Lake Whatcom - Treatment Center or Water District
Lake Whatcom - Treatment Center or Water District
Once you put water and sewer lines in, growth is inevitable. To all those who are late coming to the party, opposition to the unlawful expansion of these services by water districts and our county gov
Once you put water and sewer lines in, growth is inevitable. To all those who are late coming to the party, opposition to the unlawful expansion of these services by water districts and our county government has never been about water for the Lake Whatcom Residential Treatment Center.
From the beginning it has been about Whatcom county government ignoring its own restrictions, enacted in order to comply with the Growth Management Act, though hardly enforced. It is a demand that the county stop facilitating growth in rural areas and resource lands by allowing urban levels of water and sewer service into those areas. It is about forcing the county to accept that there is a difference between appropriate levels of governmental service in rural and urban areas. Zoning will never be enough.
The distinction was aptly drawn by the legislature, and unequivocally supported by the State Supreme Court. Whatcom county has chosen to blur that distinction. Stated succinctly, the legislature defined rural levels of service as those provided at an intensity historically found in rural areas and not usually found in urban areas. Of the two, the second condition is far and away the more significant, for frankly, few proposed intensities of water service can not be found in urban areas.
And this extremely restrictive condition was intended to stop sprawling, uncontrolled growth from continuing to eat up our farm and forest lands and destroy the rural character of our non metropolitan counties. Sewer lines are outright banned outside of UGAs, without exception. Public water systems are allowed if they are necessary for a legitimate health, safety or environmental emergency; but if and only if they can be provided without their provision leading to urban development.
The wisdom of the law is its recognition that these services will inevitably create inexorable political pressure on malleable county governments to capitulate to zoning changes for individuals who encourage the installation of these services or acquire land in reach of them.
Whatcom county's Comprehensive Plan intends to, “Discourage extension of urban levels of water service to areas not designated as urban growth areas.” Whatcom county's Comprehensive Water Plan adopts the definition of the legislature to distinguish rural from urban levels of service.
Nonetheless Whatcom county's attorneys can claim that 8” water mains and their associated pumping stations proposed on Squalicum Mountain, “are outright permitted in all areas of the county. This project does not violate the Growth Management Act's prohibition against extending urban services into rural areas.”
This, quite simply, is what it is all about. It was never, and is not now, about the Treatment Center or a debate about its needs. There are ample legal means for them to receive what they need. We need not allow the county to continue to ignore the law to help them.
This is about our county government's cavalier disregard for the protections intended for our farms, forestlands, critical areas and rural communities.
It is immediately about preventing the clever first step to get urban services to a point adjacent to an enormous development in our rural forest. And in the future to transform what is now a primordial system filtering and funneling fresh clean water to the lake, into hundreds, even thousands of residences polluting that reservoir instead.
From the beginning it has been about Whatcom county government ignoring its own restrictions, enacted in order to comply with the Growth Management Act, though hardly enforced. It is a demand that the county stop facilitating growth in rural areas and resource lands by allowing urban levels of water and sewer service into those areas. It is about forcing the county to accept that there is a difference between appropriate levels of governmental service in rural and urban areas. Zoning will never be enough.
The distinction was aptly drawn by the legislature, and unequivocally supported by the State Supreme Court. Whatcom county has chosen to blur that distinction. Stated succinctly, the legislature defined rural levels of service as those provided at an intensity historically found in rural areas and not usually found in urban areas. Of the two, the second condition is far and away the more significant, for frankly, few proposed intensities of water service can not be found in urban areas.
And this extremely restrictive condition was intended to stop sprawling, uncontrolled growth from continuing to eat up our farm and forest lands and destroy the rural character of our non metropolitan counties. Sewer lines are outright banned outside of UGAs, without exception. Public water systems are allowed if they are necessary for a legitimate health, safety or environmental emergency; but if and only if they can be provided without their provision leading to urban development.
The wisdom of the law is its recognition that these services will inevitably create inexorable political pressure on malleable county governments to capitulate to zoning changes for individuals who encourage the installation of these services or acquire land in reach of them.
Whatcom county's Comprehensive Plan intends to, “Discourage extension of urban levels of water service to areas not designated as urban growth areas.” Whatcom county's Comprehensive Water Plan adopts the definition of the legislature to distinguish rural from urban levels of service.
Nonetheless Whatcom county's attorneys can claim that 8” water mains and their associated pumping stations proposed on Squalicum Mountain, “are outright permitted in all areas of the county. This project does not violate the Growth Management Act's prohibition against extending urban services into rural areas.”
This, quite simply, is what it is all about. It was never, and is not now, about the Treatment Center or a debate about its needs. There are ample legal means for them to receive what they need. We need not allow the county to continue to ignore the law to help them.
This is about our county government's cavalier disregard for the protections intended for our farms, forestlands, critical areas and rural communities.
It is immediately about preventing the clever first step to get urban services to a point adjacent to an enormous development in our rural forest. And in the future to transform what is now a primordial system filtering and funneling fresh clean water to the lake, into hundreds, even thousands of residences polluting that reservoir instead.
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