Earlier this month, classical musician Jennifer Godfrey won her case on the state Courtroom of Appeals looking for higher environmental overview of the Seattle Metropolis Council’s sweeping land use and zoning modifications.
Now, a council member desires to eradicate Godfrey’s authorized pathway to query assumptions concerning the impacts of housing development on water, streams, timber and fish.
It’s a small battle indicative of the metamorphosis of Seattle as a spot that when valued science and inexperienced areas right into a metropolis that erroneously believes the options to all its ills lie in unquestioned progress.
Just a little background.
Final 12 months, Godfrey, a bassist with the Seattle Symphony, didn’t like what she noticed as an absence of rigor documenting the impacts of the One Seattle Complete Plan. She appealed the Last Environmental Influence Assertion to the town listening to examiner.
The listening to examiner tossed out Godfrey’s case and he or she appealed.
Attorneys for Seattle argued that constructing new housing trumps all different concerns and impacts. Within the metropolis’s view, nobody has the flexibility to even query whether or not environmental opinions adequately seize the true impacts of constructing exponentially extra housing — on the atmosphere, gentrification or anything.
That argument was based mostly on measures handed by the Legislature in recent times to filter challenges to constructing initiatives.
However right here’s the wrinkle: A long time in the past, the Legislature gave Seattle and different cities the flexibility to ascertain an appeals course of to overview environmental research earlier than last choices are made by metropolis lawmakers.
And that’s why the state Courtroom of Appeals agreed with Godfrey: She appropriately pursued authorized recourse out there to her and others. Given the appeals court docket opinion, the listening to examiner should now contemplate whether or not there’s benefit to her arguments that the town whitewashed environmental penalties of the One Seattle Complete Plan.
However the court docket went additional, not solely defending Godfrey’s authorized proper, however including that there was good purpose for it.
“Timing of environmental overview beneath SEPA (State Environmental Coverage Act) is crucial,” wrote the court docket. “One of many fundamental functions of an EIS (Environmental Influence Assertion) is to make sure that native governments ‘contemplate complete environmental and ecological components to the fullest extent when taking main actions considerably affecting the standard of the atmosphere.’”
Seattle Land Use & Sustainability Chair Eddie Lin is sponsoring CB 121215, which eliminates the flexibility of residents to file environmental appeals to the listening to examiner as laws strikes by Metropolis Corridor. As an alternative, involved Seattleites must wait till after land-use modifications turn out to be regulation and attempt to go to the Progress Administration Hearings Board or rent an legal professional and file a lawsuit in superior court docket.
“I don’t assume these listening to examiner appeals profit anybody,” Lin mentioned from the council dais. “I don’t assume that they lead to higher environmental protections for our metropolis however they do lead to vital delays.”
Lin is partially appropriate: The appeals gained’t do any good if the council chooses to do nothing even when severe environmental impacts are uncovered.
Is the listening to examiner besieged with flimsy environmental challenges gumming up progress?
At a briefing earlier this month, a council staffer famous there have been solely 28 SEPA appeals to the listening to examiner from 2016-2026. Of these, 19 have been dismissed or withdrawn. However right here’s the factor: They have been disbursed with pretty shortly — the common attraction time for dismissed circumstances was 69 days; 52 days for these later withdrawn.
By comparability, the few circumstances discovered to have benefit took for much longer. The only case the place an environmental assertion was despatched again for overview took 374 days.
In different phrases, the place there was a reputable downside, the method appropriately took time to type it out.
When clear air, water and inexperienced area are beneath assault throughout America and Seattle is altering earlier than our eyes, native officers ought to face up for science and scrutiny and pledge to get proper probably the most sweeping modifications in a long time.
CB 121215 ought to go no additional.
The Land Use Committee once more takes up the proposed ordinance Wednesday.
