The Curious Case of the Morphing Slaughter Rezone(s)

Wendy Harris is a retiree who comments on development, mitigation and environmental impacts.

Remember the rezone of the agricultural zone (AG) to allow slaughterhouses for farmers? I first addressed this issue in the Whatcom Watch almost two years ago. http://www.whatcomwatch.org/php/WW_open.php?id=1454. Much like the slaughter industry itself, it started as something small and modest, and over time, grew to beastly proportions. A new ordinance was recently enacted with significant implications.

“Small scale slaughterhouses” in the AG zone has now morphed into slaughterhouses and meat packing plants in the AG zone, the Heavy Impact Industrial Zone (HII) and the Rural Industrial Manufacturing zone. Only the AG zone contains reasonable restrictions on size and location, and none of the three rezones is based on a legitimate environmental review required under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). While the AG revisions are the result of a lawsuit, the other two rezones were snuck into the ordinance shortly before enactment, with little public discussion. The end result is an ordinance, allegedly intended to resolve a lawsuit, which could result in more potentially bio-hazardous heavy industry spread throughout rural areas of the county.

The slaughterhouse ordinance has really about one thing -- development rights. We were told that it was an attempt to provide additional income to small farmers, but instead of protecting the long term viability of our local AG economy, the rezone fragments farm land and fails to protect prime AG soils. It is a free upzone to farmers from AG land to industrial land. And now the latest ordinance allows slaughterhouses and meat packing plants, unlimited in size and local, which undermines the alleged goal of protecting small farmers.

None of this is good news, but we can celebrate the protections obtained for the AG rezone as a result of a Growth Management Hearings Board appeal filed by attorney Terry Wechsler on behalf of myself, Nicole Brown and Tip Johnson.

And were it not for the appeal, the AG rezone would not have improved, and the situation with the industrial rezones would be worse.

The Source of the Morphing

The problem started when the planning department attempted to draft a narrow conditional use ordinance for small slaughterhouses, 5000 sq. feet or less, as an accessory use to an existing farm. The ordinance, alleged to help small farmers gain access to local slaughter facilities was triggered initially when Gabriel Claycamp, a self described “Culinary Alchemist” from King County with a history of health code and SEC investor fraud violations, attempted to purchase Keizer Meats, the only USDA licensed slaughterhouse in the county.

The planning department asked Claycamp a complete a SEPA checklist for a “proposal to amend the agriculture zoning district to allow small scale slaughterhouses as a conditional use.” Claycamp submitted a SEPA checklist that responded to virtually every question with “N/A”, except for questions he answered that were project specific for his planned purchase of Keizer Meats. The planning department accepted this SEPA checklist as a valid environmental review of the impacts of an AG rezone on 88,000 acres of land.

To this day, Claycamp’s SEPA checklist remains the only evidence of an environmental review process. The size, use, location, restrictions and zones morphed many time, and only the environmental review remained constant and unchanged. In essence, there has never been meaningful environmental analysis and review for any version of the rezoned areas.

After review by the planning commission, the County Council received an AG rezone proposal without restrictions on size and use that lacked a meaningful understanding of slaughter industry operations, or related health and safety concerns that accompany bio-hazardous high impact industrial activities. Over the course of about a year, the planning department and the council would learn about these issues at each new committee meeting, resulting in constant changes, sometimes significant ones, from one committee meeting to the next.

The final ordinance, published Sept. 13, 2013, allowed slaughterhouses and meat packing plants throughout the AG zone as a primary use for up to 7,000 sq. ft., and as a conditional use for up to 20,000 sq. ft.

From Morphing to Three Card Monte

The petitioners filed their appeal that November, awaiting the appointment of a new, more environmentally friendly county council. And indeed, the litigation encouraged the new council to improve the AG rezone. On May 6, 2014, a public hearing was held on an “ordinance amending the Whatcom County Code to allow packinghouses and slaughterhouses in the Agriculture Zoning District as administrative approval uses (AB2014-060B).”

The new AG rezone is considerably more protective, and requires slaughterhouses and packinghouses to be accessory to farm use. Administrative approval applies to facilities no larger than 2,000 sq. ft., and the conditional use process is necessary for slaughterhouses and packinghouse between 2,000 and 7,000 sq. ft. Most importantly, these facilities can no longer be located on critical aquifer recharge areas of high susceptibility or frequently flooded areas.

It sounded great until the petitioners’ read the fine print and realized that, without any public discussion or input, the county council attempted to expand the rezone into Light Impact Industrial (LII), Heavy Impact Industrial (HII) and the Rural Industrial Manufacturing (RIM). This was quietly accomplished by redefining the terms and definitions at the very end of the ordinance. And it was all predicated on the same SEPA analysis that was submitted by Claycamp for the AG rezone.

The petitioners’ raised these concerns at the public hearing and were able to obtain a second public hearing that disclosed the fact that there were now three rural rezones at issue. However, the planning department dealt with the SEPA problem only by making notes to the file indicating that it believed the SEPA process for the AG rezone was sufficient to cover the rezones for HII and RIM zones. (The county conceded the issue of LII, because slaughterhouses and meat packing plants are heavy industrial activities).

In the meantime, significant issues such as what land is impacted, how many lots and acres are involved, or where this land is located (i.e. Cherry Point is the only area zoned HII in Whatcom County) remain unknown and unaddressed. And it is significant that the protections obtained for the AG rezone, restricting slaughter and packing houses in size, use and location, were not carried over to HII and RIM.

The newly morphed and expanded rezones are now county law. The final ordinance enacted involves environmental issues and concerns that were not at issue in the prior AG rezone case. This would appear to require an entirely new appeal. Anyone know a good (i.e., available) land use attorney? Or is it best to simply not tempt a morphing ordinance at rest?