Committee to review critical areas ordinance.

This week’s Land Use Committee meeting will include a review of the city’s Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO) as required by city code. According to the staff memo in preparation for the meeting, the section relating to geologically hazardous areas (GHA) needs some changes.

Land Use Committee Meeting
Tuesday, October 6, 2009 – 12:30 – 2:30 p.m.
City Council Chamber

A discussion relating to the CAO will begin at approximately 1:25 p.m. and has been scheduled for 45 minutes. If you home is on or adjacent to a geologically hazardous area (see definition below), you should plan to attend. If you do, please take notes and send them to us.

No proof that bulkheads harm shoreline.

Peter Ruggiero, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University

The shores of Puget Sound are rapidly being hardened and covered with artificial structures. While shoreline armoring often succeeds in protecting upland investments, shoreline armoring activities are hypothesized to represent a significant source of nearshore morphodynamic and marine habitat modification in Puget Sound.

Shoreline armoring is believed to affect physical processes in many ways, primarily by causing beach narrowing, sediment coarsening, and a decrease in the natural sediment supply from eroding bluffs. Shoreline armoring is also thought to affect biological processes through loss of upper intertidal habitat, changes in sediment composition, and decreased organic input.

However, it has not been confirmed in the field or the laboratory whether currents and sediment transport rates will increase or decrease in front of a hardened shoreline, as compared to a non-armored section of beach, and whether the sedimentary environment will be significantly modified.

Hearing examiner nukes Cannery Cove appeal.

by Gerald Elfendahl, Bianbridge Island Historian

Dear Friends of Cannery Cove (aka Strawberry Cannery Park),

Attached (below) is a decision of the Hearing Examiner to our City SEPA (State Environmental Policy Act) DNS (Determination of Non-significance) Appeal. It is very detailed and those who attended the three days of hearing, will want to look through it carefully. It is 22 pages. I have yet to wade through it as it just came in by email. While she supports a City determination of “non-significance”, it is clearly significant to many if not most here!

We are thankful for the Hearing Examiner’s time, thoughtfulness and courtesies. We are grateful for the City Council directing City staff to stop planning on this project. Laws don’t save historic properties: People do! We are grateful that the Council is scheduling open public study sessions on the project. Your input will be important in that.

Fixing Strawberry Plant / Cannery Cove Park

by Rod Stevens

This is the story of how a staff-driven planning process would have put much of a $1.5 million park off-limits to public use. It’s the story of how sham public involvement can lead to a citizen revolt. It’s also the story of possibility, of how, under a new form of government, we might be able to back up and do things right. This story of possibility also includes a trust fund with $30 million that can only be spent here, which might be used to leverage community-driven projects for environmental restoration.

Shoreline Master Program (SMP) update timeline.

When Alice Tawresey (Bainbridge Shoreline Homeowners treasurer) met with Kathy Cook (planning director) and Libby Hudson (long range planning dividion manager) last week, they gave her a copy of the SMP update process outline developed by the Department of Ecology (DOE). City planners must follow this outline as part of a DOE grant. It is intended to reflect WAC (Washington Administrative Code) requirements.

This week, Barry Peters shared a rough timeline with us which was provide at his request by Ms. Hudson. In her email to Mr. Peters, she said, “Please note that one of the first steps is to develop a public participation process. We anticipate doing that this year as part of Phase 1.”

A future built on our past.

Commentary by Rod Stevens.

If you stand in the lobby of the Bainbridge Island Historical Society and look across the street, you will see a house that was built in 1903 to house shipyard workers, and that was first inhabited by a man who made spars for lumber schooners. This is one of a handful of remaining historic houses that once made Ericksen Avenue one of the most charming streets In Puget Sound. But that charm is quickly disappearing. It turns out that the historic overlay zone for Ericksen Avenue, written under the current Mayor, is worthless when it comes to saving that house.

Up Eagle Harbor, another historic property is also threatened: but this threat is as much to future uses as to the remaining foundations and evidence of a cannery that used to send off barrels and bushels of strawberries. The City’s planners have declared that this place is one of no historic significance, and they are trying to return it to a pristine state of nature that would wipe out most of the remaining evidence of the cannery, and that would limit most of the future use to little more than picnicking and staring at the water.

What happens if your home is declared nonconforming?

Last summer, a proposed Critical Areas Ordinance would have declared almost every shoreline home on Bainbridge Island as “nonconforming”. We were advised by attorney Dennis Reynolds that this was a “highly disfavored status”. Specifically, he said the following…