Guest Opinion: Friends’ Appeal Seeks Wildlife Conservation Along With Public Facilities

By Stephanie Buffum Field

As an island community, we depend on barge landings, transfer stations, schools, water treatment systems and other essential public facilities. Friends of the San Juans [FRIENDS} thinks that we can and should provide those services without reducing the quality of our treasured natural surroundings. Relying on this belief, on April 13, 2010, FRIENDS appealed a San Juan County ordinance that would allow essential facilities without fully protecting wildlife or farmlands.

The Growth Management Act (GMA) directs counties to protect critical environmental areas and to conserve agricultural lands. It also directs counties to establish a process for siting essential public facilities.  Rather than reading these goals together, though, the February 9 Upland Essential Public Facilities Ordinance would elevate the status of essential facilities in a way that could sacrifice critical areas and farmlands (upland areas are lands not within shorelines). It would also loosen standards largely for public projects.

“San Juan County is one of the largest developers in the County. When it comes to critical areas protection, the County should be required to play by the same set of rules as the rest of us,” stated Friends of the San Juans Board member Bill Watson.

As the ordinance moved through the legislative process, FRIENDS made suggestions believed to comply with the GMA. “FRIENDS tried to work with the county on this issue. We provided alternative language in our comment letters and testimony during public hearings. The County didn’t correct the weaknesses, and left us with no alternative but to file the petition,” said Stephanie Buffum, Friends of the San Juans Executive Director.

FRIENDS supports siting essential services in locations that don’t unnecessarily sacrifice special areas for wildlife, forests, fish, and farmland. And a searching inquiry should evaluate alternative locations.  When alternatives exist, FRIENDS believes that decisionmakers must choose an alternative that preserves our special areas.

If no alternative exists outside of these special areas then the county must follow mitigation sequencing.  FRIENDS’ staff attorney Kyle Loring stated that “the absence of standards guaranteed to protect critical areas and farmlands from harm by poorly-informed siting processes, and the ordinance’s likely application in the future to shorelines, compelled FRIENDS to take the less-than-ideal step of filing the appeal.”

Stephanie Buffum Field is Executive Director of the Friends of the San Juans