Saltwater shores need protection, groups say
The City of Tacoma has failed to adequately protect critical fish and wildlife habitat along its shoreline, a coalition of environmental and growth management groups contends.
Citizens for a Healthy Bay, Tahoma Audubon Society, People for Puget Sound and Futurewise, formerly known as 1,000 Friends of Washington, have challenged the city’s new “critical areas� ordinance in a Jan. 13 petition to the Central Puget Sound Growth Management Hearings Board.
The groups claim city officials categorically excluded saltwater areas from the law adopted by the City Council in November, said Leslie Ann Rose, senior policy analyst for Citizens for a Healthy Bay, the Commencement Bay advocacy group.
Tacoma may be urban, but its 45 miles of shoreline are valuable, and not just for shipping, Rose said. Areas vital to salmon and other aquatic life deserve protection, she said. These include eelgrass beds, pocket marshes, Northeast Tacoma’s bluffs and areas along the Tacoma Narrows, for example.
But existing shoreline rules fall short of necessary protections, she said.
The state’s Growth Management Act requires cities and counties to use science to identify critical areas. The designation applies to valuable fish and wildlife habitat, wetlands, aquifer-recharge zones, unstable slopes and areas deemed geologically hazardous or flood prone.
A preliminary hearing on the appeal is scheduled for Feb. 13, and a hearing on the merits is set for May 18. A decision will be issued by July 13, said Linda Stores, the growth board’s administrative officer.
“We’re going to try to reach a settlement with the other side,� said Kyle Crews, a Tacoma assistant city attorney.
Peter Katich, Tacoma’s land-use administrator, said city officials dispute the suggestion that they have ignored protections for aquatic habitat along the shoreline. The city had to meet a December deadline for adoption of the critical areas ordinance, he said.
If necessary, protections for shoreline areas will be incorporated in a pending update of the city’s shoreline master plan, he said.
“It’s a complicated series of code amendments,� Katich said.
Tacoma isn’t the first local government to struggle with the requirements of state shoreline and growth management laws.
About a year ago, Citizens for a Healthy Bay and People for Puget Sound appealed to the same hearings board after Pierce County officials declined to require developers to retain a vegetative buffer along shorelines. The hearings board found the county had violated the state law.
Since then, the county has adopted the buffer requirement, and the hearings board has endorsed it.
How cities and counties around Puget Sound apply state shoreline and growth management laws has caused controversy elsewhere as well, said state policy advisers.
Heather Ballash, who works for the state Department of Community Trade and Economic Development, and Leonard Bauer, managing director of the agency’s growth management program, said lawmakers in 2003 adopted a law intended to draw a distinction between growth management and shoreline management requirements. But it’s not clear. And different growth management hearings boards have issued seemingly contradictory rulings in shorelines cases involving Everett and Anacortes, they said.
This article is republished courtesy of the Tacoma News Tribune:
Saltwater shores need protection, groups say
