MOMENT OF TRUTH

May 11 letter to Blaine City Council:

When Blaine City Manager Mike Harmon was a child, I was leading North Cascades Audubon Society to victory at the Washington Supreme Court, protecting Critical Areas statewide. One Critical Area I noted in need of protection is the east Blaine municipal drinking water Critical Aquifer Recharge Area, which Creekside manufactured home park would contaminate, easily costing Blaine utility customers tens of millions of dollars in remediation.

Perjury and fraud by Harmon and Blaine Community Development Services director Alex Wenger have led you to believe that Blaine can violate state and federal laws that protect public health and public water systems without consequence. The May 7, 2026 Washington Department of Health order undermines that belief.

The unconstitutional SEPA Zoning Amendments to the Blaine Municipal Code are likewise doomed to failure when reviewed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Learn more at Creekside Compliance Watch.

On May 8, 2026, Water Planning Matters requested that Blaine City Council remand Creekside PUD Ordinance 26-3045 to the Blaine Hearing Examiner. The present record contains material inaccuracies, unresolved engineering and wetland protection defects, procedural inconsistencies, and statutory omissions that preclude the Council from making the findings required for approval of the ordinance under the Blaine Municipal Code and Revised Code of Washington. 

Despite Wenger's claim to the contrary, Blaine's environmental determination on Creekside PUD was issued before wetland modeling was completed--making the PUD application incomplete--and before any formal stormwater adequacy determination was made. By the Hearing Examiner's own standard, a State Environmental Policy Act determination that precedes complete environmental information is irresponsible. The Mitigated Determination of Non-Significance here preceded the fundamental hydrologic modeling that would have allowed the City, third party experts and the public to evaluate stormwater, wetland, and drainage impacts. 
 
On May 7, 2026, the WA State Chief Health Law Judge set a formal evidentiary proceeding for no later than July 6, 2026. That proceeding concerns the same drinking water source assurance record that Blaine City Council is being asked by planning staff to rely on for its public water system potable-water finding. The present record incorrectly assumes the state source-water question has been resolved.  

The safe and lawful thing for Blaine City Council to do tonight is to table both ordinances.

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