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1. Your Input Is Vital
2. Property Rights
3. Neighborhood Vision Statements
4. Agricultural and Forest Lands
5. Unregulated Sprawl
6. Groundwater Protection
7. Who Benefits?

(previous version December 12, 2010)

1. Your Input Is Vital
Your attendance at a Public Hearing on the Comprehensive Plan is vitally necessary. A group of our neighbors, whose passion is protecting their property rights, are organizing to present a big turnout at all the public meetings.

2. Property Rights
While most of us share a basic belief in private property rights, some of us also value community. Our shared values of love of the land, agriculture, and beautiful open spaces need the protection of the community in order to survive into the next generation.

The Okanogan County Commissioners are about to make a decision that will greatly affect the environment of Okanogan County. After fifty years, Commissioners are formulating a new Comprehensive Plan.

Work has been underway on the COMP Plan for several years. Unfortunately, over the past year or so a small group of folks have taken over the public role in giving input concerning the Plan to the Commissioners and their planning staff.

3. Neighborhood Vision Statements
Early in the process, the county received $125,000 to finance neighborhood group input to the planning process from around the county. The groups met for two years to identify their vision for the future of the county, and suggest some goals for getting there. The work of these neighborhood groups has now been discarded, at the urging of unnamed lobbyists to the Commissioners. All mention of environmental quality, open space, agricultural livelihood, and amenities-based tourism have been discarded.

4. Agricultural and Forest Lands
Also at the urging of unnamed parties, the Draft Comp Plan deviates from the state requirement that all counties identify agricultural and forest land of long-term significance. This regulation was written to preserve prime farm and timber lands, which are vital resources for food security and the economy. The Draft Plan now identifies these commercially valuable resources as occurring mainly on public lands.

5. Unregulated Sprawl
We are facing the loss of protection of agricultural and forest lands, to be replaced by the zoning of minimum parcel sizes of one and five acres across most of the landscape. Open space will be replaced by unregulated sprawl everywhere.

6. Groundwater Protection
Nowhere in the proposed plan is the goal to protect groundwater supplies and existing wells from depletion as a result of new development.

7. Who Benefits?
The proposed Comprehensive Plan now benefits special interests such as land developers and local residents who want to be able to sell their land to whomever they choose.

CSO believes the concept of property rights is not a justification for unregulated development and sprawl.

Our county will be in court for years trying to defend this unsound attempt to go where no other county has gone. The citizens of Okanogan County cannot afford to take this wrong turn in the road.

8. Restore the Vision Statements
We value the Okanogan for the rugged beauty of its open spaces, clean skies, starry nights, fresh clean water, abundant wildlife, and the rural Western culture that grew up in this land. Unfortunately, the Comprehensive Plan Vision Statement does not discuss the character of the land, and the custom and culture of the Okanogan lifestyle, in ways that reflect the commonly held values of ALL the people who live here.

Frequent mention of environmental values raised by Neighborhood Groups early in the planning process are not included in the Plan's Vision Statement. The purpose of the Comprehensive Plan is to lay out a guide to the future of the County. However, without a description of what is of value from the past, and what is of value in the present, how can the Comp Plan shape a workable future that reflects the needs and desires of all of its residents?

9. The MAP
If you own a piece of land try to find it on the Map, and see how you fared with the limited and narrow zoning choices we will have to choose from. Will it be one-acre lots around you, or five? Ah, five...you are one of the lucky ones.

The Map shows the one acre minimum High Density Rural designation extending along all the roads and into the most inaccessible parts of the county. It also shows former ranch and grazing lands as Rural Low Density, with proposed five acre minimum densities.

The map also shows public land as Agricultural and Forest Resource Lands of Long-Term Commercial Significance. The few private lands shown as resource land are those in conservation easements.

10. Ground Water
Let your own passionate feelings be heard about ground water resources, the effects of dense developments, and exempt wells in our arid/semi-arid county.

The county is required by state law to provide for protection of the quality and quantity of groundwater used for public water supplies, but this draft makes little or no reference to the need for protection of ground water quality or ground water quantity.

The Comp Plan should require the use of Best Available Science to evaluate the sufficiency or quality of ground water supplies. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent for the scientific study of the water resources of Okanogan County. That science should be made available to the public through its use in the Comp Plan by county government. Agricultural water rights should stay with prime agricultural land. Water rights should not be sold to out-of-county buyers.

11. Resource Lands
The Draft Comprehensive Plan is hostile to agriculture, farmers and ranchers, and does not protect from incompatible land uses such as large scale industrial development.

Under state law, counties must identify and map private agricultural and forest lands of long-term commercial significance. The Draft COMP Plan has not done so. Instead, under the influence of the property rights groups, it has designated almost no private lands under this category, designating public lands instead. This is a bold and provocative act. No other county has tried to use public lands to fulfill the requirement to designate a county's commercially productive agricultural and forest resource lands.

Many thousands of acres in the Okanogan are in the agricultural and forest open space tax category, and a significant portion of this land meets the state criteria for designation as resource lands of long-term commercial significance.

As more emphasis is being placed on locally grown food, local and regional agricultural markets are thriving, it does not seem prudent, wise, or fair for Okanogan county government to shift its governing emphasis to property development and abandon its agricultural and forest roots.
(In your comments to the Commissioners, please speak to your own passionate feelings regarding protection of agriculture, future availability of food in our county, and the necessity of having water rights available for agriculture.)

