TO

The Lake Forest Park Stewardship Foundation would like to take this opportunity to comment on the Reasonable Use Exemption for the proposed Petrie Residence, per the Class 2 Master Use Permit Application submitted to the City on April 4, 2000.

There are numerous deficiencies and inconsistencies in the Petries’ application materials.

A. The size and even the number of houses being proposed is not clear. For example, the SEPA Checklist for this project, which is dated 4/7/99, states on pages 3 and 4:

Residence 1 will have a footprint of approximately 2000 square feet and the accessory dwelling will have a footprint of 1,000 feet.

In the Class II Master Use Permit Application dated April 4, 2000, Answer 1 on Page 12 states:

The residence will have a footprint of approximately 2500 square feet and the accessory dwelling will have a footprint of 1000 feet.

A letter from George Petrie to Ty Peterson, received by the City Oct. 10, 2000, states:

The size of the project seems to have grown with every new addition to the public record. This makes accurate assessment of the project’s impact on the sensitive areas in which it is to be located difficult, if not impossible.

Any authorized alteration of a sensitive area under this subsection shall be subject to conditions established by the city and shall require mitigation in accordance with a mitigation plan approved by the city.

The Petries’ application does not provide for any mitigation plan whatsoever. In fact, an addendum to the public record, in the form of a letter from Wetland Resources Inc. received by the City on May 2 2000, states that no mitigation will be required for the project. This is in direct contradiction to LFPMC 16.18.080.A.5.

C. The most recent site plan in the public record, dated Jun 2 2000, contains erroneous calculations for the amount of impervious surface being added to the lot. These calculations, in the upper left of the document, are as follows:

Buildings	4380 Sq. Ft
Driveways	1450 Sq. Ft
Access Road	4950 Sq. Ft
Total Impervious	10,780 Sq. Ft
Exist. Gravel Road	7410 Sq. Ft
Total New Impervious	3370 Sq. Ft

According to these figures, the proposed access road will consist of 4950 square feet of impervious surface. After adding up all of the impervious surfaces including the access road, driveways, and buildings, the size of the existing gravel road is subtracted to get the “total new impervious surface”. The implausible part of this calculation is that the existing gravel road is shown to be 7410 square feet, while the access road which will be in the exact same place is only 4950 square feet. Leaving aside the issue of whether the existing gravel road is impervious (which is discussed in section 4, below; further implications of this entire subject are discussed section 5), this appears to imply that the difference in area between the proposed paved road and the existing gravel road will be removed. How else could the total proposed impervious surface not include the 7410 square feet of gravel road? Yet nothing in the public record shows that this additional impervious surface will be removed.

As previously mentioned, see section 5 for the significance of the amount of new impervious surface of a project.

A principal concern in the consideration of an application for a Reasonable Use Exemption is the assessment of the amount of impact on sensitive areas (LFPMC 16.18.080). These inconsistencies in the public record prevent the citizens of Lake Forest Park from being able to accurately perform this assessment. Therefore, the Stewardship Foundation believes that these inconsistencies, and the lack of a mitigation plan, are grounds for denial of this application.

The current public record for this application is ambiguous as to whether the Petries wish to build one house or two. The Public Notices provided by the City regarding the SEPA comment period and the Reasonable Use Exemption Hearing specifically cite the intention to build one house. However, The Petrie's Class 2 Master use Permit Application, Site Plan, and Septic Design all indicate a plan to build one house and an "accessory dwelling". Per the site plan received by the City on Aug. 8, 2000, the accessory dwelling has its own septic drainfield. No subdivision is occurring; the project - whether one house or two - will be built on a single tax parcel.

While accessory dwellings are permitted and even encouraged in the LFP Comprehensive Plan, section 16.18.080.A of the LFP Municipal Code (LFPMC) is very specific about a set of conditions, all of which must be met, in order for a Reasonable Use Exemption to be granted. Three relevant conditions from LFPMC 16.18.080.A are as follows:

1. Application of sensitive areas requirements would deny all reasonable use of the property.

4. Any alteration to the sensitive area or associated buffer shall be the minimum necessary to allow for reasonable use of the property.

