City of Bellingham Makes Progress in Watershed Land Acquisition

Tom Pratum is a Lake Whatcom resident who is very concerned about the future of the lake.

On July 15, the Bellingham City Council voted to make its most significant purchase to date. In this transaction, it purchased 198.7 acres of watershed property on Squalicum Mountain just up from North Shore Road for $1.7 million. While this property is currently zoned R5A, prior to the county’s interim downzone it was zoned R2A and could have potentially had nearly 50 homes built on it at that time.

The potential for development of the Trillium property was ever more distressing due to the presence of a service agreement between Trillium and Water District 10, in which the water district agreed to supply water to the area from wells near the Squalicum Plateau if Trillium decided to develop the property.

It is well known that ground water resources in the Squalicum Mountain area are meager due to the underlying Chuckanut Sandstone, so individual wells would be an iffy proposition. The only other option for supplying water to the area would be for the City of Bellingham to agree to supply the district with water for this development—a very unlikely scenario.

The water service agreement has one other signatory that owns significant property in the area: Evergreen View Ventures/Peter Watts (108 acres). Hopefully, the property owned by this entity can be acquired for public benefit in the near future.

The map that shows watershed property set aside from development in the past two years. Note that the map does not include four parcels considered by the City Council on July 29, which total an additional 12 acres.

There are other watershed properties protected from development, but they were placed in conservancy status prior to 2000. The underlying map is the Whatcom County 2002 Comprehensive Plan, and does not reflect the county’s interim watershed zoning.

The total land spared from development over this time period is 1,059 acres, of which the City of Bellingham was involved in over 800 acres—much of that acquired in the past four months. This represents nearly three percent of the 31,250-acre watershed

A significant fraction of the acreage acquired is zoned commercial or rural forestry (CF or RF zoning designations). This has been a cause of concern for several County Council members as it is felt in some circles that forestry is the best management option for watershed land, and that we may be wasting resources purchasing land that will never be developed.

While residential land purchase is very important, it is clear that acquisition of land zoned for forestry—particularly RF zoned property—is essential for a watershed land acquisition program. In addition to the fact that residences are allowed in RF zoned areas, albeit at a low density of one home per 20 acres, private management of forested lands in the watershed is a cause for concern.

There is no better example of what private management can lead to than what has occurred on the North side of Stewart Mountain over the past year or so. There, Crown Pacific Partners has clear-cut virtually the entire hillside, right up to the watershed boundary—where their ownership fortunately ends.

This type of land management may be better for the watershed than residential development, but public ownership allows management in more watershed-friendly ways than those we are likely to see from a private timber company.