The Snohomish County Council last week approved a Critical Areas Regulations bill that embeds Councilman Jared Mead’s contested Amendment 3.
Council members Mead, Sam Low and Nate Nehring voted for the package, and council members Megan Dunn and Strom Peterson opposed it.
“We heard from the Department of Ecology, Amendment 3 is clearly high risk, so I will be supporting the underlying ordinance and not Amendment 3,” Dunn said. The “right balance was achieved with the ordinance. We know that it offers the least risk,” Dunn said.
Last year, the county planners introduced the original Critical Areas Regulations ordinance. Mead and Nehring introduced two amendments. People were concerned about the lack of environmental safeguards. At a hearing on Jan. 15, a vote on the updated ordinance was delayed. One amendment was pulled.
Mead later introduced Amendment 3, which could lower “some of the wetlands protections,” as reported by the Tribune, “to balance development pressure and conservation.”
Mead said streams were not in “the original ordinance.” A department arguing better than another department is not science.
The bill did not come without backlash at the public hearing. Much of the criticism was about the lack of protected wildlife. More than 30 people voiced their opinion. Some demanded that council members oppose the amendment.
Amendment 3 will allow for reducing buffers or the protection around wetlands. These areas gain greater lengths of protection “by placing them in tracts than in easements,” the Amendment 3 document states. It will reduce the buffer to 10%.
When a fence is placed around a buffer, it will be reduced from 15% to 10%. The combination of the fence “along the perimeter of a protective tract,” Amendment 3 states, will be reduced from 25% to 20%.
“The buffer averaging at streams, lakes, and marine waters,” the Amendment 3 document mentions, will decrease to 75%. For buffer enhancements, the width of the barrier for environmental habitats will decrease by 20%. Its area will be reduced by 25%. Buffers around tracts will have “a 25% reduction in buffer width and a 30% reduction in buffer area,” the Amendment 3 document stated.
Small wetlands in Categories I and II will not be filled. For Category III, if wetlands are “smaller than 5,000 square feet that meet specific criteria,” they are given exemptions. Regarding Category IV, those less than “10,000 square feet” meeting requirements are exempted.
Peterson wrote in an email to a constituent shared to the Tribune that he supported “the original intent of Ordinance 24-097, to increase buffers, strengthen efforts to protect clean water and restore salmon populations.” Peterson was against Amendment 3 because it did not safeguard sensitive environmental habitats.
At the May 14 hearing, State Fish and Wildlife Regional Habitat Manager Marcus Reaves stated they “estimate that roughly 15,000 acres of existing riparian forest
could be at risk of loss under the county’s current code amendments,” the Herald reported.
Kristin Kelly of the group Futurewise said the amendment was not consistent with the “best available science,” the Herald reported.
