On June 5, members of the Springland Court neighborhood and others attended a Bellingham City Council meeting to support an extension of the emergency moratorium on development in the Lake Whatcom watershed.
Some families brought their young children, some grade-school age, who bravely gave impassioned defenses of the watershed and wetlands threatened by future development unless the council enacts a permanent ban on building in the watershed.
At one point, during the public comment period, council member Michael Lilliquist interrupted, telling the children and their families that “there’s no project I know of to develop any land. The city that I know of is not proposing to remove any forest. This has to do with the moratorium that actually prevents development in the watershed until we can formulate rules. So, please continue to talk about the health of Lake Whatcom.”
The council tried to hide behind the phrase that “no projects had been approved” as a means of deflecting attention from the council’s own previous intentions. As Lilliquist said, the moratorium was “adopted by the council to allow staff time to determine if the multi-family densities in the Silver Beach neighborhood are consistent with existing city policies for protection of water quality in Whatcom Lake, or if amendments are necessary. Basically, we saw a conflict between changes in residential multi and allowed density and other long-standing protections we had in place that actually were kind of prohibitive or constraining on development.”
The council maintained that “properties north of Academy, west of the Silver Bridge Elementary School, end of Springbrook Lane, end of Alice Street, end of Oregon Street, Barkley Boulevard South, are all owned by the city. They are all properties that are designated as parks or otherwise protected by the city … we are not aware of any park property that’s slated for development.” Yet, “park property” beyond the end of Oregon Street is already platted for future development.
The extension to the emergency moratorium was passed. However, instead of a temporary pause, we need a long-term commitment from the council and the city to protect the Lake Whatcom watershed, especially the land the city owns, and the lake itself.
The council met because city staff identified a “conflict” between density and protecting a vital infrastructure resource. In fact, there is no conflict because population density cannot be increased without the infrastructure to support it. Tragically, in this case, density would further degrade our imperiled water infrastructure that is supporting current residents.
The city has a history of prioritizing development over maintaining or expanding infrastructure. Our sewage plant that needed to be replaced in 2010 is running on parts purchased on eBay. The current sewer pipe replacement project on Woburn Street is in response to development north of Barkley Village that the pipeline cannot accommodate (as reported in the Cascadia Daily News). We can’t have density without infrastructure.
Additionally, at this same meeting, but behind closed doors, the council voted to dissolve the Watershed Advisory Board that provides citizen oversight of the watershed and replaced it with a new Water Resources Advisory Board that may or may not have members right now. As well, the process the council has adopted to assess the extension of the moratorium is non-transparent and includes loopholes in section 5 of the City Council Agenda Bill 23732: “This moratorium shall be extended for an additional six (6) months, beginning on July 11, 2022, and ending on January 11, 2024, unless an ordinance is adopted amending the Bellingham Municipal Code and/or the Silver Beach Neighborhood Plan and rescinding the moratorium before its expiration.”
This follows a pattern of non-transparency and lack of accountability by the city, as it prioritizes flawed development projects like the Barkley Meadows project, which was vigorously opposed by residents and went forward despite a deeply flawed traffic analysis and the needless destruction of habitat and wetlands that would result. That project is now underway. The contractors are clearcutting woods and wetlands and razing all habitat.
The council must recognize that nature is also infrastructure. Resident Gwen Hunter made the commendable observation that the city should change the signage around the lake stating that the lake is a reservoir. She went on to request the “thousand-gallon private fuel depot, that is located on our drinking water reservoir, be removed.”
In reality, the false choice between protecting vital infrastructure or further degrading it in favor of unsustainable growth disguised as density is alive and well in city hall. We don’t have the luxury of political gamesmanship about habitat destruction and must immediately insist the process shift to permanently protecting and more vigorously enforcing existing and needed legislation to protect the watershed from pesticides, motorboats, jet skis, leaking septic systems and other threats to this natural infrastructure.
Randall Potts has interned and volunteered in wildlife rehabilitation in several centers and been interested in civil governance in Bellingham since moving here in 2003. They are the author of two poetry collections, “Trickster” (Kohl House Poets Series, University of Iowa Press, 2014) and “Collision Center” (O Books, 1994), as well as a chapbook, “Recant (A Revision)” (Leave Books, 1994). They identify as nonbinary.
This commentary was updated at 3:50 p.m. on June 15, 2023 to include wording changes the author had submitted for a description of dates surrounding the city’s building moratorium, and a characterization of the Barkley Meadows Project.
