Summary

Story

The Metropolitan King County Council’s Environment and Transportation Committee will hold a special evening work session on Vashon to review the proposed legislation to protect County shorelines and manage growth in unincorporated areas: 

Tuesday, June 29
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Open house 6:00-6:30 p.m.
McMurray Middle School
9329 Cemetery Rd SW,
Vashon, WA

During the work session, committee members will take public testimony on the Shoreline Master Program and the King County Comprehensive Plan.

Recognizing that Washington’s shorelines are among the most valuable and fragile of the state’s natural resources, voters approved the Washington State Shoreline Management Act (“SMA”) in 1972.

In order to protect these fragile resources, the SMA requires each county and city to adopt a shoreline master plan and regulations (together make up a shoreline master program or “SMP”) to “prevent the inherent harm in an uncoordinated and piecemeal development of the state's shorelines.”

Adopted in 1978, the County's current SMP has not seen any substantial revisions in three decades. In 2003, the Washington Department of Ecology adopted revised guidelines that govern the content of local SMPs. Under state law, King County is required to adopt an updated SMP that implements the new state guidelines by December 1, 2010.

The King County Comprehensive Plan ("KCCP") is the plan by which King County manages growth in the unincorporated areas. Comprehensive plans adopted by local governments provide the blueprint to effectively combine certainty for development decisions, reasonable environmental protection, long-range planning for cost-effective infrastructure, and orderly growth and development.

Every year, the KCCP can be amended to address technical updates and make revisions that do not require substantive policy changes. In 2010, the executive has proposed such technical, non-substantive changes.