Blaine UGA

My October 13, 2024, letter to Whatcom County Council:

In his October 10 letter to Blaine City Council, Blaine Community Development Services director Alex Wenger proposes significant changes to Blaine's Urban Growth Areas. Allegedly, the de-annexation of a portion of the UGA is due to problems a developer is having in the aquifer protection recharge area. 

The Critical Aquifer Recharge Area (CARA) for Blaine's drinking water should never have been included in Blaine's UGA, and Whatcom County failed us by allowing it. Whatcom County failed us again when last year you allowed Mr. Wenger to upzone the CARA for high-density residential development without doing an environmental impact statement as required by law.

While climate resilience and environmental justice are the subjects of national policy discussions, little attention is focused on how laws such as the United States Clean Water Act and the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) in Washington State are being subverted by corrupt local government officials without a word from state and federal oversight agencies such as the Washington State Department of Ecology (DOE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

We took evidence of civil and criminal wrongdoing by the City of Blaine to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and EPA criminal division a year ago. In June, Blaine Water Coalition filed a formal complaint to the EPA office of external civil rights compliance against WA State for not enforcing the Clean Water Act. 

Alex Wenger, the Blaine SEPA official who is also the Blaine Community Development Services director has concealed evidence of self-dealing facilitated by his department involving financial conflicts of interest of city council members and developers that threatens our city's drinking water aquifer.
Blaine's consolidation of power in the city-paid Hearing Examiner, who works in tandem with Mr. Wenger comprises a closed loop for expediting developers' proposals that intentionally excludes any meaningful public participation whatsoever. DOEs complicity in this 'racketeering' should prompt an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

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