Note that all of the construction in this proposal occurs within either Steep Slope areas or buffers for the steep slopes. In applying 16.18.080.A.1 to this application, it is clear that denying the current application would not deny all reasonable use of the property, because there is another reasonable use for the property - namely, one single house instead of two.

Similarly, applying 16.18.080.A.2, there is obviously a reasonable use with less impact on the sensitive area than the current application proposes – one single house instead of two.

Finally, applying 16.18.080.A.4, there is obviously a reasonable use which results in less alteration of the sensitive area than the current application proposes – one single house instead of two.

Applying the above section of the LFPMC to this case results in a clear answer to the question "one dwelling, or two?". The answer is one. Any project involving two dwellings clearly has more impact on, and alteration to, the sensitive areas than a project with one dwelling. Besides the impact of the increased combined area of the dwellings themselves, there are the issues of two septic drainfields vs. one drainfield and the additional area of two driveways vs. one driveway.

The Stewardship Foundation believes that this RUE should be denied on the basis of paragraphs 1, 2, and 4 of LFPMC 16.18.080.A. However if the RUE is granted, it should be conditioned on the Petries being allowed to build one dwelling - not two.

Again, the public record is ambiguous as to the size of the dwelling(s) being proposed. The latest statement from Mr. Petrie (in a letter to Ty Peterson dated October 9, 2000) states a size - i.e., a footprint – of 6000 square feet for "the residence" (note the singular usage in this case). The proposal is for a two-story residence; thus the total size of the house would be well over 10000 square feet.

A study of the houses in the vicinity, including every house whose lot directly abuts the Petrie's lot, (see Appendix A) shows an average footprint size of 1321 square feet, and an average total house size of 1605 square feet. The largest total house size for any of these houses is 3720 square feet.

The Petries are clearly attempting to build a house which is much larger than anything in the immediate vicinity. Again, looking at LFPMC 16.18.080, when an RUE is being considered, alterations must be the "minimum necessary to allow for reasonable use of the property". Certainly, "Reasonable Use" of a single lot, zoned for single-family residential use in a neighborhood where the average total house size is 1605 square feet, is not a 10000 square foot house.

The Stewardship Foundation believes that this RUE should be denied on the basis of paragraphs 2 and 4 of LFPMC 16.18.080.A. However if the RUE is granted, it should be conditioned on the Petries being allowed to build one dwelling with a maximum total size of 4000 square feet and a maximum footprint of 2000 square feet. Both of these figures exceed the maximum respective sizes for the houses in the vicinity of the Petrie property.

There is currently a roughly graded path from 30th Ave. NE up to the proposed building site. This path consists of gravel and fill from previous unpermitted attempts (which occurred long before the Petries bought the property) to develop this land. This road is currently quite porous; it supports a wide range of native and nonnative plant species. The Petries' proposal calls for paving this access road with asphalt. This road is at least 7000 square feet (the record is inconsistent on this figure). The plan calls for runoff from this road to be collected and deposited in the wetland buffers.

Note that this road travels though wetland buffers, as delineated in the “Sensitive Area Study” prepared by the Petries' Wetland consultant, Wetlands Resources, Inc. LFPMC 16.18.030 describes permitted alteration to wetlands and their buffers. Section L covers wetlands crossings:

A report from Wetland Resources, Inc., dated April 27, 2000, claims that merely adding loose gravel to the existing access road would minimize the impact on the wetlands buffers, since there would be no runoff (rainfall would infiltrate directly into the ground beneath the driveway).

The Stewardship Foundation believes that this RUE request should be denied on the basis of failing to comply with LFPMC 16.18.030.L.2, since paving the driveway through the wetlands buffers does not in fact minimize impacts to the wetlands. However, if the RUE is granted, it should be conditioned on the access road being covered with loose gravel, not paved with asphalt.

There are numerous inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the Petries’ application materials regarding drainage – so many that the Stewardship Foundation believes that this request for a Reasonable Use Exemption should be denied on this basis alone.

