planning and Development staff, most of us had no idea an organized effort was underway to overturn the ordinance until one day before the August 13 County Council meeting.

During the public comment session at the August 13 meeting, one builder after another paraded to the podium and claimed the ordinance would put them out of business this year. Besides, it was claimed, there was no problem here to be solved since they promised to put up their silt fences like good boys and girls and catch that nasty sediment before it could reach the lake.

The photo below, taken at 2430 North Shore Road (within 200 feet of Lake Whatcom), shows one builder’s idea of the proper application of a silt fence. While many builders seem to feel that a silt fence is a “magic wand” that will take care of all of their sedimentation and erosion control (ESC) worries, in fact, silt fences are often improperly installed and/or maintained, and even when they are functioning optimally, they are often ineffective at sediment removal.1

While it initially appeared that the council majority would hold firm in their resolve to protect the lake, an obvious buckling rapidly appeared. An item on the agenda for introduction, which would have removed Drayton Harbor from being covered by the ordinance and delayed the clearing restrictions until the end of October, was apparently not sufficient to calm the Building Industry Association devotees.

Following the public comment session, Councilmember Barbara Brenner immediately proposed removal of the seasonal clearing restrictions, and the entire ordinance if necessary. She cited a letter the council received from the Building Industry Association, which proposed a case-by-case treatment of clearing in the watershed during the rainy season.

While this proposal may sound reasonable to some, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to enforce. An accompanying proposal by the building industry that it be allowed to police itself in these matters is laughable at best.

Not surprisingly, Ward Nelson couldn’t jump on the wagon to rid us of the evil ordinance fast enough, and Sam Crawford had only to sit back and hope at least one other council member would come along for the ride.

There was hope that the four remaining council members would keep the ordinance in place. However, after Crawford ushered in statistics, which indicated a flood of building permit applications had been received in the first six months of this year in the Lake Whatcom watershed, Sharon Roy and Laurie Caskey-Schreiber fell for the inexplicable argument that, because it appeared the ordinance applied to a reasonable number of people, it should therefore be repealed.

Perhaps if they applied that thinking to our property taxes, we would all save a lot of money every year. Obviously, the more parties that engage in any harmful activity, the more it needs to be regulated.

In the end, we could only watch in horror as the council voted seven-to-zero to rescind the ordinance. However, their vote violated the county charter and they were then forced at a subsequent meeting (August 27) to introduce two separate ordinances that would either remove the seasonal clearing restrictions or make them inapplicable to residential development – the effect of either would be the nearly the same. The ordinances are to be voted on September 10, and as of this writing their outcome is unknown.

I couldn’t help thinking: Didn our newly-elected County Council members just do exactly what their opponents in the past election would have done? The problem for them is that they can be sure the Building Industry Association will still neither support nor endorse them.

1 “Strengthening Silt Fences,” D. Caraco, Watershed Protection Techniques, 2, 424-428 (2000).