By Brian Mittge bmittge@chronline.com, Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Chehalis appears to be caught between a rock and a swampy place when it comes to regulations on streamside buffers and wetlands.
A state law requiring a speedy update of city shoreline codes was recently postponed until 2012. The city, however, had already requested and received a grant to pay for a study as it rewrites its regulations.
City leaders aren't especially happy with the result of the study. They also don't want to pay back the $15,000 grant or taint their chances to receive other state grants in the future.
They didn't make any decisions in a Monday work session about the proposed complex changes to the city's regulations for property around streams, rivers and wetlands.
They did, however, consider a possible solution to their quandary of how to honor the grant while giving themselves enough time to improve on the recommendations coming from the consultant.
The idea: adopt the shorelines rules, but postpone their effective date until 2012. That idea won't be up for official vote until next Monday, but it gave the city council a bit of hope after a long, gloomy meeting.
At issue are the buffers of protection required for local bodies of water, from the Chehalis River to Dillenbaugh Creek, which runs through the industrial park and under the freeway near Exit 77.
Community Development Manager Bob Nacht said the city's current riparian, or riverside, buffer system dates from around 1981, and was taken directly from rules created by the county.
Those rules, he said, are broken.
He had one example: a property just north of Salzer Creek, along Exhibitor Road between Skipper's and the Gootee car dealership. Nacht said that several years ago a developer wanted to build on that property, and would have dug down to build his parking lot in the floodway. The floodway is the area immediately next to a stream or river that regularly floods, while the floodplain only floods in extreme events. The city gave an exemption allowing the development, but the state nixed that idea, since it violated a city ban on filling in the floodway, Nacht said.
Nacht said rather than an outright ban on floodway filling, a better alternative is to allow the developer to excavate 110 percent of what he wants to put back in for a parking lot. This actually creates more flood-carrying capacity, said Nacht.
He said the Salzer Creek request was the only one he has heard of that would require that kind of floodway development, but if there were others, the new proposed city shorelines rules would help.
The thick packet of pages sitting before the city council also addressed riparian habitat and wetlands.
The "riparian habitat" proposal would create buffers of up to 200 feet around creeks and rivers where developers must check for endangered and threatened creatures.
The city planning commission had looked at some changes to a proposal from the city's Portland consultants, but the planning commission eventually voted not to support the shorelines changes at all.
"Some of us just have a hard time trusting the Department of Fisheries," said Planning Commission Chairman Jim Ward. "This gives them another thing to work through our city with."
Still, the city council is going to look at the planning commission's changes in its meeting next Monday.
The planning commission and the consultant had recommended 200-foot buffers around "class 1" streams, which include the Chehalis and Newaukum rivers, Salzer Creek, and part of Dillenbaugh Creek. The two agreed on 100-foot buffers around "class 3" streams, which include Coal Creek, Berwick Creek and part of Dillenbaugh Creek.
Currently the city has no streamside riparian habitat corridors in its rules.
"This is new ground, if you will," said Nacht. It's also the area where the city received its grant, and feels it needs to take action. Mark Giffey, speaking on behalf of the industrial park south of Chehalis, said streamside buffers can effectively chop a property into pieces, hurting the park's chances of attracting land-intensive development.
"It's not so much the activity in the buffer, it's are you going to create a permanent division. Suddenly a 20-acre parcel becomes something not that large," Giffey said.
John Mudge, who lives south of Chehalis, has been the only citizen to comment on the city's proposed streamside rules.
In written comments a month ago, Mudge said the city hasn't adequately looked at the effect of paving and other impervious surfaces on stream runoff, nor has it adequately looked at the effect of development on salmon.
A separate proposal within the shorelines plan would create buffers around wetlands.
The city is considering the minimum buffers recommended by the state for high-quality wetlands: 150 feet for type 1 and 100 feet for type 2. For lower-quality wetlands, the buffers would be 75 feet for type 3 and 50 feet for type 4.
Developers would be required to hire a wetlands delineator for all buildings or projects that fall within 200 feet of an area listed as a wetland in a government wetland inventory.
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