Blaine UGA Colossal Mistake

6/18/25 letter to city and county:

30 years ago, when I led a consortium--including North Cascades Audubon Society--to victory at the Washington State Supreme Court, we set legal precedent for protection of Critical Areas statewide. One of the Critical Areas I noted in our official correspondence with Whatcom County and the City of Blaine is the Critical Aquifer Recharge Area (CARA) for Blaine's drinking water. In our official comments in the court record, I noted our concern that Blaine had located its Urban Growth Area (UGA) over the aquifer, which would threaten the viability of the community.

Today, it is slowly dawning on the City of Blaine what a colossal mistake it was to put greed ahead of public health. The CARA UGA is now reluctantly being dismantled and de-annexed due to vital wetlands and forest canopy that protects the aquifer from pollution associated with residential development. Aquifers should remain undeveloped, and Blaine now needs to complete the protection of their drinking water by removing the Creekside Planned Unit Development (PUD) from the CARA as well, and restoring the damage done by the unlawful clearcutting by Lynden developer Skip Jansen.

Whatcom County could have and should have prevented this from happening in the first place, but like Blaine, the county neglected its statutory duties to protect the public from improper siting of UGAs

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