News - Local News

POSTED: Saturday, Aug. 22, 2009

Farmland at heart of dispute over Kremen's growth recommendations

County Executive Pete Kremen's proposal for changes to urban growth areas would mean losing a net of 28 acres of farmland, a point that's already drawing criticism.

Kremen said allowing fast-growing Lynden to grow modestly outside its current borders is reasonable.

But the proposal is drawing criticism from those who say it doesn't let the city grow enough and those who say it allows the loss of too much farmland.

Whatcom County is reviewing and updating urban growth areas throughout the county to accommodate the next 20 years of growth. It's more than two years late doing the work, and a state growth board has ordered it to finish the changes by Dec. 1.

Kremen's proposal, released earlier this week, would rezone a total of 7,815 acres now zoned for urban development to allow only rural densities. To compare, that's more than all of the land inside Blaine, Lynden and Sumas city limits combined.

Lynden city leaders have asked the county to let the city grow on 329 acres that are now outside its urban growth area. The land, which is good farmland, is located northwest of Lynden, south of Badger Road and on both sides of Double Ditch Road. The city wants to grow by another 7,414 residents during the next two decades.

Kremen said no. His proposal would give the city 172 acres east of Double Ditch Road, and the remaining 157 acres would be put into a reserve status, meaning urban growth wouldn't be allowed until the city met certain conditions. He would let the city grow by only 4,546 people.

He defended the extra urban land as reasonable.

"While ensuring that Whatcom County maintains a healthy agricultural economy is a worthy and laudable goal, the request for modest expansion of Lynden is justifiable and reasonable," his proposal states.

"It's a real challenge to be able to allow cities to grow and flourish and yet at the same time protect agricultural land," Kremen said in an interview.

The recommendation allows Lynden to grow onto 171 acres of farmland, but in other cities more farmland is added by rezoning urban land to agriculture. Everson would see a net increase of 7 acres of farmland outside its city limits, Ferndale 37 acres and Nooksack 99 acres.

Throughout the county, the loss would be a net of 28 acres.

Amy Harksell, planning director for Lynden, defended the city's proposal and said Kremen's proposal would encourage residents who can't find a home in Lynden to move into rural areas, further eating up farmland. It's a "farce" to think those people would simply move to Bellingham, she said.

Lynden also has increased density inside city limits to ensure it's not expanding too much, increasing the homes per residential-zoned acre in 1993 from under two to more than five now, she said.

"It's not Lynden that is overly consuming farmland," she said. "Our community is a huge agricultural support community that is vital to their doing business.

"It's a tough pill for us to swallow to be continually hit with we're to blame," she added.

Growth was also supposed to help pay for the city's planned new water-treatment plant. Reducing that by about 2,500 households would make it harder to pay for, she said, and could result in higher utility charges. It'll also make it harder for the city to attract businesses to town, which the city wants to provide more sales tax revenue.

Others say it doesn't go far enough to protect farmland.

"We accept the fact that unreasonable restrictions on city growth will drive growth outside city boundaries thereby hurting agriculture," according to a statement from Whatcom Farm Friends, a nonprofit devoted to advocating for farm preservation. "The key word here is 'reasonable.' We have difficulty accepting that Lynden, Ferndale and Everson (the three cities expanding into ag and rural resource land) can reasonably justify taking more ag land."

The group also criticized the aim by Kremen to allow small cities to develop their own economic centers.

"It makes no sense to damage one of our primary economic engines for these cities - agriculture - in the hope of trying to establish some other economic driver which seems to be based more on hope than reality," the statement said.