The Council Monday night approved hiring The Watershed Company of Kirkland to complete a shoreline inventory and analysis and a cumulative impact analysis. The city will pay $87,000 for the work. In turn, the city is asking the state Department of Ecology for $96,000 to pay for the update.
Under the contract, The Watershed Company will assist the city in completing the update, which isn’t due until 2012. Instead, the city expects to complete the update by February of next year.
The contractor will review create a map of shoreline jurisdictions, prepare a plan for public participation in the update and complete an shoreline inventory and analysis, while working with Ecology so the plan meets their approval at the end of the process.
The Shoreline Master Program will, according to a representative of The Watershed Company at Monday night’s Council meeting, help ensure there is “no net loss” of ecological function as future waterfront development takes place. The plan determines widths for shoreline buffers or mitigation using the same methodology the city uses for determining wetland buffers in critical areas.
The city’s Shoreline Master Program was updated in 2000, but was delayed when Ecology, Evergreen Islands and Futurewise and other environmental groups challenged it. But, the state Supreme Court last July ruled the city was on the right track.
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