First note the impossible calculations described in Section 1.C of this document.

Next, refer to the report entitled “Preliminary Drainage Investigation, Petrie One Single Family Residential”, revised August 2, 2000, specifically to the numbers at the bottom of page 2 describing the extent of impervious surface. The report claims that the existing road is “considered partially impervious because of its compaction from past haul road activities”. A brief inspection of this road shows that it is completely overgrown with blackberries and alders and other vegetation, with the exception of the tracks left by the heavy equipment used by those employed by Mr. Petrie. (This description is confirmed by the LFP Department of Public Services’ Staff Report to the Hearing Examiner on this matter, top of page 4.) Before this land was purchased by Mr. Petrie, this “road” was completely, 100% overgrown, and had been for many years. This indicates a very porous surface indeed. Alders do not grow on even “partially” impervious surface.

The report goes on to state that the extent of the existing road is approximately 7410 square feet, and that the total combined impervious surface for the entire project – including new roofs and the driveway – is approximately 10,780 square feet. (Note that this report was written – and accepted by the Planning Department – when the proposed project consisted of two much smaller houses than the current proposed 6000 square foot footprint.) Supposedly the net new impervious surface is 3370 square feet. This latter calculation can be challenged on several grounds. If the existing (actually, original, before Mr. Petrie started impacting it) road was in fact not impervious, then the net new impervious surface is 10,780 square feet. Even if it were granted that the existing road were only “partially impervious” (a vague term not defined or used in the King County Surface Water Design Manual), that would not imply that the net new impervious surface consisting of the road is zero. The net new impervious surface consisting of the road would be the size of the road, which is 7410 square feet, multiplied by some unstated coefficient describing the extent of the “partially” impervious surface of the existing road. This coefficient is, of course, fictional. The road is not impervious now; it will be totally impervious after the proposed development. The net new impervious surface proposed for the Petries’ project is most certainly more than 3370 square feet. The correct number would actually have been, at the time this report was written, 10,780. The significance of this number is described below.

Of course, since the proposed project has changed considerably since this drainage plan was last updated, the net new impervious surface is actually even larger – the footprint of the house alone is now 6000 square feet (as opposed to the total of 4380 square feet shown on the site plan). Given the inconsistent and sketchy data available at this time, the net impervious surface of the project (all of it is new) is approximately

(The area of the driveway and access road is obtained from the Staff Report to the Hearing Examiner, page 7.)

In the Petries’ “Drainage Analysis”, page 4, the Core Requirement #2 (requiring Offsite Analysis) is dismissed as “not applicable since no concentrated off or on site discharges are proposed.” LFPMC 16.24.010.B and 16.24.170 describes the adoption of the King County Surface Water Design Manual as the City’s source for standards in this area. Section 1.2.2-1 of the Design Manual gives the following two reasons for exemption from an off-site analysis:

1. The proposed new impervious surface to be constructed is 5000 square feet or less, OR

2. The drainage area from which surface and storm water runoff is to be collected and concentrated is 5000 square feet, or less.

Neither of these cases describes the Petries’ proposal. The Foundation asserts that the proposed new impervious surface to be constructed is actually 11250 square feet. It is certainly much larger than the Petries’ claim of 3370 square feet. Thus, clause 1 (above) does not apply.

As to clause 2 (above), regarding the drainage area, note that all of the runoff from the driveway – all 5250 square feet – will be collected and deposited in a concentrated location, at the toe of the steep slopes, in the wetland buffers (see “Drainage Review”, p. 3). The Design Manual does not distinguish between new and existing impervious surface in clause 2; all that matters is the total amount of drainage area from which runoff is collected. Since in the Petries’ proposal, this area is larger than 5000 square feet (it’s 5250 square feet to be exact), this clause does not apply.

Look at the Design Manual’s clause referring to exemption from offsite analysis if “the proposed new impervious surface to be constructed is 5000 square feet or less” from another perspective. The Petries’ current proposal is to build a house with a footprint of 6000 square feet. There is no possible way this project could have less new impervious surface than 5000 square feet, no matter what type of arithmetic is performed. The offsite analysis must be performed.

