We have seen it time and again. The County’s Development Services Department fails to meet its regulatory requirements with respect to review of development applications, notification of parties concerned, application of the Critical Area Ordinance, use of the Shorelines Master Program, adherence to timelines. . . the list goes on and on.

Are resident Mary Skelton is right, when she said, “The county Department of Development Services isn’t doing its job.”

Kaye V. Ladd, in a recent Letter the Editor, wrote:

In my neighborhood, they [County Development Services] approved a single family residence on a rural waterfront lot with about half of the dry land area required by the SMP [Shorelines Master Program]. Using an erroneous calculation and without a hearing, the county planner reduced the 50-foot required setback to 37 feet. She did not notify adjacent property owners of this decision or of the appeal period.

In the end, Ladd paid her money, spent her time to do the work the County staff had failed to do, and succeeded in an appeal to the County Commissioners. Wouldn’t it have been better if the County had done their work correctly, in the first place?

In our own neighborhood, we’re accumulating an increasing list of examples of not just poor judgment, but outright ineptitude, on the part of County staff in Development Services.

The problem is not limited to the performance of the County staff, either. The Seattle attorney with whom the county contracts, for services as a Hearing Examiner, has passed on applications and set precedent which ought to be very troubling to residents on the Steamboat Island Peninsula.

Most recently, for example, the Hearing Examiner dismissed any concerns regarding suitability with respect to the rural setting, when he approved the application for a Tennis Club. While there was support for an athletic facility at the corner of Steamboat Island Road and Sexton, the Hearing Examiner ruled essentially that, provided only that no more than 60% of the property were impervious surface, a building of any size is just fine out here.

Think about the implications. If you are on residential land, and your neighbor owns 40 acres, she can build a 24-acre building right next door. The Tennis Club is nearly 3-stories in height, so let’s make that 24-acre building about 3-stories tall, too. All your neighbor needs to do is qualify for a Special Use Permit, and she can convert her residentially-zoned property to commercial use. The county’s Hearing Examiner will give no weight to an argument that a building of that size is urban in nature, and not rural.

At least one County Commissioner with whom we spoke, regarding the performance of the Hearing Examiner told us that no complaints – not one – about the Hearing Examiner has ever reached the ears of the Commissioners.

How long will the County Commissioners continue to issue toothless admonishments to County staff to “do better” and overrule staff decisions that ought never to have been made, in the first place?

How long much longer will the Commissioners continue to renew the contract with the Seattle law firm that provides this county’s Hearing Examiner?

We’re seeing these kinds of problems with the Conference Center application. The performance of county staff has affected development along fragile shorelines, and it’s getting harder and harder to ignore (see “Development projects require better scrutiny,” at the bottom of this page).

How many more Aloha Lumber projects will we see on our peninsula? In that instance, Aloha Lumber was allowed to clear every stick of wood from a 30+ acre parcel, behind the Main Fire Station, for development. They application stipulated reforestation. When they didn’t re-plant, the County staff responded that was fine with them; the County failed to stipulate that Aloha Lumber do what the company said it would, in the original forestry application.

That’s just dumb and it’s just not right.

When will our elected County Commissioners take action to bring these bumbling bureaucrats to heel? When will we get a Development Services Department that doesn’t shoot itself in the foot, so often? We’re losing fragile habitat, jeopardizing the value of our property, and our quality of life is being lost, through the inept actions of these poorly-trained paper-pushers.

Responsible homeowners usually are very interested to learn about ways to save energy and help convert ours to a more sustainable energy economy. I certainly am. Maybe you already recycle, maintain a worm bin, and have replaced single-paned windows with double-panes. You have beefed up the insulation in your home, are using compact fluorescent lighting, and you’ve purchased a car that gets better mileage. What next? I believe that purchasing Green Power, from my electrical utility, and carbon offsets, from any of several different organizations, can help to build the infrastructure that will move us to cleaner, sustainable sources of power.

Green Power

Green Power is one way that homeowners can help foster a market for sustainable energy. While the Federal Government continues to use tax subsidies and other kinds of corporate welfare to support dirty forms of energy which are polluting and not sustainable, many private and some public utilities are offering green power options to their customers. By purchasing green power, energy customers can help move our nation to more secure forms of energy production.

