Comments on Island County's Wetlands Regulations

November 30, 2007
To: the Island County Planning Commission
P.O. Box 5000, Coupeville, WA 98239
Commissioners: Mike Jocelyn, Ray Gabelein, Jr., Val Hillers, Bill Massey,
Sheilah Crider, Alan Schell, Scott Yonkman, Wayne Havens and Deb Eidness.
From: Theresa Marie Gandhi, P.O. Box 437, Clinton, WA 98236
Regarding: Comments on Wetlands Update within the Island County Critical Areas Ordinance. (Numbers relate to Comprehensive Plan numbers.)

Who I am and why I am qualified to submit comments.
I returned to the Northwest and Whidbey Island in 2000 after a decade as the wife of a relative of Mahatma Gandhi. As the official Mrs. Gandhi in five countries I attended Global Survival Conferences in Oxford and Moscow, met the Gorbachevs, Mother Teresa, and the President in the Oval Office, and was on National television in India, walked across America in a Gandhi Salt March, developed and presented non-violent conflict resolution ways and means.
After moving here I learned that the sole source aquifer was being polluted with herbicides by the County and State. I used my public relations, research, writing abilities and organizational skills to bring together a coalition of organizations to work to stop the County from using herbicides for roadside vegetation control. Work the coalition did in this regard resulted in significant reductions state wide by the Washington State Department of Transportation. In each case I was commenting on protecting water quality and the storm water runoff that adversely impacts salmon and other marine life.
I submitted comments to the Island County Salmon Plan for WIRA 6 concluding it was a plan set up to fail as it left the landowner the one responsible for saving salmon with out telling them this or how specifically to do so.
I submitted comments to the Puget Sound Partnership and wrote about the importance of not polluting storm water runoff and of maintaining the viability of the wetlands and associated systems of water recharge on islands with sole source aquifers.
I submitted comments to the Department of Natural Resources draft plan to spray herbicides on over one million acres in twelve western states speaking to the same issues of water quality and the various species that depend upon healthy wetlands, streams, creeks, lakes and rivers.
In every instance there was enough turn around time from receiving the notice that comments would be accepted and the due date. It would have been appreciated if Island County Planning had allowed more time between releasing Island County’s Wetlands update draft and all the departments that various parts of the plan would be found. Enabling some of these plans to be filed within the “secret” Farm Plans does not uphold the principle of a Land Constitution.
As part of the Growth Management Act, the Critical Areas Ordnance and Wetlands regulations are a part of a Land Use Constitution and needs to be respected and created with the input of the population that will be impacted by the regulations. There are those of us who think that planning should be for protecting the Commons that support life here. More people would have contributed to the process by speaking on behalf of our islands’ system of trees, native plants and species that are dependent upon us. We are stewards of the systems that provide us all with drinking water from a rechargeable aquifer. Each part; trees, plants and especially wetlands are necessary to recharge our wells and contributes to the water that quality of life depends upon.
Given the way that the draft proposal is written it is obvious that the Planning Department can not be considered to be protecting the future viability of our sole source aquifer and all of the species, vegetation (plants, aquatic life and trees) and water systems that make up the whole web of life. It seems that Planning is all about development and enabling it at the cost of a sustainable, usable aquifer for our seventh generation.

