Critical areas ordinance on fast track

Council addresses staff recommendations on bike paths and steep slopes

By RICHARD HANNERS / Whitefish Pilot

The Whitefish City Council is on the fast track in an attempt to have its Critical Areas Ordinance in force by April 2, the same day the current interim urgency-ordinance expires.

The council took its first shot at the contentious and complicated draft critical areas ordinance on Jan. 22 with a work session and public hearing. A second work session took place Jan. 28.

The first reading will continue to the council's regular Feb. 19 meeting and then go to a second reading on March 3.

Councilors took additional public input and looked at recommendations from city staff and the two consultants hired to draft the ordinance.

Among the big issues — how to protect natural stormwater conveyances in the city's two-mile planning jurisdiction, exempting the city's bike paths from the ordinance and radically changing the section on steep slopes.

? Councilor John Muhlfeld, who was a member of the Critical Area Advisory Committee, said the committee clearly wanted regulations protecting stormwater conveyances in the planning jurisdiction.

"How did this go 180 degrees?" he asked. "I feel we're falling way short of the intent of the ordinance."

John Lombard, of Seattle-based Steward and Associates, said city staff were concerned about administrating the regulations over such a large area.

"And there is the political factor," he said.

Randy Overton, of Kalispell-based RLK Hydro, said stormwater conveyances in the planning jurisdiction could be mapped out "as a college-class exercise" in a couple months.

City planner Wendy Compton-Ring pointed out that the section on stormwater conveyances applies to the city, the Karrow Avenue conveyance and any area not designated rural in the city's new growth policy. The public works director can also add conveyances in the planning jurisdiction on a case-by-case basis.

City projects engineer Karin Hilding noted that after eight years of drought, many people have forgotten where stormwater naturally runs. She said mapping in the planning jurisdiction is not exact and sites need to be field-checked, but all the problem areas in the city are well-known.

Public works director John Wilson said regulating stormwater conveyances in the planning jurisdiction would be "a lot of work for minimal return."

Councilor Nick Palmer, however, said charging property owners $5,000 to $10,000 to locate stormwater conveyances "is not too much to ask." He compared it to new homeowners hiring an appraiser.

"It's part of living in a complicated society," he said, adding that people in the planning jurisdiction "want to be their own bosses until someone builds a shooting range next door."

"If people want to preserve Montana, they need to do things differently," Palmer said.

Councilor Nancy Woodruff pointed out that the ordinance requires landowners in the planning jurisdiction to get a compliance permit before building.

"If they come in to get one," mayor Mike Jenson said.

The council voted 5-1, with Woodruff opposed, to extend regulations protecting natural stormwater conveyances across the entire planning jurisdiction.

? The public works and planning departments recommended exempting the city's bike trails from the ordinance "since trails benefit the entire community." Best-management practices would be used to minimize impacts on critical areas.

The city's bike-pedestrian trail system generally follows the banks of the Whitefish River, and the interim stormwater ordinance currently requires the city to obtain a reasonable-use exemption (RUE) before building in a critical area.

Hilding said she is currently following the RUE process for the Edgewood Drive, Second Street and Rocksund-Monegan bike paths that will be built this year. She said she's found abundant information on the Internet about building bike trails in riparian areas without causing resource damage.

"We don't need to reinvent the wheel," she said.

Woodruff supported the staff's recommendation. She said she didn't like the idea of "getting an exemption for something we've already said we want."

Muhlfeld, however, was concerned that the city should be held to the same standards as the private sector.

The council's consensus was to reword the draft to exempt the bike path system from the RUE process but hold the city to the ordinance's standards.

? Claiming the steep-slopes section of the ordinance is too complex, and noting the mixed reaction by peer reviewers, the public works and planning departments recommended removing that section, including the matrix developed by Overton and the reference to allowing up to 0.25 tons of sediment to be released per acre per year.

In its place would be a requirement for geotechnical analysis for slopes greater than 25 percent and adoption of an erosion-control manual from the state of Maine. The city would then draft and adopt a comprehensive hillside ordinance that addressed tree and vegetation retention, aesthetics, wildlife habitat, fire hazards, slope stability and soil erosion.

Hilding said the draft ordinance calls for using a computer model that was developed for agricultural purposes and is not appropriate for the ordinance. She said she was concerned engineers have a tendency to "play with computer models" rather than go out and look at a site. She also said the matrix was sometimes too lenient.

Overton explained that the matrix was intended as a screening tool, and Palmer supported its inclusion, calling it "an elegant tool."

"We're doing people a favor and they don't understand it," Palmer said.

Muhlfeld said surface erosion issues are more important than geotechnical analysis, and he wanted a site-by-site rather than blanket approach.

"I don't care how it's done so long as it works to control erosion," he said.

A compromise was reached that includes the erosion control manual and a future hillside ordinance but adds language about visible sediment leaving a site and leaves the matrix in the ordinance.