Puget Sound Energy offers Green Power to its customers. Wind, solar and biomass are the primary forms of energy production for this program. PSE customers can participate in the Green Power program for as little as $4 per month, which allows PSE to buy 320 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy from sources here in the Pacific Northwest. Additional quantities of Green Power are available in increments of 160 kWh at $2 each.

My home is already heated with a highly-efficient geothermal heat pump. Although mine is an all-electric home, my electrical bills are typically well below a similarly-sized home. For this reason, it was easy for me to choose to purchase 100 percent of my energy from renewable sources. This added $0.0125 per kWh on top of my monthly electric charges.

PSE customer can learn more about Green Power at http://www.pse.com/solutions/GreenPower_SignupHome.aspx.

Carbon Offsets

Another important method of investing in a renewable energy future is to purchase carbon offsets.

Essentially, the idea behind carbon offset is that we all contribute to global warming. We all have a “carbon footprint,” the total carbon dioxide emissions we create when we drive or fly or use electricity. The first steps we can take to fight global warming is to reduce our carbon footprint through conservation. We drive less. Turn down the thermostat. Buy locally produced goods and automobiles which are more fuel-efficient.

With carbon offsets, we can reduce our carbon footprint all the way to zero.

By purchasing carbon offsets, your money funds renewable energy projects such as wind farms. These projects result in verified reductions in greenhouse gas pollution. And these reductions counterbalance your own emissions.

Carbon offsets can be purchased for your home, your car, and for travel. There are even new offsets for large events, such as weddings. Offsets are for home and car are typically purchased for a year at a time. Some travel agencies are now making carbon offset purchases available as part of the ticketing process.

Even Queen Elizabeth, during her recent trip to the U.S., purchased carbon offsets against the greenhouse gasses generated as a result of her aircraft travel.

Collected funds are used to finance projects which are independently verified to produce the carbon offset. Projects typically include clean energy such as wind and biodiesel; biomass such as dairy farm methane; and industrial efficiency.

Carbon offsets are cheaper and easier to purchase than you may think. For example, a 2004 Ford Taurus, driven about 12,000 miles per year, is estimated to produce 9,997 lbs of CO2 per year. An annual carbon offset for this amount of CO2 costs $49.95 or less.

Several entrepreneurs have created consumer-oriented program to make carbon offsets readily available.

Is this cheating? Some environmentalists argue the purchase of carbon offsets provides consumers with a way to buy their way out of the need to actual reduce their carbon footprint. That owner of the 2004 Ford Taurus ought to ride a bicycle and purchase a hybrid car, instead of purchasing carbon offsets and continuing to drive the Taurus. Some have gone so far as to compare carbon offsets to the sale of indulgences, by the Catholic Church, of the kind that led to the rise of Protestantism!

Supporters of carbon offsets argue that, at this point in the creation of our new energy infrastructure, economically viable projects can be funded with carbon offsets. They also argue that purchasers of carbon offsets are typically taking other steps in their lives, to reduce their footprint on the planet.

The purchase of carbon offsets is a legitimate market response to demands that we move away from dirty, non-sustainable energy sources, to cleaner and renewable ones.

In my own case, purchasing carbon offsets for my cars and my home is a useful first step, while I investigate methods of solar water heating and await the arrival of plug-in hybrid automobiles. I am confident the money I am paying in carbon offsets is being used to fund projects which will generate renewable energy far into the future. The purchase of carbon offsets is an important component in my investment in the world my children will inherit.

For more information on purchasing carbon offsets:
On Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset
A Consumer’s Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers (PDF file) from Clean Air – Cool Planet: http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/ConsumersGuidetoCarbonOffsets.pdf
TerraPass: http://www.terrapass.com/
The Climate Trust: http://www.climatetrust.org/
DriveNeutral: http://www.driveneutral.org/home
NativeEnergy: http://www.nativeenergy.com/
Zero Footprint: http://www.zerofootprint.net/
“How to Buy a Carbon Offset” from wikiHow: http://www.wikihow.com/Buy-a-Carbon-Offset

— MARK MESSINGER