| Report 35 |
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R35: Wetlands: The Land-use Issue of the '90s
Page: Cover | Discussion
Questions |
Page 1-3 |
4-10 | Positions and Actions |
Glossary |
References
Planning for development or preservation of wetlands in Lane County,
and especially in West Eugene where the most work has been done, must not
only take into account the state and federal regulations already discussed.
Local planning efforts also have a direct bearing on the future of wetlands.
The Eugene-Springfield Metropolitan Area Plan, known simply as "the
Metro Plan," is the governing overall framework plan for the metropolitan
area. It incorporates local application of the Statewide Planning Goals
- in the case of wetlands, particulariy Goal 5, Natural
Resources.6
Amendments to the Metro Plan must follow the procedure shown on page 5. In
addition to the Metro Plan, a number of refinement plans, such as the Willow
Creek Special Area Study, provide more specific policies and directions for
development in discrete geographic areas or for the provision of individual
services, e.g., transportation. One such refinement plan, scheduled for adoption
in early 1992, is the West Eugene Wetlands Special Area Study. It is a guide
for west Eugene that attempts to balance protection of the wetlands resource
with some degree of urban development. The Permitting Process Mitigation If identified wetlands qualifying for protection under the federal and state
law are to be developed to any degree, the loss must be "mitigated,"
either by enhancing nearby wetlands or by creating new wetlands elsewhere.
This is not necessarily an acre-for-acre exchange, but depends on the quality
of the wetlands being replaced. Under the federal Clean Water Act there
is a priority of considerations before wetlands can be destroyed by development:
(1) Can the development be relocated or designed so as to avoid any loss
of the wetland?; (2) If not, can the wetland loss be mitigated on site by
creating a new wetland or enhancing an existing one?; (3) If neither 1 or
2 is possible, then off-site mitigation is permitted. In many cases, careful design can save a wetland while permitting some development.
In fact, a number of high tech industries and office developments have been
built around existing wetlands to provide attractive parklike settings.
Care must be taken, however, to protect the wetland resource values from
destruction by run-off and intensive human activity. Another effective tool is the transfer of development rights (TDRs), which
allows for more intensive development in one area in exchange for no or
restricted development elsewhere. This device was used in Eugene's Willow
Creek area where the landowners are allowed to develop more intensively
than the zoning permits on one part of their property in exchange for leasing
the wetland portion of their property over The Nature Conservancy for
preservation. The most successful wetlands are large or interconnected areas. Off-site
mitigation that results in isolated potholes filled with water have proven
not to be successful. Therefore, the concept of mitigation banks has been
introduced. Instead of scattered, small off-site mitigation, a large wetland
area could be developed or enhanced into a truly significant resource. Before
development would be allowed, landowners and developers who could not avoid
wetland loss on site would buy credits in the mitigation bank. The West
Eugene Wetlands Study hasindicated this could be a very successful tool here. Although many of the
original wetlands in the system northwest of Eugene have been destroyed by
development, there are still large areas of agricultural land that could
be reintroduced to the wetland system. By identifying in the Study those
areas that would add to the wetland resource, funds could be directed
toward protecting and enhancing them. A preserved wetlands system will
increase the quality of life in the area and offer an amenity for both
tourists and local residents. The West Eugene industrial area is an excellent example of the problems
that arise in trying to protect wetland resources. Long before the
importance of wetlands was recognized, this area had been planned and
zoned for industrial use and, in fact, some industries, such as Spectra
Physics, had already located there. Land owners who, in good faith, had
purchased property for industrial development suddenly found themselves
with very restricted use of their properties. In addition to trying to
identify ways of working around the problem through TDRs and encouraging
innovative designs, the city lobbied for a $2 million appropriation to the
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from Congress to purchase outright some of
the highest value wetlands in the West Eugene area. The funds come from
the Department of Interior Land and Water Conservation Fund and may be
used also to buy either land or conservation easements for enhancement and
non-wetland areas for connections. The BLM is seeking an additional $4
million in succeeding years. The lands so purchased will be owned and
administered by the federal BLM and managed for protection of the resource
in consultation with The Nature Conservancy, (which already controls the
wetland in the Willow Creek area), the City of Eugene, and Lane County. Storm Water Management In an effort to further protect wetlands and other water-dependent areas
and activities, the federal Clean Water Act requires cities over 100,000
population to adopt a comprehensive plan for storm water management. In
Eugene the Public Works Department is responsible for this and will
incorporate a stormwater and flood control plan in the wetland program.
