no environmental consideration

5/3/25 letter to Whatcom County:

The proposed Blaine UGA SWAP illustrates the incompetence and unethical behavior of Blaine and Whatcom County planning staff and elected officials. Thirty years ago, I contested Whatcom County allowing the City of Blaine to designate a UGA atop the city drinking water aquifer. Three years ago, Blaine citizens contested the City of Blaine changing the Blaine Municipal Code to allow residential development in the Critical Aquifer Recharge Area (CARA), in direct violation of the State Environmental Policy Act and the federal Clean Water Act. 

Any development in CARAs in Washington state requires a current, best practices Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which the City of Blaine did not do, even after being instructed to do so by the Washington Department of Ecology, which mistakenly believes it does not have to enforce the law. Now, after developers have discovered they cannot build in most of the CARA due to extensive wetlands, Blaine Community Development Services is proposing to relocate the CARA UGA to the Semiahmoo peninsula, again without any environmental consideration. 

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