At a Monday special meeting, the Sammamish City Council approved 6-1 a public emergency ordinance and adopted interim development regulations that strike a pilot program that had allowed subdivisions within the erosion hazards near sensitive water bodies no-disturbance area.

The interim regulations are valid for six months.

The erosion hazards near sensitive water bodies overlay stretch down much of the west slope of the city. The majority of the land within the overlay areas are zoned R4 or R1, with some R6 zoning. Within the overlay there is a no-disturbance area.

Without the pilot program, development is still allowed within the overlay, but the no-disturbance area must be left alone, barring some exceptions, like utility corridors, existing single-family home parcels or public park facilities like parking lots or restrooms.

“One of the reasons I am very much in favor of sending this back to the planning commission is that it allows a lot of uses in that no-disturbance area,” Councilmember Kathy Huckabay said.

Community Development Deputy Director David Pyle noted that, despite not being able to build within the no-disturbance area without the pilot program, the no-disturbance “area does not detract from the density that you could achieve on a property.” The biggest constraint would then be geometry — whether you could physically fit the maximum allotted density outside of the no-disturbance area — and zoning controls.

The pilot program was originally adopted by a split vote in 2013. The majority of the sitting City Council — namely Deputy Mayor Bob Keller, Councilmembers Huckabay, Tom Hornish and Christie Malchow — were not on the council that approved this project.

“These pilots did not just come up,” Councilmember Ramiro Valderrama-Aramayo said.

Valderrama-Aramayo said it was a very “intensive process” and that there were thousands of hours of testimony from consultants and the public, as well as hundreds of reports published on the city’s website that aided the decision, which was wrapped up in the approval of the Environmentally Critical Areas code that passed in 2013.

“This was years in the making,” Valderrama-Aramayo said. “It was thoroughly discussed. … There were thousands of hours that were invested into this project at all levels, from consultants, citizens in particular, planning commissioners and council members.”

Despite being adopted about four years ago, the pilot program has never been utilized, Community Development Director Jeff Thomas said Monday.

This was in part due to it being “bundled up” in amendments in the Shoreline Master Program, which was a “multi-year, rigorous process,” Thomas said. This was cleared up by council action in February and finally given the green light on March 1, after the Washington state Department of Ecology approved the updated Sammamish Shoreline Master Program.

The pilot program had approved a maximum of four subdivision projects, two using the tightline drainage design — which permitted the installation of a permanent water quality treatment system that drained directly into Lake Sammamish — and two using the low-impact design — managing stormwater differently in the case where direct access to the lake was not available. Pilot programs were intended to operate two projects at a time, one of each type. Then there would be a review of the project before another would be approved.

The low-impact design called for 65 percent of the site to remain forested open space, for no more than 10 percent of the gross site area to be impervious surface and for the stormwater discharge volume to match the average annual volume discharged from a predeveloped forested site.

“It’s a very high standard to meet,” Pyle said. “It’s so restrictive that you really can’t build it.”

Additionally, the pilot program did not permit development within the Ebright Creek, Pine Lake Creek, Zaccuse Creek and “mid-Monohon” sub-basins.

The topic of the pilot program came up at the May 16 City Council meeting, which is when council asked staff to prepare interim development regulations that removed the pilot program from the code.

“I think it’s really important that we send this back this back to the planning commission to look at,” Malchow said Monday. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know that the pilot project was still out there and available. And I do have concerns looking at these maps and I don’t want to sound dramatic when I say ‘Oso’ [referring to the massive mudslide that occurred in Oso, Washington, in 2014] but I think we have to be cognizant of the area we live in. A pilot project by definition lends itself, if successful in one area, to spreading.”

Per state law, after adopting the interim regulations, the council must hold a public hearing within 60 days. The public hearing is scheduled at the July 18 City Council meeting at 6:30 p.m.

City staff and the planning commission will need to begin work on permanent regulations. They hope to have this work done within six months.

“It would be quite a bit of work, but we feel we have the capacity, in talking with the city manager, to undertake that work,” Thomas said.

The City Council voted 6-1 Monday to approve the emergency ordinance and adopt the interim regulations. Mayor Don Gerend was the only dissenting vote.

He said that the program was put in place with a lot of foresight, with adequate regulations to ensure that adverse impacts to sensitive water bodies were avoided. He assumed staff would use the best available science to review projects and that if development requirements are stricter now then four years ago then he would expect staff would be stricter in their review.

“Everybody has said how much time we spent going through this some four years ago,” Gerend said. “Well now we’re talking about doing the same thing and staff can say, ‘Yes, we can handle it,’ but I have also heard that staff is overworked now, not to mention the planning commission and the council. We have a whole lot of important plans that we want to get done this year.”

Malchow countered that this is an opportunity for a new council to revisit an old policy.

“As much energy and effort that went into this before, new councils always have the right to revisit previous policy,” Malchow said. “Often times we are put into office to do that very job because people don’t like what’s going on.”

There is at least one development in the pre-application process that is impacted by council’s action. The Parker Plat, a 30-lot dubdivision, has already held a neighborhood meeting on its proposed development. The subdivision would have in part used the pilot program to develope the site.

Development can still move forward on the Parker Plat, but not using current plans. Under the interim regulations, the Parker Plat applicants would have to set aside the no-disturbance area as undevelopable land.