The Snohomish County Council has scheduled a May 14 public hearing on proposed updates to its Critical Areas Regulations ordinance.
State law requires critical areas plans, which regulate land management and development near wetlands, streams, and other sensitive environmental habitats, be updated at least once every 10 years.
These updates are required to be based on “best available science,” a term that has caused some disagreement among the council.
After county planners submitted a draft Critical Areas Regulations ordinance in December, council members Jared Mead and Nate Nehring developed two amendments meant to rebalance the buffers to allow more development.
At a Jan. 15 public hearing, the council postponed voting on the ordinance.
Then in April Mead proposed a new amendment. His Amendment Three would reduce some of the wetlands protections in the draft critical areas ordinance as a way to balance development pressure and conservation. (comparison narrative)
“It increases protections in every aspect,” Mead said, while noting it “doesn’t go quite as far as the proposal from planning” in increasing wetlands protection. The amendment adds an exemption to allow development in small wetlands. Mead, though, said it includes increased protection for streams, which Mead said the draft ordinance did not provide.
Opponents are calling on the County Council to reject all amendments. For example, Bill Lider, an expert certified in stormwater engineering, wrote a letter to council members saying the wetlands that could be developed over are critical to Core Summer Salmonid Habitat streams.
Under the current ordinance, developers must maintain a minimum 100-foot buffer zone between their development and the largest wetlands and fish-bearing streams.
Through incentives, however, they are allowed to encroach closer to* wetlands or streams in certain instances.
One incentive is fencing their property. Another is called averaging.
Averaging allows developers to encroach within 50%* of one section of a stream or wetland.
The planning department’s proposed critical areas update would keep an* incentive for streams but eliminate it for wetlands, requiring all development near qualifying wetlands to keep a 100-foot minimum buffer.
Mead’s amendment would make the minimum buffer 75 feet for both wetlands and streams.
Ryan Hembree, a council legislative analyst, said in an April 29 email to Mead that “With respect to buffer enhancements plus fencing, tracts and buffer averaging for streams, lakes, and marine waters, Amendment 3 provides greater protection than what is in current code.”
“An example is that current code allows a 50% buffer reduction for enhancement plus buffer averaging while Amendment 3 only offers a 25% reduction of the standard buffer width,” Hembree noted.
Ideally, the county’s 100-foot buffer between developments and streams and wetlands should be hundreds of feet, Mead said. The 100-foot limit is a political compromise.
He claimed there is no scientific evidence that reducing the minimum buffer to 75 feet will cause additional environmental harm. But it will, he said, provide developers more room to build housing.
“There are two pieces to this see saw: environmental protection versus housing capacity,” Mead said. “Our state mandate is to maintain the existing functions and values of critical areas, not to restore them. I want people to fully understand the issue.”
The May 14 public hearing begins at 10:30 a.m. at 3000 Rockefeller Ave., Everett, in the 8th Floor Jackson Board Room. Virtual participants can attend the Zoom link of https://zoom.us/j/94846850772 . Or, see this link for the agenda and further material when the county publishes it.
Corrections, May 7, 2025:
The initial version of this story included incorrect interpretations of the code for buffer widths and incentives. The Tribune is crosschecking again on the material.