City’s ’emergency’ Lake Whatcom moratorium should become long-term
Density collides with water quality in Silver Beach
On June 5, members of the Springland Court neighborhood and others attended a Bellingham City Council meeting to support an extension of the emergency moratorium on development in the Lake Whatcom watershed.
Some families brought their young children, some grade-school age, who bravely gave impassioned defenses of the watershed and wetlands threatened by future development unless the council enacts a permanent ban on building in the watershed.
At one point, during the public comment period, council member Michael Lilliquist interrupted, telling the children and their families that “there’s no project I know of to develop any land. The city that I know of is not proposing to remove any forest. This has to do with the moratorium that actually prevents development in the watershed until we can formulate rules. So, please continue to talk about the health of Lake Whatcom.”
The council tried to hide behind the phrase that “no projects had been approved” as a means of deflecting attention from the council’s own previous intentions. As Lilliquist said, the moratorium was “adopted by the council to allow staff time to determine if the multi-family densities in the Silver Beach neighborhood are consistent with existing city policies for protection of water quality in Whatcom Lake, or if amendments are necessary. Basically, we saw a conflict between changes in residential multi and allowed density and other long-standing protections we had in place that actually were kind of prohibitive or constraining on development.”
The council maintained that “properties north of Academy, west of the Silver Bridge Elementary School, end of Springbrook Lane, end of Alice Street, end of Oregon Street, Barkley Boulevard South, are all owned by the city. They are all properties that are designated as parks or otherwise protected by the city … we are not aware of any park property that’s slated for development.” Yet, “park property” beyond the end of Oregon Street is already platted for future development.
The extension to the emergency moratorium was passed. However, instead of a temporary pause, we need a long-term commitment from the council and the city to protect the Lake Whatcom watershed, especially the land the city owns, and the lake itself.
The council met because city staff identified a “conflict” between density and protecting a vital infrastructure resource. In fact, there is no conflict because population density cannot be increased without the infrastructure to support it. Tragically, in this case, density would further degrade our imperiled water infrastructure that is supporting current residents.
The city has a history of prioritizing development over maintaining or expanding infrastructure. Our sewage plant that needed to be replaced in 2010 is running on parts purchased on eBay. The current sewer pipe replacement project on Woburn Street is in response to development north of Barkley Village that the pipeline cannot accommodate (as reported in the Cascadia Daily News). We can’t have density without infrastructure.
Additionally, at this same meeting, but behind closed doors, the council voted to dissolve the Watershed Advisory Board that provides citizen oversight of the watershed and replaced it with a new Water Resources Advisory Board that may or may not have members right now. As well, the process the council has adopted to assess the extension of the moratorium is non-transparent and includes loopholes in section 5 of the City Council Agenda Bill 23732: “This moratorium shall be extended for an additional six (6) months, beginning on July 11, 2022, and ending on January 11, 2024, unless an ordinance is adopted amending the Bellingham Municipal Code and/or the Silver Beach Neighborhood Plan and rescinding the moratorium before its expiration.”
This follows a pattern of non-transparency and lack of accountability by the city, as it prioritizes flawed development projects like the Barkley Meadows project, which was vigorously opposed by residents and went forward despite a deeply flawed traffic analysis and the needless destruction of habitat and wetlands that would result. That project is now underway. The contractors are clearcutting woods and wetlands and razing all habitat.
The council must recognize that nature is also infrastructure. Resident Gwen Hunter made the commendable observation that the city should change the signage around the lake stating that the lake is a reservoir. She went on to request the “thousand-gallon private fuel depot, that is located on our drinking water reservoir, be removed.”
In reality, the false choice between protecting vital infrastructure or further degrading it in favor of unsustainable growth disguised as density is alive and well in city hall. We don’t have the luxury of political gamesmanship about habitat destruction and must immediately insist the process shift to permanently protecting and more vigorously enforcing existing and needed legislation to protect the watershed from pesticides, motorboats, jet skis, leaking septic systems and other threats to this natural infrastructure.
Randall Potts has interned and volunteered in wildlife rehabilitation in several centers and been interested in civil governance in Bellingham since moving here in 2003. They are the author of two poetry collections, “Trickster” (Kohl House Poets Series, University of Iowa Press, 2014) and “Collision Center” (O Books, 1994), as well as a chapbook, “Recant (A Revision)” (Leave Books, 1994). They identify as nonbinary.
This commentary was updated at 3:50 p.m. on June 15, 2023 to include wording changes the author had submitted for a description of dates surrounding the city’s building moratorium, and a characterization of the Barkley Meadows Project.
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