Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the August 5th meeting of the Thurston County Planning Commission. This is a meeting without a full quorum, so we have made an informal decision to proceed to hear public comment today and also to hear our presentation, but we will defer substantive conversation until we have a quorum. The Thurston County Planning Commission is a resident advisory committee to the Board of County Commissioners on Land Use Planning Matters such as the comprehensive plan and the zoning ordinance amendments. Planning commission actions are in the form of recommendations to the county commissions, the final decision makers. All planning commission meetings are open to the public. Committee members are welcome to observe all planning commission briefings and work sessions. We welcome public comment at all of our meetings. We would appreciate if folks could introduce themselves, give us your address, please speak to us directly. Please note that we will not respond to public comments, and you're limited to three minutes. I'd like to proceed now with introductions in the boardroom. My name is Sandy Kaiser. I represent District 3, and I'll go to my left. Daniel?

All right. Commissioner Bonbarger, District, I both live in and serve for District 1, although I am technically at large.

Sure.

Bill Bushburn, District 4. Barry Halverson, I live in and serve in District 2.

Okay. Since we now are off our agenda, we will skip that approval process, and I think we can proceed to public comment. And I'd like to welcome folks who have signed up. I guess I don't have the sign-in sheet.

You might sign up for it.

Please. Thank you very much. Okay, we've got three people in the room signed up and first we will hear from Christy White.

Good evening commissioners. My name is Christy White and I live in the Delphi Valley, Thurston County. I wanted to address the critical areas ordinance wetlands specifically this evening. The staff have done an outstanding job of responding to a variety of questions that we've peppered them with in the last 48 hours. And my ask is that you ask them to make sure that they give that information to you this evening because I think it's very critical to what we've been working on as a group. I'm particularly looking at single family residents when it has to expedited or committed that is that can be a real challenging area for wetlands that are taken over by single family residences, whether it's a single class or development so concerned about that also making sure that the ordinance is robust. There's a lot of buzz happening out there about how developers are very unhappy with the permitting process, and I understand that as well. But I think clarity of the permitting process versus it being easy to override critical areas is not what we want in Thurston County. So my ask is that you ask the planning staff to design this ordinance such that it is clear, but very robust because that's what makes Thurston County, Thurston County. I don't want to live in Tacoma. I don't want to live in Seattle. What we have with the environment that we have in Thurston County is critical. I know that you have a lot of expertise in many of us who have come and presented to you. I have yet to see the developers really involved in this process at all. And we're nearly a year into it. So my ask is that you really look at this hard and make sure that it is protective but clear. Thank you. Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Charlotte Persons.

Hi, I'm Charlotte Persons from Olympia. Today I'm representing South Sound Bird Alliance, the local chapter of the National Audubon Society. We have 1300 members in Lewis, Thurston, and Mason counties. Our mission includes environmental issues such as conservation of wildlife and environmental justice. Our concerns about proposed expediting review of single family homes are mainly for the wildlife affected by wetlands. However, wetlands also benefit humans by recharging aquifers, serving as storm water repositories, preventing flooding and stopping or slowing down wildfires. We have not yet been able to see the actual proposed code or staff plans. So our comments today reflect our general concerns about the expositing of single family homes near and in wetlands. The first point is expedited review of single family homes must be balanced with safeguards that will take into account the size of the parcel as well as nearby hydrology, especially water flow and level. Second, expedited review for single family homes must also take into account consideration of wildlife habitat and behavior in the nearby wetlands. not just of endangered species like Oregon spotted frog, but other wildlife, such as birds and mammals, such as beavers, red squirrels, and elk. Third, the state guide for the critical area ordinance states that those ordinances must take into effect cumulative effects. We look forward to seeing staff modern plans and their schedule for publication. so the public can see the cumulative effects on wetlands of expedited review of single-family homes. Climate change for our region is predicted to bring more drought, hotter summers, and more heavy rain events in winter. These changes will make wetlands even more important. We hope that you will keep this in mind as you develop this chapter of the CAO. Thank you.

Next, I'd like to invite Rhonda Larson-Kramer.