The purpose of an offsite drainage analysis is to ensure that no detrimental effects are seen downstream of the proposed project. Note that LFPMC 16.18.080.A states, as one of the criteria for the granting of a Reasonable Use Exemption,

3. The proposed development does not pose an unreasonable hreat to the public health, safety, or welfare, on or off the proposed site and is consistent with the general purposes of this chapter and the comprehensive plan.

The stream flowing from the Petrie site, Brookside Creek, is a major tributary of McAleer Creek, a known current salmon spawning ground. Salmon are known to be extremely sensitive to changes in turbidity and temperature of the water in which they spawn. The effects of increased runoff into Brookside Creek resulting from this project must be ascertained.

Since the offsite analysis required by the King County Surface Water Design Manual has not been performed, the applicants can not prove that criteria specified in LFPMC 16.18.080.A.3 has been met. Therefore this request for an RUE must be denied. However if the RUE is granted, it should be conditioned on the Petries performing a detailed off-site drainage analysis prior to the granting of any permits for construction or grading.

The City claims that the Petries’ proposal require relief only from requirements governing development in steep slope hazard areas, not from those governing wetlands and their associated buffers. Presumably this is because the only encroachment into the wetlands buffers is the access road. There is in fact no mention in the proposal of any mitigation for encroachment in wetlands. This is in contradiction to LFPMC 16.18.230, which describes permitted alteration to wetlands. Section L covers wetlands crossings:

Thus the Municipal code clearly states that mitigation is required for this wetlands crossing. Neither the Planning Department nor the Petries’ propose any such mitigation. The Stewardship Foundation believes that mitigation for this wetlands encroachment must be implemented. Our recommendation is described in section 7, below.

There is currently a culvert on the Petrie property, though which the upper portion of Brookside Creek flows immediately downstream of its headwaters on the adjacent Hill property. Both the Hill property and Brookside Creek have been deemed "prime coho habitat" by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Furthermore, the DFW has found the culvert on the Petrie property to be impassible to juvenile salmonids. See letter from Douglas Hennick, DFW Area Habitat Biologist, to LFP Planning Department, received by the City on June 7, 2000. The DFW has recommended that this culvert be replaced with a fish-passable culvert to facilitate the return of salmonid to their traditional habitat in this area.

Note that efforts are already underway to remove similar obstacles on Brookside Creek downstream of this culvert. Trout Unlimited, Streamkeepers, and the LFP Stewardship Foundation, as well as private individuals, are currently working on such projects.

The Stewardship Foundation believes that this RUE, if granted, must be conditioned on the replacement of the Brookside Creek culvert with a fish-passable culvert. This will act as mitigation for the wetlands encroachment described in section 6, above.

In summary, the Stewardship Foundation believes that this Reasonable Use Exemption should be denied on the on the grunds described above. However if the RUE is granted, it should be conditioned on the following:

2. The house shall be restricted to a maximum footprint of 2000 square feet, and a maximum total area of 4000 square feet.

4. An offsite drainage analysis shall be performed prior to the granting any permits for grading or construction.

5. The Brookside Creek culvert be replaced with a culvert which is fish-passable.

All measurements are in square feet. “Footprint” is the size of the ground floor. “Total” is the total square feet in the house, counting all floors and possible basement. “Legal” is the legal description, consisting of subdivision (see below), block (“B”), and Lot number “L”.

Briercrest = Briercrest Addition; LCH3 = Lake City Homes #3; Miller = Miller’s addition to LFP4; LFP4 = LFP 4^th Addition Division A

TO:	Lake Forest Park Planning Department
	Hearing Examiner
FROM:	Doug Mitchell, President
	Lake Forest Park Stewardship Foundation
DATE:	December 12, 2000
SUBJ:	RU00-02, Reasonable Use Exemption, Petrie Residence

Building	6000 Sq. Ft
Driveway & Access	5250 Sq. Ft
Total	11250 Sq. Ft