Instead of the traditional approach of a pipe network for storm water, the
city is looking at a natural system using flood plains, allowing
vegetation to grow along the storm water canal and perhaps widening the
canal. There will be an attempt to have a multi-use approach including
recreation, habitat for storm water management and flood protection. The
agency is working on a detailed plan in the region west of Spectra
Physics. Similar planning will be applied within the rest of the City of
Eugene also. The best available maps for inventorying wetlands are those produced by
the FWS, according to Tim Bingham of the Lane Council of Governments. LCOG
also issued a preliminary inventory of Eugene and Springfield wetlands in
1988 that stated: "To ensure that no wetlands were overlooked during
our inventory, the USFWS National Wetlands Inventory maps and broad
definition were used." That definition reads: "Lands
transitional between terrestrial and aquatic systems where the water table
is usually at or near the surface or the land is covered by shallow water.
For purposes of this classification, wetlands must have one or more of the
following three attributes: (1) at least periodically, the land supports
predominately hydrophytes; (2) the substrate is predominately undrained
hydric soil; and (3) the substrate is nonsoil and is saturated with water
or covered by shallow water at some time during the growing season of each
year."7 Using the FWS maps and definition adopted in 1979 and still in use in
1988, the LCOG has produced a study of the Eugene/Springfield Metropolitan
Area and an even more detailed study of the West Eugene Wetlands Special
Area. Most cities in Lane County, however, do not yet have an updated
inventory of their wetlands. Indeed, when contacted, several officials
from the smaller cities stated that they had none or no significant areas
of wetlands. This committee selected a sampling of maps to indicate how various cities,
large and small, are affected by wetland designation:
Metro-Eugene/Springfield, the West Eugene Wetlands Study Area, Cottage
Grove, Florence, and Veneta. Three of these are included here on pages 7,
8, and 9. Other cities in Lane County have not yet completed
identification of significant wetlands within their urban growth
boundaries. Urbanized areas not incorporated as cities have not been
included in this years study.
The map on page 7 shows the wetland area in the City of Cottage Grove.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to determine the acreage from the map.
The Planning Director stated that the city considers their wetland areas
to be assets. The northem area will be incorporated into a golf course,
and the one to the east will contain a water treatment plant and public
park, which will be enhanced by its wetland characteristics. Eugene/Springfield In addition to the delay of any prospective development in the area while
the wetlands study and planning was in progress, a particularly thorny
problem arose because some industries, the major one being
Spectra-Physics, would now be required to mitigate for the
already-developed acreage, as well as for that on which they proposed to
expand (see page 5). The West Eugene Wetlands Special Area Study has been in progress since
1988. Several drafts of the plan have been produced. The public has been
involved in each step of the process, and community workshops have been
held every few months to provide public information. The latest draft is
dated April 1991. Having been received kindly by the general public
participating in the workshops, it will now go to city and county
officials for approval. Because it will require amendment of the Metro
Plan, planning commissions of the city of Eugene and Lane County must hold
hearings and recommend adoption to the Eugene City Council and the County
Commission. Those bodies will adopt the plan after they have also held
public hearings. (See p.5.) 6. Lev, Esther, and Peter Zika, Comp. Preliminary Inventory of
Eugene-Springfield Wetland, Riparian and upland Areas for Wildlife Habitat
Value. LCOG, Dec.1988. rev. Feb.1990, pp. 1. 7. Lev, op cit., pp. 2, 3. Source: Scanned from original document.
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