Bad Dominoes: The Bellingham Plan Falls Short
By Rodd Pemble, Oct. 22
Remember as a kid, setting up long, black rows of curving dominoes, so you could tip the first one and watch the momentum zip down the line with a clickity-clack sound? Super fun!
Unfortunately, the Bellingham Comprehensive Plan, proposed by the mayor and adopted by the City Council last December, would work the same way, with pollicies set up like dominoes, just waiting to tip over, one after another, leaving us with a big mess on the floor for at least the next 10 years.
Let's start with Lake Whatcom and the neighborhoods around the north end of the lake, Silver Beach primarily. Despite years of participation and work by the neighborhood residents, and written plans in place to protect water quality, the latest Bellingham Plan took a big step backward and increased the recommended number of new housing units in Silver Beach from 98 to 354. How exactly do 4 times as many new housing units protect the lake?
Even the City agrees that more units equals more run-off which equals greater negative impacts to water quality in the lake that is the ONLY source of drinking water for over 120,000 local residents and businesses. The state’s Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) report said in order to meet state legal requirements to protect the Lake, 87% of the city neighborhoods draining to the lake must cut their run-off to levels as if the neighborhoods were still a natural forest. That goal is not helped by City dominoes tilting toward MORE polluted run-off.
The Silver Beach proposals in the Bellingham Plan are just one example of bad housing dominoes proposed all over town, poised to start a chain reaction of negative consequences – thousands of homes planned for low-density areas, like East Bakerview, King Mountain and Cordata, creating more neighborhoods with only 3 or 4 homes per acre, far below the level required to support frequent mass transit, and usually unaffordable for families making average wages. They might as well say “cars live here,” since most of these neighborhoods are a long walk or (safe) bike from most anything a family might need – groceries, pharmacy, the gym, places of work or worship. And as these no-bus and no-bike dominoes fall, they tip into ones labeled “vehicle miles travelled” (VMT).
Honey, Where Are The Car Keys?
“VMT,” as it’s known in planning circles, is a measure the state uses in the Growth Management Act (GMA) to determine if cities and counties are actively making progress on required climate and growth management goals. The GMA requires that VMT must decrease each planning cycle, and that the City include in the Plan the active steps the City will implement to achieve that goal. Fewer miles driven = a healthier community.
But the City didn’t include any action steps to reduce VMT, and their VMT projections show a steady INCREASE over time. That violates the GMA, plain and simple. They did not include practical guidelines from the WA State Dept. of Commerce to support transit-oriented development and reduce vehicle miles traveled. Like more run-off into the lake, more vehicle miles traveled equals more traffic congestion, more air and water pollution, more greenhouse gases contributing to climate change (i.e., floods, storms, salmon extinction), more injuries and costs from accidents, more reliance on cars instead of buses and bicycles, and on and on. It’s a cascading, negative impact domino train for sure.
Moving On Up
On the other end of the housing plan, urban villages found favor with the consultants hired by the City to research the best practices to achieve the City’s Climate Protection Plan goals, and avoid further suburban sprawl. We have seven urban villages now – Barkley, Fountain District, Old Town, Waterfront, Downtown, Samish Way, and Fairhaven. While denser than most neighborhoods, they are still far below the housing densities necessary to really reduce those negative effects of sprawl. The City of Bellingham projected average Urban Village density at 13 units per acre, but established Urban Villages across the nation are more like 50-150 units per acre – we have a long way to go, and the City’s dominoes are falling in the wrong direction.
That is why the City’s consultants’ recommendation was crystal clear – 90% of ALL new Bellingham housing units built from 2025-2045 should be in Urban Villages, and only 10% in other low to high density housing types. So what domino did the City stand up in the Plan after reading the consultants’ conclusions?
The City actually CUT the percentage of units in Urban Villages over the next 20 years, with just 34% allocated there, instead of the 90% recommended by the experts. They actually allocated a higher share of new housing at the LOWEST density – that is, single family dwellings – which as we’ve seen, sets off a train of dominoes with negative impacts across our community, not the least of which are massive public costs for new roads, sewers, water lines, fire stations and police to serve suburban sprawl.
