The San Juan County Council’s three person stormwater subcommittee has effectively withdrawn its proposed Stormwater Utility funding ordinance and taken a different approach to addressing the problem in light of an immediate legal deadline to comply with a Growth Management Hearings Board (GMHB) Order.

Subcommittee Chair Rich Peterson told the Council on Tuesday, April 8, that the County is facing a two-tiered problem. The first is an April 15 GMA Hearings Board deadline to explain how the County will fund approximately $2 million in capital expenditures for stormwater control in Eastsound over a six-year period. The plan itself has to be in place no later than June 4, 2008.

The deadline for the Eastsound capital plan grew out of legal action filed under the Growth Management Act (GMA) in 2000 and has been extended several times.

Peterson said, “Basically, the Board has told us that its patience is at an end. If we don’t meet this deadline it could impose penalties, including a moratorium on issuing building permits. That would be disastrous for our local economy.”

Peterson described the Eastsound problem as a part of the larger problem of funding capital projects for stormwater control countywide.

“When San Juan County joined the GMA program in 1990, it committed to build the infrastructure required to support development as it occurs.” Peterson said. “The fact is, the County has not done that with stormwater and now we have to play catch up. We have no choice.”

The GMA specifically requires the County to have a 20-year plan to deal with stormwater countywide and, each year, be able to demonstrate how it will fund the next six years of the plan. San Juan County has never been in compliance with that provision.

The Council’s Stormwater Subcommittee recommended that the Council proceed by authorizing a loan from another county fund or an external source to satisfy the Growth Management Hearings Board’s immediate deadline for funding the Eastsound capital projects. Meanwhile, the Subcommittee will continue to work on a means of funding the stormwater system and needed improvements countywide (ultimately including the Eastsound projects). The subcommittee has set the end of July as a target for presenting that proposal to the Council and the public for review and discussion.

“The bottom line is, we don’t have nearly as much time to deal with this as we initially thought,” said Peterson. “Fortunately, with data from the first Stormwater Steering Committee, the input we received during the referendum process and in open Subcommittee meetings we held after the referendum, we are working with tremendous amount of good information.”

“Now it is up to us to use that knowledge to craft an ordinance which clearly defines the tasks the Stormwater Utility needs to accomplish countywide, the cost of accomplishing them and an effective and efficient means to finance it all – and we need to do it in time to get public comment and for the Council to adopt it this Fall.”

Council Chair Howie Rosenfeld, also a member of the subcommittee, added, “Despite the fact that it now looks as if this is just an Eastsound problem, it is not. Right now, Eastsound is the only area in which thorough studies have taken place. We have already identified numerous areas that require attention on Lopez and San Juan Island. We need to get started doing the detailed watershed studies and planning that will enable us to establish a long-range program to provide the infrastructure we need to catch up with the development that has already taken place and to provide for future growth.”

Council member Peterson asked the council to ask the County Administrator to prepare the necessary documents to authorize a loan that would satisfy the immediate requirements set by the GMHB. The Council voted unanimously to grant the authorization. Peterson said the subcommittee would bring further issues concerning the Stormwater Utility before the Council in the near future.

The subcommittee has not offered an estimate of the total cost of funding a six- year, countywide stormwater plan, but staff members have indicated that, when the studies are done more money may be required for projects on other islands than has been committed to meet the needs of the Eastsound urban growth area.