Judge sends Canterbury Bluff plat back to Spokane County planning

A Spokane County Superior Court judge said the county planning department and its hearing examiner failed to provide adequate protection for a wetland located in the heart of a proposed 25-home subdivision on North Hatch Road.

Judge James M. Triplet ruled last month that the proposed Canterbury Bluff plat at 17714 N. Hatch Road inadequately addresses wetland protections as required under state law and the county’s critical areas ordinance.

The proposal is being sent back to the county planning department for revisions by the developer.

The county planning department and the hearing examiner approved a reduced 75-foot buffer when the law generally requires a 100-foot buffer.

The issue was appealed by a neighborhood group called Citizens Affirming Responsible Development, initially before Hearing Examiner Mike Dempsey and subsequently in Superior Court after Dempsey ruled in favor of the developer.

Triplet noted wetland buffer exceptions are allowed, but only if there are no feasible alternatives.

He said the plat could be reduced from 25 lots to possibly 22 lots as proposed in an initial plat by Landed Gentry Development Inc., of Burlington, Washington.

Triplet did not rule on exceptions approved by the county allowing a private road, which would not be as wide as a public road, to make room for more home lots. The private road along with deviations in sidewalk standards was approved by the hearing examiner as an exception to newer county road standards that also call for neighborhood connections.

“Because I have determined that reducing the number of lots is a feasible alternative to the reduction in the wetland buffer zone, I am not sure I need to address these further issues unless or until a new plat is submitted,” the judge said in his ruling.

Jim Cooke, a member of the neighborhood group, said, “We are disappointed it takes a neighborhood to keep our county officials in check.”

He said the error over the wetland stems from previous legal action involving an original 2008 plat submitted by the developer.

That proposal had languished following the economic downturn and was ruled invalid by the hearing examiner in 2013 because the developer failed to meet a time deadline for completing a preliminary plat application.

Landed Gentry sued the county, but that case was put on hold pending the outcome of the updated preliminary plat application, which calls for 25 homes.

Cooke said the neighborhood believes that county officials are going out of their way to satisfy the developer in order to end the threat of a judgment against the county over Dempsey’s disqualification of the original plat over the deadline issue.

He said that CARD has spent more than $6,000 on the appeal, and the neighborhood group believes the developer’s road plans create hazards for future residents.

In an email, Cooke said, “Through exemptions and design deviations, our county officials are doing everything they can to make the developers’ pending lawsuit against them go away. 

“However, their actions are actually increasing the county’s liability for wrongful injury or death” because of the potentially inadequate street design, he said.