Resident challenges county decision allowing urban growth on King Mountain

JARED PABEN - THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

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Growth researcher and Bellingham resident Jack Petree says Whatcom County didn't properly study the environmental impacts of allowing urban growth on rural King Mountain land.

He makes the claim in a new appeal filed in Snohomish County Superior Court.

But Ralph Black, who owns the land, says Petree is wrong. Extensive environmental studies were done on that property and they were provided to county leaders, Black said.

The challenge could harm efforts to annex the land into the city and develop a mixed residential-commercial urban village. The development would enable construction of James Street Road through to Horton Road, which could relieve traffic congestion on Meridian Street.

In February, the County Council voted to bring 286 rural acres north of Bellingham into the city's urban growth area. The land was needed to help accommodate the city's growth, the council said. About 230 of those acres are on King Mountain, and they're generally located behind Wal-Mart.

A recent state growth board ruling generally supported the county's decision.

On Nov. 10, Petree, whose clients include developers, filed an appeal of that decision in the Snohomish court. The appeal, prepared by attorney Dick Settle, claims a 2004 environmental study didn't look at a majority of the King Mountain land. The appeal asks the court to invalidate the county's decision and require an environmental study.

"If they're not held to account, they will continue to do things improperly, and that's the primary reason (for the appeal)," Petree said. "Where is the sense of bringing in steep slopes at the top of the mountain in lieu of other land that's flat, adjacent to services, adjacent to the city (and) in the case of some of it, surrounding a golf course?"

Petree believes Bellingham needs more land for growth, which is the same thing landowner Caitac USA believes and stated in papers filed in the same court on the same day and prepared by the same attorneys. The company wants urban growth area status for its land between Bellingham and Smith Road (the land includes the North Bellingham Golf Course) so it can build what's essentially a small city there.

Black, the King Mountain landowner, called the filing "a really convoluted kind of argument."

When Black applied to log and clear his land in late October 2006, the county required him to extensively study the land, including wetlands, steep slopes and animal habitats. Those studies were provided to county staff and County Council members, and they were more thorough than the 2004 study would have been anyway, he said.

Even if the court decides the review wasn't properly done, he said, "they could literally take our (environmental study) and staple it to the other," Black said.