Tracking Developments on Streams and Wetlands

November 2001

Local jurisdictions within the Thurston Region adopted Critical Area Ordinances (CAO's) in the early 1990's as a part of compliance with the state Growth Management Act (GMA).  The recent listings of several salmon species as "Threatened" under that Endangered Species Act lead many in the community to ask the following question:

How well are local jurisdictions implementing stream and wetland development regulations in the Thurston region?

In 1997 Thurston Regional Planning Council (TRPC) began to answer this question.  This project evaluated built-out development projects within the cities of Lacey, Olympia, Tumwater, and Thurston County.  A total of 100 projects were selected, which contained either stream or wetland features, and which may have been located within Shoreline Management Act (SMA) jurisdiction.

TRPC collected data from 18 sites in Lacey, 23 sites in Olympia, 47 sites in unincorporated Thurston County, and 12 sites in Tumwater.  A number of sites had more than one stream or wetland per site.  A total of 138 wetland features and 40 stream features were found.

Permit data was collected on all 100 sites, but site inspections were made to only 35 sites.  Sites to be visited were selected randomly from each jurisdiction.  Visits were made to projects with and without mitigation in the same percentage as the total number of projects.  Sites data was collected during the spring and summer of 2000 and in the fall of 2000.  All site visits were made with a staff from the local jurisdiction.

This report focuses on compliance and not on the environmental performance of any particular regulation or standard.  Compliance was measured by determining:

How well the local Critical Area Ordinance (CAO) standards matched with the state guidelines,
If the permits were issued according to the CAO standards, and
If the CAO requirements were implemented on the project site.
To adequately evaluate these various reviews, Benchmarks were created which translated questions into evaluation criteria.  The values for these benchmarks were depicted by: "Sunny", "Partly Cloudy", "Stormy", and "Not Enough Data".  The total budget for the entire project was $77,000.

For more information contact Steven W. Morrison (morriss@trpc.org), Project Manager or call (360) 956-7575.
 

Tracking Developments on Streams and Wetlands - Nov. 2001 [pdf 9 MB]

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