[Skamania] 🌿 Building Near a Wetland - North Bonneville June '26

What does it really cost to build a house near a wetland in North Bonneville? This month the City Council turned a routine environmental-rules update into a debate about affordability and local control. We also cover the North Bonneville Planning Commission, a firefighter bill four years overdue, a library open just six hours a week, and why sewer pipes are quietly straining budgets all across the Gorge.

In This Episode

• The Critical Areas Ordinance heads to the state, and one councilor's cost analysis that reframed the whole debate
• The city pays off firefighter-pension dues unpaid since 2022, and a vote where the record and the recording disagree
• Sixty-five hundred dollars in tourism funds for a summer car show and Gorge Days
• A library that gets used every day but is staffed only six hours a week
• Blackberries, faded road lines, and a striping machine the city could not buy
• Why North Bonneville's fifty-year-old sewer lift stations are part of a Gorge-wide story
• What is next: a July 7 zoning hearing and a July 28 look at the Bradford Island Superfund site

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch at skamaniadispatch.com
• North Bonneville City Council agendas, minutes, and audio (the new "Supplemental Documents" link holds sheriff reports and written public comment)
• North Bonneville Planning Commission meetings & minutes: the draft Title 20 zoning revisions and the July 7 public hearing
• Fort Vancouver Regional Library: send comments on the North Bonneville branch through the FVRL website
• Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Priority Habitats and Species and Department of Ecology Critical Areas / wetlands guidance

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey neighbor, welcome back to our next Open Gorge month end city roundup. I'm super glad you're here today. Today we're in North Bonneville and we've got two bodies to catch you up on for June of 2026. The City Council, which met twice this past month, and the Planning Commission. Let's start with the one that hits closest to home and to your wallet. So picture this. You own a lot in town and you want to build a house. There's a wetland or a stream somewhere on the property. Maybe that's why you got the place, because it's really pretty. But what does having that kind of natural resource adjacent cost you? That question sat at the center of the June 9th council meeting. The city is updating something called its Critical Areas Ordinance. That's the local rule book that protects wetlands, streams, steep slopes, and wildlife habitat. The state requires cities to refresh it on a schedule. Now here's the part that people worry about, so I'm going to be clear about what the ordinance does not do. It does not ban building, and it does not touch your house if you already own one. Consultant Paul Dennis, who's guiding the city through this process, put it plainly. He said, current homeowners are not affected. This is about future development. So where's the cost? It's in the studies. The ordinance says that before you build near a critical area, you have to identify it and then study it. And that's where the debate got real. Counselor Jeff Blakely got a five-page letter of recommendations from the Department of Fish and Wildlife. So he sat down and added up what those recommendations could cost a single property owner. And the numbers are not small. One report might run a few thousand dollars. A habitat migration plan, twenty thousand to fifty thousand dollars or more. And a full watershed analysis, if it reaches beyond your lot, could climb past $100,000. And here's the so what of that all. In a small town like North Bonneville, those studies could cost just as much as the house itself. Paul Dennis said it out loud. If you're just trying to build a home, doing the studies can cost close to what you're going to spend building in the first place. Blakely raised one more concern. Fish and wildlife wants the city to adopt a state species list, quote, as amended, unquote. And that means every time the state changes its list, the city's rules would also have to change automatically. No council vote. He asked, are we setting ourselves up for a headache here? So what actually happened is less drama, I'd think, than the debate would suggest. The draft the city is sending to the state leans on the milder recommendations from the Department of Ecology and not the expensive ones from Fish and Wildlife. The city attorney reminded everyone that the city can receive the state's comments without adopting all of them. And the council voted for nothing to send it up the chain with intent to adopt. Then starts a 60-day comment window, locks in nothing at the moment. The hard choices will come later. Alright, and with that, let's move over to the city's money. The council found out that it hadn't paid its dues to the Board of Volunteer Firefighters since 2022. Those dues fund pension and disability benefits for volunteer firefighters. Fire Chief Callista Hamilton caught it. The good news? The board agreed to waive the interest if the city paid it off in one check. So the council approved the payment, roughly $6,400. Now, one honest note here, the written minutes say that vote and a second one passed four to nothing, but the recording tells a slightly different story. On the tape, Councillor Emily Sabo abstains on both, and she says why. She's part of the fire association, so she stepped back to avoid a conflict. I'm telling you both because I think this is one of the interesting things about reporting based on public records. Sometimes they don't always show the exact same thing, and I think it's going to bring up where they can conflict, especially over something that might not be a big deal in the brand scheme of things, and I think matters for the kind of integrity that we want to say that public records should get to have for us. So very interesting. I'll keep an eye on it and we'll update this episode if indeed it turns out that one is right and the other is not. So the second vote was tourism money. The council awarded $6,500 in lodging tax funds to the North Maudeville Fire Association, $3,000 for a car show on July 11th, and $3,500 for a summer event. And here's the quick thing to know that hotel tax money can only be spent on tourism. It's the law. That's why groups have to apply for specific events. And now we're going to talk about the library because this one is uh a bit surprising, actually. Surprised me anyway. Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries branch manager David Wyatt came to present. And the headline is this the North Monteville Library is open just six hours a week. Before the pandemic, it was 12. And yet about 40% of the town holds a library card. That's a lot higher than the district average. Wyatt was honest. The decision to add hours isn't his, it's made in Vancouver. So we asked residents to speak up and send comments to the district. Chief Hamilton backed him up during public comment. She said that the library gets used every single day. On weekends you'll see cars parked outside and people on benches. And she pointed out that the seniors at Hamilton Park apartments are getting left behind because they can't easily get to Stevenson. So, a couple of quick public works notes before we shift gears. Two residents on Shelley Lane asked the city to cut back Blackberries swallowing their road. And Council Blakely flagged the faded lines on streets near the cemetery. Turns out the city asked for about $7,000 last year to buy a line striping machine and got turned down. So now they're trying to borrow one. Now moving over to the Planning Commission. They met June 2nd, and the big item is the next stage of the same date review, this time for the city zoning code. It's called Title 20. And the takeaway for us is the date. The Planning Commission held a public hearing on the zoning changes on July 7th, so we'll catch up on that pretty soon. And if you care about how the city grows, that's the meeting to go back and check out the recording for. So the commission also raised something that deserves your attention, in my opinion. The city's sewer system. It needs two lift stations to replace, and they're 50 years old. The price tag mentioned was around a million dollars. Really does add up, especially all this aging sewer infrastructure. And here's why that matters beyond Northonaville. This is a gorge-wide story that we've been reporting on for some time. Stevenson spent the spring wrestling with a sewer ordinance tied to a $15 million plant. Clickitac County is holding a hearing this summer on Dow's part, wastewater rates, and White Salmon studied its own plants capacity. The pipes across this region were built decades ago, and replacing them costs millions. Small town budgets just don't have that lying around. It's the quiet pressure under almost every single meeting that we cover. So what's next? July 7th, the Planning Commission's public hearing was on a zoning code. July 28th, the City Council takes up the Bradford Island Superfund site, the old dumping ground upriver, because as one counselor put it, North Bonneville is downstream from it, and the Critical Areas Ordinance is now with the state for 60 days before a final vote. For all the details, the exact numbers, and all the links, you can read the Fulverton dispatch at Scamania Dispatch.com. You've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, the home of the Scamania Dispatch and the Click of Tattler. We believe in informed communities are stronger communities. To support our work and stay up to date on everything happening in the gorge, head over to Scamania Dispatch.com to sign up for our newsletters. You can also find us on Facebook at facebook.comslash opengorge. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on today's episode. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll talk to you next time.