The Ironwood Priority Habitat and Species (PHS) area and urban forest have been destroyed by developer Pacific Ridge, but Sno-King Watershed Council (SKWC) continues its legal fight to protect the water quality in this important tributary to North Creek. Snohomish County has approved a substandard Ironwood design that will not only degrade water quality, but “starve” a critical downslope wetland of water.
On July 8, 2021, SKWC filed its opening brief in Snohomish County Superior Court. A copy of our brief is included in this post. The Schedule from here is:
Aug. 4: Pacific Ridge and PDS file their opening briefs;
Aug. 18: SKWC files its Reply to Pacific Ridge & PDS; and
Sept. 2: Hearing at 1:00 PM in Everett Superior Court. These types of hearings typically last about 2 hours.
Our judge is the Hon. Millie M. Judge. That’s right: Her name is Judge Judge. Dave Bricklin says she is excellent—very fair-minded, not biased toward property owners and government agencies like so many other judges. Judge Judge will issue her decision sometime after September 2, 2021.
Snohomish County Planning and Development Services continues to fight us in court to support their erroneous Ironwood decision. We need your assistance to continue this fight. What can you do to help protect our salmon and water quality in Snohomish County?
First, send an e-mail to the County Council at contact.council@snoco.org and ask them to enact protective legislation needed to stop Planning and Development Services (PDS) from approving projects not in conformance with their own manual. PDS refused to go one iota above the minimum state Ecology requirements so that they can continue to allow developers to exploit loopholes in the new 2021 Drainage Manual. Tell the Council to pass a resolution and an ordinance to:
- Recommend that the County Executive Dave Somers order PDS to withdraw its permit approval and require Pacific Ridge to redesign their Ironwood project to address the issues raised in SKWC’s Land Use Petition Act (LUPA) appeal;
- Prohibit the use of lawn grasses and clovers, that are pollution generating pervious surfaces (PGPS’s), in all bioretention ponds;
- Prohibit the use of all bioretention ponds as play fields and pet toilets by construction a 4-foot high fence around all bioretention ponds;
- Require signage explaining the water quality purpose of bioretention ponds; and
- Require PDS to adopt all the other recommendations in the March 1, 2021 Lider Engineering comment letter to help protect water quality in Snohomish County.
Second, we need to raise money to help support this and other legal challenges. Please consider donating generously to the SKWC at: https://snokingwatershedcouncil.org/donations/.
100% of donations received by SKWC will go to legal expenses or to outside expert witnesses. All work provided by Bill Lider of Lider Engineering for SKWC is donated pro bono.
2021 07 08 Petitioners Opening Brief
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BpQm8kn4UQ1DaZ1Szd8lcT4WKeNSz4BE/view