Hi, I'm Rhonda Larson-Kramer. I live at 1814 East Side Street, Southeast in Olympia. And before I get into my prepared comment, I wanted to mention that the goal overall of the Growth Management Act is to smooth the way for putting housing inside existing urban areas and I'm understanding that developers are asking you to smooth the way for allowing development outside those areas. So I just want to keep in mind the framework of the Growth Management Act. We don't want to necessarily smooth the path for development in rural areas because that's going to counter our goals. At the July 15th meeting of this body, the Planning Commission discussed whether flood hazard regulations should be loosened to make it easier to build housing as a way to address homelessness. And I appreciate the desire to increase housing opportunities, definitely, but I think that approach is based on a false premise. The assumption that the Thurston County lacks efficient land to accommodate future housing growth is the assumption that is not correct. And the evidence is in the buildable lands report. And that report shows that there's more than enough development capacity within our existing urban growth areas to accommodate projected growth. And since that report was issued, the legislature adopted middle housing requirements and that further increased the development capacity within the same urban areas infill. So in other words, we don't need to weaken critical area protections to meet our future housing needs. The purpose of floodplain regulations is to protect people, property, public infrastructure, and natural functions of floodplains. Simply disclosing a known hazard to a home buyer or a renter does not eliminate the hazard. We generally don't address public safety risks by saying, as long as people are warned, it's acceptable. So we prevent people from being placed in dangerous locations in the first place. Disclosure also shifts the risk onto future homeowners, renters, emergency responders, insurers, and then ultimately taxpayers. When homes are built in places we already know are vulnerable to flooding, the consequences extend far beyond the original purchaser. I was also concerned by the suggestion that flood risk is declining because Tacoma Power has become better at managing reservoir releases. While it deserves credit for improving flood management on the Nisqually River, it doesn't eliminate flood hazards. Reservoirs have a finite storage capacity and climate change is expected to increase frequency and intensity of floods. So if our goal is to increase housing, the solution is to make better use of ample development capacity that we already have. I urge the Planning Commission to maintain strong floodplain protections and continue directing growth to safe, appropriate locations. Thank you.

Okay, let's turn to folks online. I see two hands up. So I would invite Vanessa Laval to begin.

Good evening, and thank you for your time, everybody. My name is Vanessa Lavelle. I live 6741 Alpine Drive Southwest, and I have a comment about the wetlands for the evening. So if no net loss of wetland functions is the goal of the critical areas ordinance, I oppose having an expedited process for single family homes. Although I generally do support housing, wetland areas are habitat that benefit wildlife and provide ecosystem services. and also for aquatic species that are really critical. Additionally, for the potential future landowner, there could be real consequences for them if it's not properly evaluated. For example, septic installation, or what if they develop pervasive black mold? Perhaps the process could have an expedited option if they're building within the GMA and they agree to cluster their development away from portions of the property that are wetland. I also kind of have some questions for your consideration. So if wetland delineation happens every five years and we are experiencing longer dry periods, naturally some of these areas are going to shrink. And how will those sites be seen in future determination processes? Will they lose the wetland label or will we supplement them with, you know, gray water to keep them as a wetland? It's my understanding that wetlands do influence hydrology in a variety of ways. And I just sat through Department of Ecology's Washington's Water Future public session. And, you know, they are looking for innovative ways to keep water, right? And with looking to the eastern side of the state being on fire, it feels like wetlands are kind of free insurance against the most extreme types of wildfires. And so, yeah, for your consideration, I guess I'm nervous that our climate projections might be outdated. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next, I'd like to invite Phyllis Farrell.

Hi. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Greetings, commissioners and staff. Thank you for all the hard work that you are doing to protect critical areas. I know you're all aware of the environmental benefits wetlands and frequently flooded areas provide. But with projected growth, it's really important to have adequate co-productions to preserve and maintain those environmental benefits of stormwater management, filtration to maintain and improve water quality, carbon sequestration and habitat. I am concerned about the pressures faced by county staffers to allow and grant variances, exemptions, and perfunctory mitigation plans when permitting for growth. For example, there was recently a permit approved in my neighborhood, Sunwood Lakes. This was a reasonable use exception permit for a future single-family residence driveway and on-site septic system. I walk by this lot practically every day, and it's almost always underwater. I mean, I would have described it as a wetland. I couldn't believe that somebody was going to try to build a house on it. The proposal includes a septic drain field and reserve on an adjacent HOA parcel to the south. When I called up the HOA president to say, you know, what the heck are you improving a septic system on an adjacent lot? And she said it was because they didn't think that the applicant would ever be able to get a permit for the house. The proposed development, and I'm reading from the county's website, the proposed development is located within a wetland buffer. The subject parcel totals 0.17 acres and is zoned McAllister geologically sensitive area. In rural Thurston County. I am just having a hard time understanding how this is protecting wetlands, a small lot, so small that the septic had to be on the adjacent lot. And it's within a wetland buffer and a geologically sensitive area. So I guess what I am suggesting is that it's really important that strong, clear codes and ordinances be developed that minimize this kind of bending, it seems it's apparent bending of the rules to get a reasonable, get a permit in a rural area that we're trying to, as Rhonda mentioned, submit to the urban growth areas. Thank you. Thank you.

