PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson County is in compliance with the Growth Management Act and Olympic Stewardship Foundation has failed to prove its challenge of the county’s critical areas ordinance, Western Washington Growth Management Hearings Board concluded.
“The compliance order finds the county to be in full compliance with the GMA and closes the case,” county Chief Civil Deputy Prosecutor David Alvarez said Thursday. “It’s definitely a victory that the hearings board has found us in compliance. We’re very pleased.”
Jim Hagen, Olympic Stewardship Foundation president, said the property rights group was not surprised by the decision.
“It’s not unexpected, and I think that many of the issues that we have are beyond the scope of the authority of the hearings board,” Hagen said. “We are certainly going to carefully look at the next steps that we are going to take.”
Hagen said one of the issues Olympic Stewardship Foundation wanted to challenge was the portion of the critical areas ordinance that could make some parcels unavailable for development by placing them in a high-risk portion of a channel migration zone.
“That would be a 100 percent taking” of private property, he said.
Olympic Stewardship Foundation and its co-petitioner, Citizens Protecting Critical Areas, appealed part of the hearings board’s final decision and order in November 2008 in Thurston County Superior Court.
A hearing is scheduled Nov. 20 before Judge Richard Hicks, who will address the hearings board’s final decision and order.
An order last year concluded the county did not comply with the Growth Management Act because its channel migration zone hazard maps were unclear and did not reflect that the best available science was used to assess risk.
It also concluded that restricting removal of vegetation on property containing a geologically hazardous area reflected best available science.
Since then, the county has addressed issues that were found not in compliance in its ordinance.
Olympic Stewardship Foundation’s original petition challenged stream and wetland buffers and channel migration zones prescribed under the county’s new critical areas ordinance.
The foundation originally requested that the hearings board invalidate the critical areas ordinance in its entirety because many of the rules adopted are excessive and materially interfere with the goals of the Growth Management Act.
The county began the critical areas ordinance update in 2006.
County Director of Community Development Al Scalf said the Department of Community Development staff, the planning commission and the county commissioner engaged residents, agencies and tribes in active debate regarding best available science in designating and protecting critical areas as required by state law.
Critical areas include ecosystems and areas such as wetlands, aquifer recharge areas for potable water, fish and wildlife habitat areas and frequently flooded and geologically hazardous areas.
The county critical areas ordinance is part of an agreement struck with the Washington Environmental Council, a state lobbying group that argued before the Growth Management Hearings Board in 2005 that the county failed to comply with the state Growth Management Act regarding critical environmental areas.
The environmental council filed a petition in February 2005 after the county updated its critical areas code in late 2004.
County commissioners settled with WEC in executive session behind closed doors, saying it was necessary to avoid a long, costly legal battle.
In May 2006, the county Department of Community Development drafted a critical areas ordinance update that increased wetland buffer zones.
Jefferson County farmers protested in June 2006 by circling the courthouse with tractors bearing signs.
They feared that 300-foot buffers would make it impossible to develop their properties.
Environmental council officials said agriculture would be exempt, and the critical areas draft now includes that exemption.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
