What do you want to see in Clallam County’s updated shoreline master program?
Are you concerned about protecting water quality and wildlife habitat?
Are you concerned about the effect setbacks and buffer zones might have on developing private property?
Do you want to promote recreational opportunities?
Do have ideas for land regulations around the 800 miles of marine and freshwater shorelines in the county?
Week of April 11
Bring them to public forums scheduled in Port Angeles, Sequim, Joyce and Sekiu the week of April 11.
County staff and advisory committee members will use ideas developed in small groups during the forums to develop detailed strategies to be offered for public comment in the fall.
Each forum will begin with presentations of maps and information during a half-hour open house.
County staff members will tell of the process of updating the shoreline master program and summarize the present floodplain management along rivers and streams, marine shoreline erosion and human efforts to protect property and aquatic habitat.
Then participants can divide into small groups to develop strategies for managing river floodplains, protecting both private property and environmental resources and ensuring public access to waterways.
Schedule of forums
Forums are scheduled:
■ Monday, April 11 — 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., Port Angeles Senior Center, 328 E. Seventh St., Port Angeles.
■ Tuesday, April 12 — 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., Sekiu Community Center, 42 Rice St., Sekiu.
■ Wednesday, April 13 — 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., Crescent Community Grange, 50870 state Highway 112, Joyce
■ Thursday, April 14 — 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., John Wayne Marina, 2577 W. Sequim Bay Road, Sequim
The state Department of Ecology requires all cities and 39 counties to update their shoreline master programs by 2014.
Clallam County’s current plan was adopted in the mid-1970s.
The county hired Consultants ESA Adolfson of Seattle last year to assemble focus groups, hold regional public forums, meet with commissioners and tribal councils and take shoreline inventories.
The consulting firm, which is working under a $599,930 agreement with the county, will incorporate public input and technical data to draft new regulations for shoreline uses.
County officials hope to send a draft update of the shoreline plan to the Clallam County Planning Commission by April 2012.
Draft new regulations
The state-required shoreline plan updates have fanned controversy in other jurisdictions such as in neighboring Jefferson County, which sent its update to the state in 2009 and early this year received conditional approval of its plan.
Much of the controversy has been due to buffers on land to protect waterways. Concerns about such setbacks were voiced during a Clallam County commissioners meeting in February.
Shoreline plans are required by the 1972 Shoreline Management Act, which the state Department of Ecology said is intended to “prevent the inherent harm in an uncoordinated and piecemeal development of the state’s shorelines.”
The county received a $1 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency last year to define and achieve “no net loss of ecological function” of shorelines and to apply some of the groundwork to other jurisdictions in the Puget Sound basin.
