Thurston County processes 123 applications for Habitat Conservation Plan review

Joshua Cummings, Director of Community Planning and Economic Development, met with the Thurston Board of County Commissioners for the Habitat Conservation Plan update yesterday, October 17.

According to the county’s page, the County's Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) is a mitigation plan to replace the habitat lost to the building and development it permits, and is also the legal way to develop property compliant with federal endangered species laws.

As explained in the county’s video, mitigation happens when the permit applicant replaces the federally listed threatened and endangered species habitat somewhere suitable other than the impacted property.

Before, citizens needed to undergo the long process of getting a federal permit to build a structure on land with protected species. HCP makes this process shorter by assigning the county to process its permits after giving applicants mitigation options.

If Thurston County issues a permit to the applicant, it ensures that the project meets county and federal regulations.

HCP Permits

“To date, we have received 123 applications for the Habitat Conservation Plan review. And out of that 123, 99 have been completed, and 20 are still in review,” said Cummings.

Cummings also gave the amount collected from the permit applicants, as the board requested during the last meeting.

“The total fees thus far are about $763,000. But a big portion of that is $540,000, coming from a large subdivision,” Cummings shared. “$540,000 is essentially an 80-acre project with 40 acres of habitat being impacted. So that's a big bucket of the mitigation process-- you can see that that's how that total gets up to $763,000.”

Cummings also said that the mitigation fee is directly proportional to the project's impact. Applicants that are impacting more land also pay more.

“When you talk about how come we don't move things faster, and time is money-- this is actually one of those shining examples of ensuring that we were concurrent in our review,” emphasized Cummings.