Furthermore, neither the mayor nor the City Council proposed a single new urban village over the next 20 years, even though most people could suggest quite a few – e.g., Cordata, the area just north of Costco, Birchwood, Sunset Square, Irongate/E. Bakerview. Why pay for expert recommendations, then ignore them? Why fail to follow the clear statutory direction from the GMA? The Bellingham Plan is full of bad dominoes.
Just Call It Methane
I mentioned greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions above, one of the obvious impacts from City policies that essentially encourage more pollution from car and truck trips. But the City itself has also failed to address their largest municipal greenhouse gas impacts, despite their own Climate Plan laying out a vision and goals around reducing GHG emissions.
The largest single source of City greenhouse gases are our ancient sewage sludge incinerators at Post Point, accounting for about 40% of all GHG pollution by municipal operations. They have burned methane – a GHG that heats the atmosphere 80 times faster than carbon dioxide – day and night for the last 50+ years, which also generates toxic pollution in the air we breathe and the water of Bellingham Bay, from which comes seafood for our tables.
The Climate Protection Action Plan Update was adopted by City Council in December, 2019. It suggests best management practices at Post Point and addresses past modifications to the equipment, briefly mentioning a future plan to explore alternatives, including bio-digestion and other disposal methods. That process did begin with robust public participation, but due to health and environmental concerns, and excessive costs, was cancelled by Mayor Fleetwood in August, 2022.
Much state legislation, from the GMA to the Shoreline Management Act (SMA), and many state regulations (like those from the Dept. of Ecology and the Dept. of Health, for instance) require the City to protect, improve, and restore surface water and groundwater, air, and soil resources in the community through its policies and actions. Local groups and citizens (and once again, an expert City consultant) have been calling for the City to seriously look at alternative technologies to sludge incineration, but the mayor proposed, and Council recently approved the status quo – a contract to spend $40 Million (that’s just Phase 1) of tax money to upgrade incinerators that are over 50 and 35 years old respectively. This is technology so old (designed in the 1930’s), that staff have acknowledged they had to search for parts on eBay.
The City wouldn’t waste public money trying to retrofit a Public Works work truck it bought in 1972 to use today, or a computer system it bought in the 1990’s – so why are they spending tens of millions of dollars to prop up aging equipment that pollutes our community, when safer and cheaper options exist?
The current Bellingham Plan says nothing about reducing or eliminating the Post Point pollution and the poisons it spreads in our air and water, and as a result violates numerous state and Federal requirements to reduce such pollution. The current Plan does not have a single mention of sewage, incineration, methane, or Post Point. It pretends to meet the Growth Management Act, but its vague, aspirational statements do not meet the law.
The City 2018 Climate Action Plan stated that “Bellingham would have to reduce its annual community emissions by 1.2 million [tons] or 72% [by 2030] to stay on target.” According to the City’s 2023 emissions inventory, the City is not on track to meet that 2030 goal. The City’s 2023 Climate Protection Plan update (due every 5 years) has yet to be completed.
See You In Court
The Whatcom Environmental Council looked very carefully through the many sections of the Bellingham Plan and decided that it failed in multiple ways. We submitted detailed recommendations during public comment, and when those were ignored, we decided to challenge the Plan before the Growth Management Hearings Board. Our dominos are lined up to protect Lake Whatcom, preserve our drinking water quality, fight suburban sprawl, encourage housing affordability, improve our health and quality of life through reduced use of cars and trucks, and improve public participation and citizen voices in governing our community.
Want to help? To help us in this and other efforts to protect the people and environment of Whatcom County, you can donate at www.whatcomenvirocouncil.org. And please contact your City Council members (360-778-8200, ccmail@cob.org) and the mayor (360-778-8100, mayorsoffice@cob.org) to let them know what you think about a Bellingham Plan that commits us for 20 years to some bad, but preventable, outcomes.
Learn more about WEC and our work at our Community Open House on Thursday, November 12th, 530pm at Stemma Brewing West, 500 Carolina St.
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