Thurston’s Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) had two meetings yesterday, July 26, to share updates on its Shoreline Master Program (SMP) and conducted a roundtable discussion with the Chehalis tribe.
The first meeting yesterday continued the briefings held last May and June, where the board began to discuss public comments received on the Shoreline Master Program (SMP) update.
The SMP regulates development and redevelopment along the shorelines of Puget Sound and large lakes and streams.
“The county is updating its master program as required by state law. This update includes comprehensive and periodic updates and the current shoreline requirements since this current SMP was originally adopted in 1990,” Senior Planner Andrew Deffobis explained.
Deffobis briefed the commissioners about shoreline buffers, shoreline environment designation reviews, decision matrix items with no public comments, and shoreline variance overviews.
Additional steps for the SMP would be:
The board’s second meeting for July 26 is a roundtable discussion, one without any specific agenda or items of decision, with the representatives of the Chehalis tribe.
District 3 Commissioner Tye Menser opened a point of engagement about the Grand Mound Subarea Plan, a subcomponent of the county’s comprehensive plan.
“The county commissioners are working on a plan related to Grand Mound subarea, and that's an area that's an urban growth area boundary that we're allowed to do some more urban style development that we can’t do in the rural areas,” Menser said. “Three of them requested a pushing of the urban growth area boundary.”
The tribe’s representative raised a mining concern– whether there are any requirements about restoring lands after the operation ceases.
“As I understand it, they've got permission under their permit to keep mining. It's like, you can mine, and then you hit a pivot point where we either stop and reclaim, and it can be something else, or you keep mining, and then you're pretty much not going to turn it into something else. It's kind of like – be a lake,” Menser explained.
“We certainly appreciate that you are bringing the tribe into the conversation at the beginning of the project,” said Jeff Warnke, Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation’s Director of Government and Public Relations.
There will be a board briefing at 2 p.m. next Thursday, August 3, to tackle the next steps for the Grand Mound area planning process.
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