EVERETT — Snohomish County Council member Jared Mead introduced a new amendment early last week to a draft update of the county’s Critical Area Regulations ordinance.
The new proposal, Amendment Three, comes after months of discussions on how to update the policy, with the council trying to find an appropriate balance between environmental preservation and the county’s desperate need for housing.
Amendment Three offers compromises between many of the new draft proposals and current codes, with Mead adding new protections to stream buffers.
The current code offers multiple incentives for developers to build fences around habitats in favor of getting buffer width reductions. The proposed ordinance from planning staff gets rid of most of these incentives, requiring the minimum buffer widths regardless of if fences are put in. Mead’s amendment keeps some of these incentives but decreases the buffer space developers can encroach on if they construct barriers.
The Critical Areas Regulations ordinance, which covers development and land management regulations around wetlands, wildlife conservation areas, geologically hazardous areas, aquifer recharge areas and some flood hazard areas, was supposed to be updated in December when the county finalized its 2024 comprehensive plan.
But in December, council members Nate Nehring and Mead introduced Amendment One, proposing changes to the drafted ordinance that county long-term planning staff had spent the last year researching and preparing for adoption.
Nehring and Mead’s first amendment suggested reinstating part of the current code, which would have slashed new environmental protections put forward by planning staff. The current code was first adopted in 2006 and uses data from the 1990s, according to county planning staff.
In a 2024 staff report, Mead and Nehring stated the rationale behind the amendment was that it “maintains capacity for growth inside UGAs [urban growth areas], helps address housing affordability challenges and reduces pressure to expand UGAs in the future.”
Four days before the Jan. 15 public hearing, when the council had scheduled to vote on the update, The Daily Herald published an article about the amendment and what it would mean for the update of the ordinance.
At the hearing, attendees expressed anger about the amendment and its environmental protections. Many testimonies underscored the importance of protecting the environment, and community members referenced The Herald’s article in their public comments.
The County Council delayed the decision, stating it wanted more time to go through the materials about the proposal prepared by planning staff.
Since then, Mead has been talking to local tribes, environmental groups and researchers, trying to better understand the science of how buffers protect streams and wetlands from human influence, he said in an interview Monday.
“I’m really proud to propose Amendment Three,” Mead said on Monday. “I’m taking this extremely seriously, and there is always a give and a take in policymaking.”
The council has yet to announce the date of the next public hearing to discuss the new amendment and ordinance. In the meantime, stakeholders and experts disagreed about the direction of the new proposal.
“While I appreciate the Council’s efforts to address concerns and find common ground, even modest reductions in development capacity can have a real impact,” said Brian Hayter, vice president of government affairs for Snohomish County Camano Association of Realtors, in an email. “I hope the Council continues to weigh how policy changes like these may affect the long-term ability of families, workers, and community members to find and keep a place to call home.”
Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish County expressed in a statement on Tuesday that it is “neutral” on Mead’s new amendment but maintains its concern that the new proposal is not based on new science and data.
“While we appreciate the time the council is taking on this issue, we still do not see the basis for changing the current code,” said Natalie Reber, government affairs manager for MBAKS, in an email. “That said, we understand the political pressure the council is receiving – even though the pressure is not related to any new data or science-based facts.”
Tim Trohimovich, director of planning and law at Futurewise, a sustainable development and land use nonprofit, disagrees with the development association, and said more needs to be done to protect wetlands, and fish and wildlife habitats. disagrees with the development association.
“We appreciate that it has some improvements in it,” he said last week, referencing Mead’s new amendment. “It still isn’t supported by the science,” he said.
Wetlands are critical for reducing flooding, protecting water quality and sequestering carbon, according to the Department of Ecology. Additionally, wetlands and small streams are often places where maturing salmon find refuge before migrating to Puget Sound.
County and state reports published in recent years say current policies aren’t doing enough to protect habitats.
“Despite significant investments in the recovery of salmon and other fish and wildlife species, scientific evidence of continued ecosystem decline in Washington indicates that NNL [No Net Loss] policies are not working or are not going far enough to protect our state’s rich natural heritage,” Director of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Kelly Susewind wrote in a 2022 report.
Without policy changes, critical habitats will continue to disappear, a Washington State Academy of Sciences report wrote.
The 2024 Snohomish County Critical Area Regulations Monitoring Report found that between 2009 and 2021, there was a net -2.6% decrease in rural critical areas and a net -3.5% decrease in critical urban areas.
“We are losing habitat under the current regulations,” Trohimovich said. “We need to do something better.”
According to Mead, his goal with the first amendment discussed at the Jan. 15 hearing was to buy time to go through what the planners had gathered.
“My thoughts when I first got the ordinance from planning was, ‘This is rushed, and we can’t vote on this in two weeks,’” he said. “We can’t possibly fully understand the implications of the policy, neither on the environment nor on housing, with the information that’s been presented to us.”
Mead was present at a Planning and Community Development Committee on Dec. 3 where Titcomb and Strandberg presented for almost an hour and answered questions from council members. The planners explained the proposed policy and the research and information they gathered in 2024 from the state Department of Ecology, Fish and Wildlife, local tribes and other constituents.
He also referenced a “robust” conversation he had with the planners about buffers the month before.
On Wednesday, Mead said, “In my opinion, [it was] not nearly enough time for us to pull up 80 different links for thousands of pages of ‘best available science’ and then [for] us to make that decision. That’s why I proposed the amendment. I said, ‘I have not been convinced, based on this tiny staff report we got, we need to change what we’ve been doing.’”
Mead said he’s grateful that he’s been able to converse with people such as Tom Murdoch, director of the Adopt A Stream Foundation, a local nonprofit that does riparian education and conservation. But he wishes the last three months had gone differently, he said.
“What’s regretful is just the fallout of it and how it turned into a big fight that didn’t need to happen,” he said.
But council member Dunn said at the time it was unlikely that the council could have delayed a decision on the ordinance since it had been due to be updated in December.
Dunn’s comment amounted to “political spin,” Mead said on Monday.
“When you put that into the ether, of course, people are going to get riled up,” he said. “When you couple that with the fact that you’ve got the person saying, ‘Hey, there’s an amendment being proposed to strip environmental protections, and it’s going to get crammed down our throats and there’s no time for any of us to consider this,’ Of course, you’re going to have hundreds of people pissed off.”
Dunn said she’s welcomed public comment and involvement during the update process.
“I think that he was surprised that people were monitoring and watching this process,” she said in response to Mead’s comment. “But it’s not a surprise to me that people care about our critical areas.”
Regarding Mead’s intent with his and Nehring’s first proposed amendment, “I would point you to all of the updates we received throughout 2024 when PDS was working on the Critical Areas Regulations,” Dunn said.
“There was time for him to engage,” she said. “We received drafts and [at] no point did he engage throughout 2024.”
Dunn said Mead has only provided the conservation draft, and not the backing information. Typically, the council has a process for taking data and science into policy considerations, she said.
“In this case, he’s proposing an amendment and then he’s trying to justify it after,” Dunn said.
Eliza Aronson: 425-339-3434; eliza.aronson@heraldnet.com; X: @ElizaAronson.
Eliza’s stories are supported by the Herald’s Environmental and Climate Reporting Fund.
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