BRINNON — More than 70 people gathered at the Brinnon Community Center, where Jefferson County Commissioners passed an ordinance to replace a chapter of code on floodplain damage prevention.
Changes to the code Monday night were made in an effort to maintain compliance with FEMA, for its National Floodplain Insurance Program (NFIP).
“If we were to leave the program voluntarily or involuntarily, because we didn’t do, for example, some of these housekeeping amendments, or some other aspects of the Community Assistance Visit, we would be ineligible for long-term flood disaster assistance,” said Josh Peters, the county’s director of the Department of Community Development (DCD). “If something were to occur in this area or elsewhere in the county, we wouldn’t be able to access the resources. We wouldn’t get federal assistance for repairs to structures caused by flood damage.”
Also, leaving NFIP would make loans and mortgages tricky, Peters said. Implications also would extend to losses in capacity to pursue federal grants or loans for acquisition or building construction.
“Especially home sales in special flood hazard areas would be difficult to complete, even more so than now, if we had no participation in the National Flood Insurance Program,” Peters said.
Code changes include added definitions, reference to a floodplain administrator, a standalone floodplain development permit, livestock sanctuaries and agricultural specifications.
Jefferson County’s construction requirements have been 1 foot above base flood levels for the 100-year floodplain since at least 2007, Peters said.
“With respect to how construction occurs within a Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA),” Peters wrote. “As a result of the 2018 state building code cycle, the construction standard became at least 1 foot above base flood elevation. This proposal does not alter that standard.”
Peters, who has worked for the county since 2000, said the county has participated in the NFIP since before his time at the county, possibly before 1982, he said.
Commissioners Greg Brotherton and Kate Dean were present at the meeting, while Heidi Eisenhour attended via Zoom.
Also in attendance was Phil Cecere, the county’s fire marshal, building official and floodplain administrator, Deputy Floodplain Administrator Greg Ballard, Natural Resources Program Coordinator Tami Pokorny, County Administrator Mark McCauley, Deputy Clerk of the Board Carolyn Gallaway and DCD Associate Planner Andy Gosnell.
Peters presented a FEMA SFHA map of the Brinnon Rural Village Center floodplain and floodway at the meeting. The map showed that 29 percent of Brinnon’s commercial downtown is in the floodway, while 79 percent is in the 100-year floodplain.
“The reason why we’re even looking at this chapter is because we received a community assistance visit from the Department of Ecology Floodplain Management section,” Peters said at the meeting. “They were essentially representing the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, as part of these periodic community visits that they do with all the local governments.”
The visits are supposed to happen every five to 10 years, but the last visit was in the 2000s, Peters said.
“They wanted to take a look at everything that we’ve been doing,” he said. “All of the building permits that we’ve issued, all of the flood elevation certificates that went along with those building certificates. They wanted specific files to look through. They wanted to make sure that we were implementing the National Flood Insurance Program appropriately.”
The Department of Ecology also looked at the county’s code as a part of its visit, making some suggestions for amendments, Peters said.
The changes were a matter of housekeeping, Peters said.
County officials met with Brinnon residents in 2023 about the potential of pursuing a grant to see what could be done to mitigate the Dosewallips River, but the county was not interested, Peters said.
“We were beating the pavement for a grant that might help deal with this real threat,” Brotherton said. “We built a community in a floodway; it shouldn’t have been built here in the first place.”
At Monday’s meeting, Peters said he and his staff would be willing to consider pursuing grant options again, if members of the Brinnon community wanted to partner. Peters invited attendees to reach out to him.
Several public comments reflected attendees being worried about the economic impact the changes to code could bring.
“Jefferson County is currently in an affordable housing crisis,” said Dan Ventura of Brinnon. “We have an economic development crisis in Brinnon. We’re an extremely impoverished area. No decisions should be made whatsoever until these more pressing priorities are addressed.”
Applause rose from the audience following Ventura’s public comment. Brotherton later responded to Ventura.
“To the idea that, until we can fix all of the problems, we shouldn’t do anything,” Brotherton said. “We don’t have that luxury, we’re agents of the state. We have to continue to make the staff, policies and the laws that we have work as well as possible. If you look through the staff’s presentation, which was sincere, the changes here are minor, to prevent us from losing something major. We can’t stop doing anything because we can’t do everything.”
Brotherton reflected on his experience of visiting badly flooded homes in Port Ludlow and on Thorndyke Road following the 2022 king tide.
“They did not have flood insurance and they were despondent,” Brotherton said. “They had water that went up over their sink and caused $50,000 worth of damage. They really wished that they had flood insurance. It’s fine until it isn’t. We’re talking about emergencies. Not being able to get FEMA assistance is an existential threat to Brinnon.
“This ordinance is not a threat, it’s a continuation of what’s normal. It should be hard to build in a floodway; we don’t define the floodways. We want to be able to protect our flood map and flood insurance throughout the entire county.
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Dean shared her motivation for supporting the ordinance before the motion was passed.
“It is a part of responsible planning to limit the public health and safety risks of continuing to develop in those areas that we know are at increased risk,” Dean said. “I think that there has been a misunderstanding about what all of this involved. I don’t know that it’s any consolation to know that these regulations have actually been in place for many years.”
Andrew Schwartz, president of the Lazy Sea Homeowners Association, who represents Brinnon on the county Planning Commission, said he thinks the county put forward a good foot by engaging at the community meeting, but there are some issues of trust in the community.
“I think last night, what people heard was, it’s just going to be more of the same,” he said. “The only element that was different was DCD saying, ‘We’re absolutely open to getting together with a group of you and seeing if we can come up with solutions.’”
Schwartz said if the county can show him there aren’t any solutions, he is willing to advocate for the perspective.
“Nobody’s made the effort, and that’s what I want to see happen,” he said.
Schwartz said his takeaway is positive and that he plans to pursue working with DCD to see a community group form to seek solutions.
The county has set up a webpage with information on the code change and the process leading up the hearing at https://www.co.jefferson.wa.us/392/Resources.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
