Commissioners approve decade-required update after mediation delay; rules double protections for small streams and add clarity for wells, parks and habitat designations.
Skagit County commissioners on Nov. 25 approved a new Critical Areas Ordinance that expands stream buffers and provides more clarity on standards, capping a contentious yearlong update shaped by tribal input and public pushback.
The Critical Areas Ordinance is a series of regulations that all cities and counties in Washington are required to evaluate and revise every 10 years as part of the Comprehensive Plan update, with the goal of protecting wetlands, critical aquifer recharge areas, fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas, and areas prone to flooding and geological hazards. The CAO was first adopted in 1996 and updated for the last time in 2007.
The most recent update process began in late 2024, with the Planning Commission recommending the Board of County Commissioners adopt the CAO with changes. When the county released a draft in July with only 18 days for public comment, the Swinomish Tribe requested additional days to evaluate it and respond — a request the county declined, saying the amount of time for review was sufficient. The state Dept. of Commerce intervened with mediation.
County staff proposed further amendments to the draft in October, followed by a public comment period from Oct. 30 to Nov. 14, according to an Oct. 21 memo from Planning & Development Services.
Among the changes, which aim at maintaining or increasing the combined acreage of all critical areas in the county, is a 100% increase in the width of the standard riparian buffer — from 50 to 100 feet — for small, non-fish bearing streams, which the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife found to have suffered the greatest loss of trees. Additionally, buffers for all streams used or potentially used by fish have to be 150 feet wide, a 50% increase for streams smaller than five feet in width.
The Swinomish Tribe and some commenters requested establishing buffer sizes based on the site’s growing conditions for trees (as recommended by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife) but Eckroth said that the standard riparian buffer process makes compliance and enforcement simpler and less expensive.
The new ordinance, which does not apply to irrigation ditches or any artificial watercourse, provides more clarity for application requirements and development standards for new wells, as well as new sampling requirements in seawater intrusion areas. It also allows for the construction of small park structures — up to 200 square feet — within wetland and fish and wildlife habitat conservation area buffers in public parks.
Other changes include, but are not limited, to: adding forage fish spawning areas to fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas; requiring that the county is only notified when heavy machinery (and not hand tools) is used on restoration projects; clarifying that protective critical area subdivision tracts or easements may be owned and maintained by the owner of the lot or transferred to another owner, which can be the county, homeowners association or a land trust — but, unlike the second draft, may also include other entities beyond those three options.
Luisa Loi is a general assignment reporter for La Conner Community News.