The following are my comments on Island County’s wetlands draft Comprehensive Plan and Critical Areas Ordinance.
Goal. There is confusion in the comp plan and in the ordinance between Critical Areas and Wetlands. This needs to be resolved. The document needs to reflect the intention to protect non-human species, both on land and in Puget Sound. A goal of “no net loss” of wetland area is missing any intention to increase either wetland function or area.
4. The definitions in 17.02B.030 are so elastic as to be useless. There is no way to measure or predict what constitutes “Reasonable and Practical”.
5. Mitigation sequencing stops short of denying a permit in the event the proposal has immitigable impacts. Use of the term “Reasonable and Practical” negates the entire statement and does not say No in these cases.
6. Restoration after damage to wetland and /or buffers is allowed. Success in this regard is not “Reasonable nor Practical” but is problematic and usually fails. The result is a net loss of wetland, both in functions and in area. Restoration can take more than the length of a human life and the original parts making up the wetland are lost with its destruction.
9. a. One sentence says it all. “Under no circumstance will a permit be denied to protect a wetland or make the land unusable.” There may be a fee in lieu, but the project, however damaging, will go forward. The position of Island County that development for human uses will always take precedence over maintenance of a functional ecosystem – which in fact supports continued human life.
9. b. Needed public facilities and services are not defined but this provision encourages the purchase of land containing wetland because such lands will cost less, in the knowledge that “needed public facilities” will trump the need to protect the wetland. This could include cell towers and at its worst, as in North and South Carolina, commercial hog farms with hundreds of thousands of hogs and their waste.
9. c. This ordinance guarantees that there will be a net loss of wetlands.
9. e. What is this supposed to mean?
10. When development plans are given precedence over all else, there will be no fairness or equitability for downstream/downhill landowners. (An example is the current cement plant expansion proposal in Greenbank that will impact all down hill with toxic to life run off.) The ordinance as written is so flexible that there is no predictability.

Wetlands Overlay – Goal: Missing from the goal is “to prevent a net loss in area of wetlands”. Then three policies have been stricken: 1) “avoid land development that causes loss of wetland functions”; 2) “mitigation projects that add to existing wetlands or increase function and values of degraded wetlands are preferred over efforts to create wetlands from no-wetland are preferred over efforts to create wetland from non-wetland areas and should remain subject to wetland area regulations.” 3) “prohibit alteration of land that results in degradation of wetlands (with exception)…” Why were these removed and no policies that are comparable or speak to these issues replaced? The striking of these three items demonstrates a shift in intention. The original wetlands ordinance had a focus on protecting wetlands. The current ordinance shifts the focus to enabling development in instances where wetlands might limit it. This shift leads to guaranteed adverse impacts on individual wetland and on the entire functional ecosystem of Island County.
1) These three policies are supplanted by non-regulatory protections with out a regulatory framework that would enable them to work.
2) Less protection for existing wetlands in favor of squeezing in one or two more houses in the development comes about when buffer averaging is used. Never mentioned is the “other technique” of leaving the wetland alone. It must be acknowledged that there are some areas that can not be developed without destroying them. Without this as a part of the ordinance we will continue to lose wetland areas and functions.

Policy C. In 17.02B.030 “Reasonable and Practical”, are defined in such a flexible way as to make it mean what ever one wants it to and thus makes the entire statement meaningless.
Policy E. is inconsistent with Critical Area goal 9.a. that says that regulation to protect critical areas should not make any existing parcel or lot unusable. Given this document was written by a developer for developers 9.a. will take precedence and the majority of the time a permit to do major damage to a wetland will be issued.
F. Because all enforcement is complaint driven and since the public cannot know the specific buffer assigned to a particular portion of an individual parcel because the ordinance is so convoluted it will be impossible to determine if a violation has occurred. This will result in ‘valid’ complaints greatly diminishing. This will allow new and continuing damage to occur to wetlands without any enforcement.

Since Senator Haugen pushed through a law making all Farm Management Plans secret documents no part of a Land Use Constitution should be allowed to be hidden within this system. As wetlands naturally occur on farm lands how will the County and Public have access to these plans to know if they are following the rules and regulations of the Critical Areas Ordinance -CAO, wetlands regulations and Growth Management Plan -GMP? Either remove reliance on these plans or demonstrate that the county will have access to them for review and that the public will have access to review the county’s determination.
Growing Season in a coastal area is the entire year and the definition needs to be corrected to reflect this.
(Comments on “Highly Erodible Soils” through Wetland Type are left out for lack of time.)
Wetland Functions needs to be rewritten to include the long list of beneficial functions performed by wetland in Island County.
(Comments from here through the end are not included as it is 3:28 AM and I want to submit this before your office opens December 3, 2007.)