Next, I'd like to invite Loretta Sepinen.

Good evening, planning commissioners. I'm Loretta Seppanen, Olympia, Washington. I'm going to comment on two things. The first is about the option one and option three. I appreciate the conversation that you all had on this for wetlands, for the buffer size on wetlands. You had this back in April. I found it hard to understand. I went back and listened to the Zoom, I mean, the YouTube video and understood it better and thought, wow, it would help me and I think other people to understand this if we had a visual. Then I looked today and you're getting a PowerPoint from staff and there's a visual in there of what, how, another county handles this issue might not be the way we handle it but a visual and I urge you to ask staff to include visuals in these complex kind of things not only as they present the Loretta we lost your audio just now

Loretta, if you can hear us, could you mute and unmute yourself? Uh, see if maybe that solves the issue. I'll make sure you can hear us.

Can you put it over the chat?

Well, we're waiting for that. Uh, commissioner Nelson just wanted to brief you that since we don't have a quorum, we basically decided to hear public comment. and the presentation and defer any substantive discussion until we have our colleagues with us. And also, I really, again, like to thank members of the public for their patience as we sorted that out. This, I think, is a good compromise. Perhaps now, I guess, maybe we'll get Loretta back, but perhaps not.

It looks like she dropped off, so it might have been a connection issue.

Yeah. Sorry to hear that.

She came back. She disappeared again. Bonnie Blessing just raised her hand.

Okay. Well, let's go to Bonnie Blessing in the meantime and hope that we can reestablish contact with Loretta so she can finish her comment. Go ahead, Bonnie. Bonnie, we're ready for you if you'd like to make comment. Yeah, perhaps.

He's muted right now. He's muted. No, she hasn't unmuted. Bonnie, you need to unmute yourself.

Okay, well, let's go back to Loretta, who appears to be back with us. Loretta, are you able to speak?

Thank you. I apologize. I lost the internet connection. I think you heard what I had to say about option one and three and how great it is to have visuals. And they're going to see one as an example this evening in the staff's presentation. And I'd like that both as this is all presented, but also actually have these examples and visual examples are great in the code. So that's one request. The second is about single family exemptions. I'm thinking this one in options one and three might be a help here that if a landowner goes for option three, which is taking the maximum amount of buffers. then that might be a place where they could be allowed to have expedited review. But if they're going for the more complex option three, I worry about the loopholes that might present and having an administrative approval. rather than the more complex and public review of the document. So if they go for option three, then expedited single family approval or review. I don't know which word is supposed to be used there. But if they go for option three, don't allow it. That's my request of you to think about that. Thanks.

Thank you. Okay, Bonnie, let's try one more time. We'd like to have Bonnie Lessing speak.

Hello, does this work?