12. Rural Lands
Make known your own passionate feelings about rural areas, availability of water in rural areas of our county, open space, sufficient lot size for agriculture, and overdevelopment. With removal of the resource lands designation, all lands in Okanogan County outside the city limits, and the Methow Sub-area will now be classified as Rural.

Rural High Density is one acre minimum lots, Rural Low Density is 5 acre minimum. That 800 acre ranch next door to you has a pretty good possibility of being carved up into 500 plus homesites so that a developer in Seattle can make a pile of money. And they will be allowed unlimited access to whatever groundwater exists unless you have the means to challenge both the county and the developer in court.

13. Incompatible Land Uses
There are no regulations in this Draft Comp Plan regarding incompatible or prohibited land uses that will protect your property values from the negative effects of derelict mobile homes, weed strewn lots, packs of dogs, abandoned horses, trash and old cars, a commercial motocross site, a gravel pit ... well, you get the picture. Some regulations are necessary with population growth to protect your property values.

"Rural" in this plan allows a whole host of incompatible land uses, including large industry and commercial activities in rural areas, and high density rural zoning in areas that cannot support that type of density due to distance from service centers, poor transportation and access, lack of water and presence of critical area habitat. Look at the map ! It tells a different story than the text. If people look up their place on the map, they will be shocked! The most remote, inaccessible, arid, steep areas are being zoned one acre rural.

This makes a mockery of what planning and zoning are all about. Currently, about 1/2 of the private acreage of the Okanogan Valley and Highlands, is in parcels of 1,200 acres or more. Under the proposed COMP PLAN, formerly large land holdings will be allowed to be converted into one and five acre minimums. CSO believes that there should be areas of the Okanogan that stay in large lot sizes, say 20 acre or 40 acre minimums, or even 120 or 1200 acres!

What would you like your rural neighborhood to look like in ten years? Do you want to see one acre parcels along all the scenic country roads? Are blocks of five acre ranchettes suitable for all of the rolling expanses in the Highlands?

14. Sub-Area Plans
Support the Designation of Sub-Area Plans County Wide. The commissioners have promised to keep the Methow Review District Sub-Area plan in the Comprehensive Plan. However, it does not give enough direction regarding the possibilities of creating Sub-Areas in other parts of the county. The Existing Molson Overlay, with 20 acre minimum lot sizes should be entered into the Comprehensive Plan.

Our county is diverse in culture and in landscape-and larger than three states in the US. This Draft does not recognize the possibility of a need to create separate zoning rules that respond to unique conditions in various areas of the county.

15. Environmental Protection
There is no statement of the high value Okanogan County residents place upon clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat, view-sheds, or open space. The Comp Plan offers no guidance as to how environmental protections are compatible with one and five acre parcel densities.

16. Dark Skies / Light Pollution
Whatever the density, a single mercury vapor floodlight can ruin the night sky and rural atmosphere. Light pollution does not respect property lines. Express the wish to protect one of the World's increasingly rare assets: A clear view of the night sky.

Protect our County's night skies, while we still have them. This is also an increasing source of tourist dollars. A Dark Skies Ordinance would keep night lights focused down to earth where it is needed, instead of pointing at the starry night.

1. State law requires that every county needs to identify their natural resource lands of long-term economic significance including agriculture, forests, and mineral deposits (leave it in the ground!). As the plan stands now, these natural resource lands are identified as occurring only on public land. This means that private land that is resource land (like forests and agriculture) will be classified as "rural" making it possible for these lands that best grow food and produce habitat for wildlife and building products to become one to five acre suburban sprawl.

2. Agriculture, which has been the social, cultural, and economic "driver" for Okanogan County is and will be supplanted by a new model wherein the land's value for development is the major consideration. Real estate development thus becomes the new economic generator. Before this radical change is adopted, a county-wide citizens' referendum should be held.

3. If the re-classification and disappearance of the agricultural lands designation as a class of protected commercial resource lands, the ag open space tax deduction may be lost as well, thus increasing the pressure to break up large properties for residential development.

4. The three year public involvement process for the Comp Plan cost the taxpayers $125,000 in grant money. It resulted in a series of vision statements from citizens' groups around the county, but due to pressure from powerful interest groups, these vision statements were deleted from the Comp Plan and the public process denied.

5. Although an adequate water supply is essential to long-term development and in-stream flow, and groundwater is already over-appropriated, the zoning map fails to consider whether adequate water is available for the allowable density. Water rights overall will be threatened through unsustainable development.

6. The Comp Plan Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was done on a much earlier version of the plan. The plan has subsequently been changed to the point where this EIS no longer qualifies. Many of the environmental protections in the previous versions of the Comp Plan have been dropped. A new EIS is required.

7. The county has not even contacted the various public agencies (USFS, DNR, etc.) which will supposedly now bear the burden of maintaining the public lands as county ag and timber resource land. Is the county's premise even compatible with state and federal land management laws?

8. The possibilities for litigation under this plan are huge. If the county wants to end up defending themselves in a series of expensive lawsuits, they need only adopt this ill-advised plan. As taxpayers we will all share in the county's self-imposed legal burden. Park the snow plows while we pay the lawyers!