Reworked ordinance offers break on waterside buffers

By Keith Ervin
Seattle Times staff reporter

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King County farmers may not have to create wide buffer zones around creeks and wetlands under a proposed ordinance if they provide other protection to those waterways, County Executive Ron Sims said yesterday.

An earlier draft of a revamped "critical-areas ordinance" angered many landowners by requiring a "no-touch" zone of as much as 300 feet around wetlands and 165 feet beside streams.

The law also would severely restrict how much logging or land-clearing rural property owners could do.

Sims' staff drafted those tough proposals after the federal government's finding that Puget Sound chinook salmon is a threatened species. Concern about local fish runs grew further with Sims' announcement last fall that a run of freshwater salmon has gone extinct in Lake Sammamish.

Under the latest reworking of the critical-areas proposal, farmers could avoid waterside buffers altogether and other rural landowners could submit plans to reduce their size.

Sims plans to submit the stream-protection ordinance and a revised comprehensive land-use plan to the Metropolitan King County Council on Monday.

A final draft of the critical-areas ordinance is being written, and the appropriate size of buffers to protect streams and wetlands in urban areas is still under debate, officials in the Department of Development and Environmental Services (DDES) said yesterday.

But the Sims administration has made a key concession to farmers who opposed earlier drafts of the plan: Farmers would be exempt from stream buffers if they submit acceptable management plans. Those plans likely would have to keep animal waste out of streams.

"We have come to say that we're doing less regulation of agriculture as long as they have adopted best-management practices," Sims said after a press conference yesterday. "We recognize their efforts to steward their land."

If farmers refused to work with local conservation districts to write management plans, they would be subject to the stream buffers when they sought to make improvements to their property.
 
Nonfarming residents of rural areas also could narrow the size of waterside buffers by submitting their own stewardship plans. Those plans could include restoring native plants that were removed in the past and restricting the amount of land covered by a house and driveway.

Sims said he decided to give farmers more flexibility in response to their complaints about the proposed development buffers around waterways. "They were saying, 'No more regulations.' We recognized that."

Sims' proposal would eliminate the requirement that farmers get a county permit to maintain drainage ditches. They would still need a state permit.

Several members of a "stakeholders" group that advised Sims on the ordinance praised his willingness to work with all sides. But they acknowledged that a tough political battle lies ahead over the streamside buffers and proposed restrictions on cutting trees.

The law would require rural landowners to leave trees and other native plants on 65 percent of their land.

Harry Reinert, a DDES manager who has played a lead role in writing the ordinance, said it is "very clear" based on recent scientific research that fish habitat in streams degrades rapidly when 35 percent of the forest cover is removed.

In the Bear Creek and Issaquah Creek basins, where the land-clearing restriction is already in place, Reinert said water quality has improved. "We can attribute that to the fact that we have clearing restrictions and we have bigger stream buffers," he said.

Tim Trohimovich, planning director for the growth-management group 1000 Friends of Washington, said the tree-protection provision "is cutting edge. I'm not aware of another county in Washington state that has adopted it for their whole rural area.

"Overall, we think this is a significant improvement over what we have now, and we applaud the county" for the proposal, Trohimovich said.

Tim Attebery, King County manager of Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties, said Sims has done a good job of listening to different interests, but Master Builders is concerned about the proposed waterway buffers in rural areas.

King County Councilman Steve Hammond, R-Enumclaw, said he doubts there is a strong scientific rationale behind some of the proposals, particularly those buffers.

Hammond said farmers in his district would be unhappy about being told to submit farm-management plans. "It's distasteful to them," he said, "to call a 20-something county employee and ask them, 'How should I be farming?' when they have been farming longer than the county person has been alive."

Rick Spence, governmental-affairs director for the property-rights group May Valley Environmental Council, called the proposed ordinance "a waste of legislation promulgated by Ron Sims' gang of thieves."

Dow Constantine, R-Seattle, chairman of the County Council's growth-management committee, said the panel would look closely at the scientific rationale for the proposed regulations. Constantine said he was pleased that rural residents who write stewardship plans could qualify for breaks on property taxes and surface-water management fees.

The comprehensive plan amendments proposed by Sims would:

• Allow more farm-related businesses, such as machinery-repair shops, in the county's agricultural zones. Farmers also could do more food processing and sell products from other farms at outdoor markets.

• Permit cottage-style housing communities built around a central green in urban areas.

• Change the traffic "concurrency" standard to allow more rush-hour congestion in urban areas than in rural.

• Adjust the urban-growth boundary in nine areas, including 120 acres largely surrounded by urban development on Willows Road south of Woodinville.

• Move 120 acres from the Redmond Ridge "panhandle" from the urban zone into the rural zone in exchange for increasing density in another part of the urban village.

Times staff reporter Jon Savelle contributed to this report. Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com

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