Yes. Oh, good. That's better. Hey, I have just a couple of comments. I thought it might be good for the permit staff to be able to share, like, why to appreciate a wetland. But, you know, after learning a bit more, well, like the other day on Nextdoor, someone, a social blog locally, someone posted a toad, a toad that happened to occur at or near Sunwood Lakes within a Western toad. It is a species of local importance. It got 226 hearts and 20 comments in the space of like an hour on Nextdoor. One reason the toad's there is because there's a habitat near some pond somewhere that it breeds, but it disperses into the uplands. That's one function. Another function of wetlands that people really like is the music in the spring. Neotropical migrants are really attracted to shrubby, scrubby plants. deciduous tree wetlands, sometimes large, sometimes small. Size of wetland may not even matter for habitat so much. Locally out back, I live on the east side of Capitol Forest, we see bear, elk, cougar, owls, even mountain beaver, and woodpeckers literally take a dip in a puddle that is probably a wetland that might be a square meter. And it's like 200 meters from like a real stream, but it's just this tiny little thing. I see how there's a gradient of wetland quality and a gradient of wetland impacts. I have seen where the approval of a single family home on 40 acres led to massive driveways, warehouse, even a runway in a lowland. Then to deal with the very occasional high water that might not be adequately delineated in any wetland survey because it's the winter inundation of an area. Um, and maybe separation for septic because of all that upland stuff with a single family home, they had to lower the water table, like elsewhere cup, you know, a hundred meters away and it just lowered the water table everywhere. And that doesn't seem very resilient for climate nor for species recovery. This seems to happen a lot. I've seen other areas where a single family home already had a reasonable use, but they wanted to add. And so they had to do like onsite mitigation, put in shrubs, but then those get mowed and then they knock out beaver dams. And so we lose a whole habitat thing. I've also seen where people want to put in just a small porch, you know, often near wetlands, but that wetland might never have surface water, even in the winter when things flood a bit, no surface water, maybe cover with blackberry, never on a critical aquifer recharge area, not near habitat, not near a lake. It seems like some regs could be easier near that. I thought that the ecology stormwater manual had ways to guide things. For NPDES permits, if you're going to add so much impervious surface to an area, then it's an impact. But in summary, I believe it's important to help permit staff teach folks to appreciate, and then there's a gradient of quality wetland and impacts to wetlands. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else online who'd like to make public comment? I think we'll proceed based on our earlier conversation and our earlier decision not to have substantive conversation. I think we'll skip the debrief that we would normally have of public communication and proceed to the CAO work session number 20.

Let's go ahead. Second chair. Oh, yeah. Thanks.

I'm accepting my promotion.

I'm just listening in.

I'm just listening in on myself.

I'd like like 20 minutes to listen.

Bonnie? Oh, never mind. You better mute.

All right.

So tonight we're going to be going over the gap analysis for the wetlands chapter of the critical areas ordinance. A quick preface to this one compared to the last few that you've had. This we've actually been able to put together before we come up with a code draft. So this is more of the like big overview of what to expect or at least what we're proposing at this time for changes to the code. And then we'll bring back the code draft at a later date. So outside of that, this will follow about the same structure as the rest of the gap analysis presentations that we've had. We'll go over a couple of key points from the best available science, talk about the gap analysis itself. And then for this meeting, we can hold off the discussion for next time. So some key points about wetlands, they provide key ecological functions that support water quality and quantity, habitat and hazard mitigation. Wetland buffers help protect the features that support wetland functions like vegetation and soil. Wetlands are both susceptible to and can help mitigate the effects of climate change on the landscape. As with our other chapters we're also looking wherever possible to create transparency in our screening tools and report requirements flexibility where it's appropriate and clarity and navigability of the code language for folks who are coming to us for permits. Okay, getting to the gap analysis section itself like our other chapters will be looking to add. a section with clear designation criteria so people know what to look for to find out if they might have wetlands on their property, making sure things are publicly available, transparent. In that same vein, including criteria for the specific report reports that would be required. For different situations, especially in this case, if we go with that choice between option one and option three. We want to make it really clear what we're looking for as far as reporting, so that people know what to tell their biologists, they can plan ahead for both money and time spent on the reporting they want to do. This one, we got some spoilers in the public comments. We are considering adding processes and criteria to allow for some expedited review for single-family residential. A couple things to speak to that briefly, because we did hear it in the comments quite a bit. The criteria for option three, as we've talked about, and what's fairly standard for expedited SFR review are somewhat similar. For example, one of the counties that we've looked to that does have provisions for this is Kitsap County. And they do require that to get the expedited review timeline, you essentially adopt the largest buffer based on the wetland category, which is how option three functions. So if we go with the combination of option one and three, as we've discussed, this could potentially be a bit redundant, but maybe when we revisit the conversation and discussion with the whole group, we can talk about those kind of fine details.

And I think one of the things I think we could note is I think in Ms. Sepinen's comment, she was speaking along kind of the same lines. Like if you are taking that option three, which is the big buffer, that is the place where the expedited review or approval happens. And that's also a way to incentivize accepting that bigger buffer if you can.

