YOUR VOICE NEEDED TO REMOVE 4 INDUSTRIAL (WAREHOUSE) PROJECTS FROM THE COUNTY DOCKET. SUPPORT NISQUALLY AND AG POLICIES
By Sue Danver, Betsy Norton, and The Conservation Committee
A wave of land use proposals that could change the nature of rural Thurston County has begun. BUT with either a simple pro/con or longer comment on Thurston County’s online comment site, citizens can help avert this outcome and protect from warehousing and other industrial development the Black River National Wildlife Refuge, West Rocky Prairie Wildlife Area, the natural wildlife corridor along Beaver Creek, and thousands of rural acres throughout the county.
Four landowners are requesting to change from Rural/Resource/Residential to Rural Resource Industrial (RRI) zoning. Three projects would enable large warehouses to be built within 50 to 300 feet of valuable habitats and waterways, and in one case “do more intensive” industrial work. UP Castle would enable warehousing along much of I-5, or throughout the county, depending on which amendment proposal is approved. None of these projects is consistent with the current development code based on the Thurston County Comprehensive Plan as it exists today.
Essentially, the upcoming decision to consider adding these projects to the County docket is a silent referendum on the future of warehousing in rural Thurston County. If any of the above projects are selected and approved, locating warehousing on rural county lands will be established before citizens will have the opportunity to provide their vision for the future of rural lands in the county via the Thurston County Comprehensive Plan 2045 Update – that will be completed in early 2025. A precedent to pave, light up, and endanger our rural and wildlife lands and waterways will have been set. Citizens will find it even more difficult to stop an invasion of warehouses if the Commissioners decide to adopt any of the above proposals.
You have the opportunity to quickly comment on each of the proposed docket projects by using the County’s online comment form to REMOVE the project from being considered or to put the project ON HOLD until after the Comp Plan Update is complete.
While many of the proposed docket items deserve your comment, we urge you to act on four docket items in particular, important to protect wildlife habitat. Below are links to the County website and some suggested talking points to facilitate your input.
How to comment:
** Online site is open: deadline for public comment is 5:00 pm Friday, March 14 **
Thurston County has created a website for the docketing process, with very brief summaries of the projects proposed for the docket, and a survey form for public comment.
- Scroll down to the Public Participation Opportunity / Comprehensive Plan Docket Comment Form here:
Fill out the commenter info and then check the projects you want to comment on. These are four that BHAS is most concerned about right now:
- Click NEXT and submit your short comments and/or attach your comments for each selected project on the next page – BHAS suggested comments to choose from are listed in the boxes below these instructions.
- SUBMIT your comments.
We, the Oregon Spotted Frogs, the Birds, and the Coho Salmon thank you for helping to conserve our habitat!!
Black Hills Audubon Society’s short list of concerns about these 4 projects:
Beaver Creek: Land Use Amendment & Associated Rezone
Beaver Creek – A Natural Riparian Corridor – Slideshow
- REMOVE this project from the docket.
- Thurston 2045, the Comprehensive Plan Update, sets goals and policies for the next 20 years for the climate, environment, and land use. It should be finished by about December 2024. No rezoning decisions should be made until this is complete.
- The rezone would endanger the Oregon Spotted Frog, a federally threatened endangered species, and a healthy run of Coho which spawn in Beaver Creek. The stormwater runoff from industrial plants’ and warehouses’ asphalt parking lots will contain industrial contaminants which are harmful pollutants to aquatic species, especially juvenile Coho.
- The rezone will permit new infrastructure: modern industrial facilities, including highly automated warehouses that will add significant and inflexible demand for electricity, likely to result in higher rates for Thurston County residents.
- The rezone will replace carbon-sequestering and water-filtering grasslands and wetlands with impervious surfaces, exacerbating drought in the dry season and flooding in the wet season.
- The rezone’s truck traffic will increase Green House Gas (GHG) emissions at a time when Thurston County’s climate commitment requires reducing these emissions 45% by 2030.
- The rezone endangers Beaver Creek, which is one of the only natural riparian corridors in this area of western Washington. The creek is bordered by land owned by the state, federal government, county parks and land trusts, land that conserves unique and rare glacial prairies between huge public lands—JBLM and Capitol Forest—with links to the Pacific Coast and the Olympics.
- As an alternative to industrial development, a protected Beaver Creek aquatic corridor is a natural complement to the larger Connectivity Project in Thurston County currently in analysis. This project will allow passage of wildlife under I-5 between the Olympics and the Cascades. The feasibility study for this project will be out later this year.
- The rezone is unnecessary. The county’s Industrial Land Study and the Thurston Regional Planning Council’s Buildable Lands Study both say there is enough industrially zoned land in the county right now. Per the Growth Management Act (GMA) rules, no more is needed.
Black Lake Quarry: Land Use Amendment and Associated Rezone
- REMOVE this project from the docket.
- Rezoning the Black Lake Quarry (BLQ) parcels and subsequent land development carries substantial risk of negatively impacting the upper reaches of the Black River. The river provides habitat for Coho Salmon and Federally listed Oregon Spotted Frog and provides local residential groundwater supplies. The BLQ property features artificially created open ponds and highly permeable soils upslope from the Black River channel. The distance from the BLQ property to the Black River is 500 to 1500 feet.
- Request that Thurston County honor their earlier commitment to protect the ecologically important Black River Unit of the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge.(BRNWR).
In 2009, Thurston County and BHAS won an appeals court decision denying a mine expansion. In 2018, the mine acquired a new permit by agreeing never to construct an asphalt or concrete plant on the property. The Black River supports runs of Chum, Chinook and Coho Salmon as well as Steelhead and Cutthroat Trout, and its banks have the most extensive riparian environments in western Washington. See https://www.washingtonnature.org/blackriver
Port of Tacoma: Land Use Amendment and Associated Rezone
- REMOVE the Port of Tacoma application from the docket once and for all.
- This is the fourth attempt to industrialize the Port of Tacoma property next to West Rocky Prairie Wildlife Area. Earlier attempts were made in 2006, 2008 and 2019. In the 2019 campaign, 6,000 citizens signed a petition expressing opposition to any warehouse development on the Port of Tacoma property.
Federally endangered Oregon Spotted Frogs reside close to the border of the Port of Tacoma property and require sufficient water resources of high quality to survive. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has completed ten years of on-going study on the water levels necessary to maintain the health of this population. Both the frogs and important climate research could be compromised if a warehouse or other industry were to be established so close to the West Rocky Prairie State Wildlife Area.
UP Castle: Land Use Amendment and Associated Rezone
- REMOVE this project from the docket.
- The 3.3-acre property does not fit within current code requirements that RRI zoning be within 0.5 miles of I-5 and on a major arterial road from an I-5 interchange.
- Both amendment proposals, whether from county staff or the proponents, would expand industrial zoning to thousands of acres throughout the county. The county staff’s proposal would allow industrial zoning anywhere within 0.5 miles of I-5, not just at interchanges. The proponents’ proposal would allow industrial zoning in federal rural opportunity zones scattered throughout the county.
- Both proposals are big decisions that should not be attached to a docket item. Instead, they should go through normal processes for making county policies – like the Comp Plan Update.
For more information, see https://www.thurstoncountywa.gov/castle-land-use-rezone-amendment
Photo credit: Empty Warehouse, by Betsy Norton, and Beaver Creek, by Dennis Plank.
