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06/17/2008: "CC Continues Discussion On Stormwater Regulation Complaints"

County Administrator Pete Rose told the Council that they need to ask themselves "How do you want to ask the public to respond to their concerns on the regulations?" Rose said the the regulations are based on state guidelines that are 1,100 pages long.

The County Council received a requested briefing and discussed a staff report Tuesday (06-17-08) from staff on the county stormwater regulations.

Rose said the public seems to have responded in a negative way to the regulations because they are now being required to do things they did not have to do in the past, but the regulations have not changed. community development & Planning Director Ron Hendrickson explained that because is department is now fully staffed, they can enforce the regulations.

One of the concerns, Rose said, is that driveways, be they new or existing, are factored into the computations, and the resulting increase in square footage pushes proposed projects into the more demanding set of regulations.

The briefing request resulted from a number of complaints and concerns some council members have received that the current regulations are not appropriate to rural areas, too expensive to install, and the instructions for design are confusing. (Previous story)

Councilman Rich Peterson has expressed his concern that unless they address complaints about the current regulations, the council is going to find that once they write a new stormwater ordinance, it will be a hard sell to the public. Councilman Gene Knapp has repeatedly said the current regulations must be redone.



Knapp has been the most vocal about what he has labeled the inappropriateness of using stormwater regulations for SJC (San Juan County) the council was told that were simply adopted from the state; which in turn were inspired by King County regulations

Last week Knapp told the council that he has been doing research on the subject, and has been told that some of the regulations the county has been applying are intended for large commercial projects; and used the example of parking area regulations intended for fifty cars being applied to residential parking in front of a house.

Former County Commissioner John Evans told the Island Guardian last week that he had been approached by one of the authors of the King County strormwater regulations, who informed him that it had never been the intent of the King County regulations to be applied to rural areas.

Councilman Kevin Ranker has also been calling around, and has found that SJC is not the only county to have taken the easy route and simply adopted whole cloth the King County regulations, but that they too are now also looking for an alternative.

Ranker said that both Mason and Clallam Counties are willing to share their plans with SJC, and that the WSAC (Washington State Association of Counties) is reviewing stormwater plans in all 39 counties in Washington to obtain information on how each county is dealing with the state mandated requirement to address stormwater.

The Council will discuss the Staff report , and at some point at a later date open up the discussion to public comment.