Planning commission addresses shoreline program concerns

Last Thursday, the planning commission for the Wahkiakum County Shoreline Master Program (SMP) held a workshop at Johnson Park to continue work on the document and address public concerns.

“The planning commissioners and I have two goals,” Garrett Phillips said, “to give you info about the shoreline master program updates so you learn some things about it, and to get questions and comments and feelings from you.”

Phillips is a coastal planner for the Columbia River Estuary Study Taskforce (CREST) and was hired through a grant from the state to help Wahkiakum County update their SMP.

“We have a final draft and there are opportunities to change it before the county takes action to approve it and make it official," Phillips said, before giving a basic overview of the SMP.

For the most part, timber harvesting and agriculture are not regulated by the SMP, according to Phillips. Land that has been farmed at any time can be farmed again. Forest practices next to the Columbia River are already regulated.

Any existing development, whether it is a home or a business, will not have to be moved or changed due to any updates to the SMP.

“About 90 percent of the county’s land area isn’t covered by the SMP,” Phillips said. “The SMP really just covers the areas close to the major rivers and streams. That is 200 feet from the rivers and streams. For wetlands, [the buffer] goes out to the edge of the wetland.”

He reminded the audience that the updated SMP is fundamentally the same as the one that has been in effect since the 1970s, and that wetlands, riparian areas, frequently flooded areas have been regulated by the county for years.

"The general rule of thumb is that you are not supposed to develop in there,” Phillips said of the buffers, “but there are exceptions that can lessen that buffer a bit.”

Phillips presented several scenarios and answered questions as they arose.

“If you have a 100 foot deep lot on Puget Island, and you have to have 138 foot buffer what do you do?” asked one resident.

“I think there might be some opportunities to give the planning authority to grant an exception in that case,” Phillips remarked after pointing out that the man would need a permit.

One person wondered if they were going to have to pay taxes on lands they no longer own.

“We are really losing value,” she said.

One Rosburg resident said with the new buffers and changing criteria, he went from 8 1/2 acres to a quarter acre of land that could be developed.

“It used to be we were stewards of the land. The farmers, the ranchers,” Skamokawa resident Jerry Ledtke said. “We took care of our land and we took care of the habitat, and now the government is the steward, and they don’t have a very good track record.”

“The only real difference is the width of the buffer,” Gene Healy commented. “I think it’s important that we understand that we are trying to work on a regulation that is going to make this area little bigger, but we’re not going to make the regulation any different.”