BLAINE EXCLUDES ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION

[Excerpts from How City Planning Departments Skirt Compliance in Washington State by Water Planning Matters.]

October 15, 2025, the City had released over 100 previously withheld files, including important Department of Ecology (Ecology) concerns about frequently flooded areas, unmaintained ponds that flooded Birch Bay Village, disturbed and unprotected wetlands used for contaminated stormwater, polluted streams and project engineering correspondence... 

The City and Applicant discounted Ecology's frequently flooding areas and wetlands concerns, ... and ignored an impaired creek deserving of protection for fish and lagoons in Birch Bay Village, primarily on procedural grounds, choosing to approve the project in a vacuum of missing facts and outdated city maps...

There appeared to be concerted efforts by Applicant and City to exclude consequential information that might affect the buildable footprint or higher costs relating to mitigating flooding, pollution or wetlands damage risks...

In March 2026, a PUD Hearing on Creekside relating to the development of a Critical Aquifer Recharge Area connected hydrologically to municipal drinking water wellheads, the same examiner systematically mischaracterized the community's environmental and geohydrological objections as "lay opinions" that expend “taxpayer money” for “nothing.”


Here, the Hearing Examiner omitted the testimony provided by a Certified Professional Wetland Scientist with over 40 years of watershed experience. By suppressing credible scientific objections as lay interference, the Examiner insulated the developer's wetland baseline buffer geometries from further state and federal scrutiny.  This procedural maneuver effectively shielded the development’s impact on connected salmon-bearing waterways and municipal aquifer recharge zones from rigorous scientific evaluation before final project approval by the City Council.

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