As the person who proposed the hybrid approach, my intention was

if you want to take the extreme measure that the really tiny counties are really designed for that have big buffers and no flexibility the incentive is things go faster yes and that's kind of inherently built into just the way that option three functions um is that by taking the largest buffer we don't necessarily need to know something like the way it literally functions is there there's no habitat score consideration which is a solid chunk of what would be inside of a wetland report is determining what the habitat score of a wetland is. In option one, that can give you 150 feet of difference on some wetlands. In option three, we don't need that information, and you just get to move on. It takes less time for us to review sort of inherently, regardless of whether the actual review timelines change. It's a simpler process overall, and we would hope that that acts as a sort of incentive for people to choose more protective buffers.

Is that how the code section is written?

In our code? It's not drafted yet, but we can make sure that it is. So this is more the first two here are related more to that option one and option three discussion that we've had. So we're actually replacing our buffer tables just directly with the ones from Ecology's recommendations. You'll note that in the second one here, it's replaced buffer tables with only option one. That's because option three doesn't include any provisions for reduced buffer width. So that's one of the benefits of option one is not only is it more specific to something like the habitat score of the wetland, it also provides the ability to implement mitigation features to reduce the buffer. um it's not anything as far as like percentage of reduction it there's still it's still fairly close together i think for some wetlands for example it's the difference between like 150 and 110 feet but if you have a fairly small property that can make a big difference in what you're able to do um for the tree protection and actually throughout the code as well um we're looking to create provisions that are appropriate for wetlands and prairie environments. This is based on feedback from our conservation partners, Thurston County, It has historically been largely prairie with lots of oak habitat that has over the years been encroached on by Douglas fir forests. And sometimes our current provisions can get in the way of restoration activities that are happening in prairie environments, which sometimes do involve removing trees so that prairie related trees and similar species can thrive. This is the visual we were talking about. So this visual is a comparison of essentially how it would work if we did adopt directly that option between ecologies option one and option three. So the top two are option one. This is totally not to scale. Also, this is just a visual aid. I tried to make it approximate. You know, so the first one, so this would all be the same wetland. It's a category two with a habitat score of six. So it's kind of a mid range as far as wetlands go. It's not the rarest one, but it still has a solid habitat value with no mitigation options. So no minimization measures. It would have 150 foot buffer. If the applicant chose to use minimization measures, so there's a big long table in the ecology guidance, and they essentially need to implement everything that's applicable. It's not just like you do one or two. It's pretty robust. Then they can bring it down to 110 feet, and that's essentially the trade-off for having a lower impact. And then if they only wanted to be up in that top right corner of their property, they could just pick option three. That would give them a 300 foot buffer for a category two wetland with a habitat score of six. And they wouldn't have to worry about minimization. They could do a simpler wetland report and just move more quickly. And then we can skip discussion from that.

Thank you, Claire. And we'll encourage everyone who's not here to watch the video and hear the public comment and see the presentation. So we're ready next time for conversation. With that, I think we'll proceed now to staff update.

See here, the I don't think I have any big updates. We did hire one associate planner, we brought down, we stole me from environmental health. She's gonna be working on Brian Benjamin's team, natural resources. She's, that's the streamflow planner position that we had open for a minute. So we're excited to have her on board. She'll keep some of her own portfolio.

So calendar. I do not have our next meeting in front of me. It'll be in two weeks.

It is August 19th. Okay. August 19th. And there's the open space hearing on the 19th.

That's right. So it'll be jam-packed.

Luckily, we'll just be the discussion from what we just had. Oh, we have to dig in on the single family. And we might already have a solution to that with the existing one to three. So we actually, I forgot, we do have one thing we wanted, Claire wanted to share with folks.

I turned my computer off already, but it is on thirstingcriticalareas.org. Based on basically all of the feedback that we've gotten from multiple angles, we've expanded the timeline for CAO a little bit. So we can go over it in more detail next time, I think with more folks here, that'll be useful anyway, but anticipate more time to work through CAO. So we'll give more time to review each of the next three kind of sections that's coming up. And then we finalize the schedule around how engagement around the public hearing will go, how workshopping between the public hearing and CAO recommendation draft will go, but it's out as far as March. So like quarter one, 2027.

So we'll have more time to work on this.

Great.

That's helpful. Appreciate that. Okay. Anything for the good of the org? Hearing nothing. I think our meeting is ended.

Must be a record.

I know. Well, we didn't get into the chatty as we always do, but next time we will. And again, thank you for being so patient with us as we sorted that out. You didn't see the public public.