Board sends new shoreline program to county planners

Wahkiakum County commissioners voted Tuesday to send a revised version of an update of the county shoreline management plan to the county planning commission for review and recommendation.

In 2017, the planning commission completed a multi-year effort to update the county’s aging original plan and recommended that the board of commissioners adopt it. However, land owners objected to the plan’s new provisions and said they feared the new plan would prohibit them from using land along streams and rivers for agriculture and other traditional uses.

Commissioners agreed with the concerns and asked the county Real Property Rights Advisory Board to go over the plan and make revisions that would make the plan county friendly but still meet state shoreline law. Members of that board had been some of the major critics of the 2017 proposal.

On Tuesday, Commissioner Blair Brady told colleagues Dan Cothren and Mike Backman that the advisory board had completed its work, dropping provisions not mandated by law and developing a shoreline plan that doesn’t hold “Wahkiakum County to a higher standard than any other county in the state.”

He complimented the advisory board on its work.

"They’ve done a lot of work,” he said.

Advisory board member Lily Kolditz said two members, Chuck Hendrickson and Nick Nikkila, had led the way. They had studied plans from other counties and used language from them that already complied with the law.

Commissioners passed Brady’s motion to submit the plan to the planning commission for consideration.

Public Works Director Chuck Beyer, who advises the planning commission, said that group will need to track the changes made by the advisory board as a matter of due process.