Now, here’s an interesting item. Earlier this month state Ecology Director Jay Manning wrote the Spokane County Commissioners giving them some really terrific news involving tens of millions of dollars in state grant funds. The news was that the County would still get the money.
This is good news, except for one thing. The reason the county was in danger of losing the funds (and rightly should have) is that it is out of compliance, repeatedly, with the state Growth Management Act. The latest chapter in the county’s rather militant non-compliance with the GMA is the one we reported on last week, involving the county’s remarkable record of shenanigans around the McGlades restaurant development north of Spokane.
The GMA has a sanctions clause for counties who trample over the law the way Spokane County has in recent years. The state withholds grant money from the offending jurisdiction.
But, what if, say, the grant money was for things like removing septic tanks, or building new wastewater treatment plants to protect a sole source aquifer, or a river that has non-attainment status under the federal Clean Water Act?
In such instances, the offending county can apply for an exemption arguing that the loss of funds “would lead to substantial environmental degradation.”
And that’s the purpose of Manning’s letter, to grant the exemption, so that the flow of state grant funds to Spokane County septic tank elimination program (STEP) and to fund its new waste water treatment plant will continue uninterrupted.
There’s a decent argument that the state–which has an obvious interest, say, in protecting City of Spokane water users from upgradient septic tank pollution reaching the Spokane Valley aquifer–would be punching its own nose by withholding the grant funds.
It’s just that the flip side of this is argument is that Manning’s letter will do little to dampen the brazen attitude the County Commissioners have displayed in recent years that they are beyond the reach of the state’s land use planning laws, and even the county’s own comprehensive plan. It kind of looks like they’re getting away with breaking the law, and one can easily imagine a commissioner, or two, having a private chuckle about it as well.
No comments yet.