My summary:
The draft proposed Wetlands Regulations within the Critical Areas Ordinance is obtuse, so long, complicated, involved, unreadable, not understandable and unworkable as to guarantee the destruction of the majority of wetland and thus Critical Areas. It is a developers plan written by a developer who had veto power over best available science as related to me by Dr. Adamus. The placement of Keith Dearborn as having the final say on what “best available science” would be allowed has contributed to the creation of proposed wetland regulations that favors development over the preservation of islands wide system critical to recharging our sole source aquifer.
If the draft ordinance and regulations are adopted as proposed it would be REASONABLE and PRACTABLE to assume that Island County’s sole source aquifer will be so depleted in the near future as to make drinking water unavailable and all property worthless.
The proposed wetland regulations are not REASONABLE or PRACTABLE. They are convoluted, unreadable (referencing 5 volumes of Hitchcock that requires a one day workshop to learn how to use). The regulations go in circles: if A then B, if B then A making all within the loop as null and void. This works for developers whose profit will be large enough to pay a lawyer to use all the huge number of built in loop holes.
The proposed regulations do not protect wetlands because they are so complicated it is impossible to understand or administer.
They rely on landowners (i.e. developers) to determine the size, shape and type of their own wetlands and buffers. The forty-five buffer possibilities make it too complicated and obtuse to be useful except for developers with lawyers. I can not say this enough as it is so obvious and contrary to the intent of having regulations in the first place.
Within the draft regulations is a statement that NO MATTER HOW HORRENDOUS “NO DEVELOPMENT PROPOSAL WILL EVER BE DENIED TO PROTECT WETLANDS!”
Then hidden within is the worst of the lot in the Conservation District Secret Farm Plans. Taking advantage of this “Secret” place the County and Public cannot know what is being permitted to degrade wetlands that are almost always found on farm lands.
Many wetlands are being defined out of existence.
There are many scientific definitions that are incorrect.
The “reasonable use” exceptions passed in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling concerning “the taking of all economic use” of a property has been redefined completely so that the intent of the ruling has evaporated into thin air. Thus you can build whatever you want and deal with the wetlands after all the damage has been done.
The most unreasonable for the health of the wetland and the most practicable for the Developer is that they can just buy their way out of having to adhere to the CAO and Wetland’s Regulations.

Mosaic wetland provisions are flawed and unworkable. There are several problems with the interpretation and implementation of the provision and the numerical standards used. What is meant by the “average” distance “apart” and “upland area between the wetlands” and how they are to be measured is obscure. The definition and its practical application need to be clarified and the standard revised to include greater separation between individual wetlands in the mosaic.

Rural Stewardship Plans (RSAs) are voluntary for retention of forest vegetation so are their durability over time is questionable. Without forest cover over major portions of the landscape, habitat generally and wetland habitat in particular will be degraded from fragmentation.
Best available science say deforestation is causal in watershed wetland habitat, and hydrological degradation.
The Island County Planning Department’s (i.e. Dearborn’s) proposal does not include effective mechanisms to prevent the above mentioned impacts. This is predictable given the minimum expected development in the next twenty years.
This means that the sole source aquifer we all depend upon for drinking water will dry up and living in Island County will end. The whole web of life staying healthy is necessary to support humans living here.
We have unique features not found else where in the Pacific Northwest including but not limited to: a coastal ancient forest, huge old growth red cedars, endangered lupine, rare western wetland plants and glacial kettles.
Creating wetland regulations that protect the systems that recharge our sole source aquifer make the islands livable. Implementing the proposed draft regulations on wetlands will facilitate the destruction of the interwoven systems that recharge the source of our drinking water. Failure to protect these systems threatens the viability of our sole source aquifer that makes life possible here. We live on islands that are different than the mainland and need more care than exists in the proposed regulations to protect our way of life from developers that would make their money, destroy our way of life and leave for other areas to profit from.
There is a comprehensive wetland plan written by professionals, submitted to the county and then filed away because it failed to provide profits above preservation. It exists and should be pulled out of the bottom drawer and used. The entire web of life would be well served if this discarded plan were brought out and considered as a viable alternative to the developers’ proposal currently under consideration. Please at the very least ask to see what the Planning Department has hidden.
Your approval of the proposed regulations will be your vote for the death of Island County as a desirable place to live. Please allow more time for public input.