Bellingham neighborhood group files another appeal over Edgemoor subdivision
A Bellingham neighborhood advocacy group is continuing its fight against a residential subdivision proposed on a large forested site in the city’s Edgemoor neighborhood.
Protect Mud Bay Cliffs, a group that formed in opposition to the proposed development known as the Woods at Viewcrest, filed an appeal Thursday to the Bellingham City Council after the proposed project was approved to move forward earlier this month by the Bellingham Hearing Examiner.
It’s the latest move by PMBC in what has become a years-long legal battle between the local opposition group and the developers.
“The City’s obligation to protect public health, safety, welfare, and shoreline ecological functions is especially important where intensive development is proposed on geologically hazardous coastal bluffs directly above public shoreline areas and ecologically sensitive estuarine resources,” PMBC’s appeal stated.
The project proposes the development of 38 single-family home lots and three open-space tracts on about 38 acres of land along Viewcrest Road. The development would be situated near an area known as the Mud Bay Cliffs, which rise above the Chuckanut Bay estuary below.
PMBC members have asserted for years that the development could negatively impact the surrounding natural environment and the people living nearby. The group’s goal has long been to preserve the forested project area, expressing concerns about the project’s impact on water quality, habitat degradation and geologic instability.
When the city of Bellingham determined last year that the project, as proposed and mitigated, would not cause “significant adverse environmental impacts,” and therefore would not require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), PMBC appealed that decision in an effort to force an EIS under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA).
That triggered a weeklong hearing in January of this year for Hearing Examiner Sharon Rice to hear testimony from PMBC, the project applicant and city staff. Rice denied PMBC’s appeal after six months of deliberation, ruling that the applicant and the city could move forward with the development largely as planned.
PMBC’s appeal alleges the hearing examiner’s decision was made “despite unresolved certainty concerning” allowable density and developability of proposed lots, stormwater discharge impacts, stormwater modeling, slope saturation and slope stability, and reductions of landslide hazard area buffers, among other things.
“The Hearing Examiner’s decision gave excessive weight to feasibility-level consultant and staff opinions and deferred future review while overly discounting concerns raised by PMBC’s highly-regarded and experienced experts regarding unresolved uncertainty, cumulative risk, and public safety implications,” PMBC’s appeal states.
The hearing examiner’s ruling ultimately determined that the city “conducted an informed, thorough, realistic review of potential project impacts” and that any negative impacts could be adequately reduced through the project’s proposed mitigation measures.
The ruling also stated that the records provided gave no evidence that the project would have significant adverse impacts on geologically hazardous areas, the water quality of Mud Bay or other off-site wetlands, or any species that live or forage in Mud Bay.
