Proposal to clear trees for 105 new homes in Thurston County survives appeal
A plan to build 105 new homes on a heavily forested Thurston County property will proceed after the Board of County Commissioners rejected a hearing examiner appeal Wednesday.
The property in question is located at 1318 88th Ave. SW in rural Thurston County but within the Tumwater Urban Growth Area.
A group of six neighbors filed the appeal on May 14, two weeks after Hearing Examiner Sharon Rice approved a preliminary plat to subdivide the 22.04-acre property into 105 single-family residential lots with conditions as well as a permit to harvest about one million board feet of timber from the site. The plan has drawn opposition from some neighbors who are concerned about the environmental and traffic impacts of the project, The Olympian previously reported. The applicant is local developer Todd Hansen of Tenino Land Company LLC. Hansen is represented by attorney Heather Burgess of Dickson Frohlich Phillips Burgess PLLC.
In the appeal, the neighbors, led by Jim Weston, argued the hearing examiner erred by approving the preliminary plat without an already completed groundwater impact analysis as required by Thurston County code, the county’s Drainage Design and Erosion Control Manual and state law.
“Without the mounding analysis, the record before the hearing examiner had no evidence of whether this project will cause groundwater flooding to surrounding properties,” Weston said at the Wednesday hearing.
However, the board ruled that the analysis is only required at final plat approval. In Rice’s preliminary plat approval, she required the applicant to comply with the drainage manual if they received final approval from the county and met other conditions.
“To require final conditions within a preliminary plat is not appropriate and is contrary to the statute and county code,” the board’s decision reads. “Appellants present no authority that requires the Hearing Examiner to alter her sequence of approval. Additionally, no case law exists to support the Appellants’ argument. The only case law that the Appellants presented to the Board to support their position were artificial intelligence hallucinations, which the Board has disregarded as inappropriate.”
Four of five commissioners signed onto the quasi-judicial decision. Commissioner Carolina Mejia recused herself from the appeal hearing and decision.
At the Wednesday hearing, Commissioner and Board Chair Tye Menser said Mejia received ex parte communications from either the opponents or proponents of the proposal on appeal. All other commissioners affirmed they did not receive any such communications.
The property is located in the Salmon Creek drainage basin, Weston said, which is historically vulnerable to groundwater flooding.
“Some homes experience groundwater underneath and around them throughout the Salmon Creek basin in very wet years,” Weston said. “Septic systems have failed and drinking water has been contaminated. I have neighbors directly across from me that have experienced both of those situations.”
Weston said this matters because the groundwater system in the area is extremely fragile and can quickly reach critical levels.
“Small changes in recharge can have real impacts on neighbors, and adding to the risk, the applicant proposes an infiltration basin that would have a mere one and a half foot separation from the high groundwater level, that leaves virtually no room to accommodate unusually high groundwater,” Weston said.
Weston said he’s not against development, but rather he wants to ensure that the development does not flood neighboring property. He admitted he’s not a lawyer, and the appeal filings have some mistakes in them.
“However, it’s a heartfelt concern that removing many trees, increasing the rainfall hitting the ground as well as building on aquifer with high groundwater to begin with is just a flood waiting to happen,” Weston said.
Burgess said the hearing examiner correctly approved the preliminary plat, and the proposal has gone through an extensive multi-jurisdictional review process.
“There was no testimony or evidence presented at the hearing that the drainage design for the project did not or could not meet adopted (Drainage Manual) standards, nor was there any expert testimony offered reviewing the project’s proposed drainage design in that manner,” Burgess said. “This appeal turns on timing, and respectfully, it relies on an incorrect construction of what the approval requirements are.”
Burgess acknowledged that the area has high groundwater that can cause “horrible flooding.” However, she said the mounding analysis would be completed before final engineering approval as it was not required for consideration of the preliminary plat.
“It’s very important to manage,” Burgess said of the flooding. “We don’t want to have our development inundated with it either, and so it’s really important to comply with those standards.”
The developer must still meet the hearing examiner’s conditions and secure additional approvals, including final engineering approval and construction permits, Burgess said. No clearing and grading will occur on site until that happens, she added.
“We have to have all of those approvals in place before any tree gets cut,” Burgess said.
Hansen told The Olympian in April that it’s unclear when construction may start because development approvals will take many months.
“The development process is very time-consuming and prone to delay and revision,” Hansen previously said.
