HUNDREDS OF FISH HAVE DIED RECENTLY IN SPANAWAY LAKE! WHY?

https://pierceprairiepost.com/2022/12/19/tiny-homes-project-causes-water-worries-in-spanaway/

  Posted by Lincoln on December 19, 2022    

They call it need. They call it supportive  housing. They call it mental health crisis. They use all the words they  can to evoke empathy for their cause. What they are not saying is they  are using this bleeding heart approach to cause harm to Spanaway water  resources and its political future. 

“They” are Pierce County and Lakewood  officials. Boundaries for legislative and council districts have been  drawn from Lakewood into the Spanaway and Parkland areas for the past 20  years, since Lakewood formed a city. This editor has the notes from the  redistricting meetings. Parts of the 28th legislative district which is  mostly controlled by voters in Lakewood and the 6th Council District,  also majority Lakewood have added to the lack of resources, the  cancelling of the Cross Base Highway and other redirection of potential  resources to improve the area. Republican representatives such as Dick  Muri have been very vocal for years in their complaint that building the  Cross Base Highways would cause the military base to close, by placing  road boundaries around their space. This thought process does, however,  ignore that there are hundreds of square miles of range lands out there  too.

Now the County Executive’s Office along  with former Republican State Senator from the28th District, Steve O’Ban  who is now Senior Counsel to the County Executive is one of the main  people behind the planning of the Tiny Home Village proposed for the wetlands southeast of Spanaway Lake.  This village would be almost 300 tiny homes, built on a wetland area  that the Audubon fought to keep from being a highway. Now that wetland  would be infused by septic systems, adding to the pollution problems  that Spanaway Lake neighbors and residents have already been feverishly  trying to correct, even taxing themselves in a local use district to try  to raise funding to clean up the lake.

This link tells about Tiny Home Villages.  The idea itself is honorable. The complaint in Spanaway is the location  chosen is a sensitive wetland. In addition, the Spanaway location is  specifically for those difficult to place, people with mental health  issues and drug problems. The nearby neighbors fear that these people  may receive monetary support monthly, when there is still month at the  end of the money, they will break into neighboring homes and businesses  and pilfer other peoples hard earned assets. It is a mixed bag of  problems and an awful thing to place inside the boundaries of a small  area that has been trying to become incorporated. The monetary support  needed and potential crime generated by such a place would be a heavy  burden for a fledgling city government to afford. Hence, it may cause  the area to be unable to incorporate.

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In  the words of Pierce County “Through Ordinance 2022-49s, shared housing  is already allowed in urban residential areas. It is a permitted use in  higher density residential, commercial, and mixed-use zones.” Urban is  the key word. The property they are planning for the Spanaway site is  currently secluded, forested wetland, not anything that could possibly  be confused with an urban area. Here is a photo.

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Comments  on zoning changes are being accepted, but close today, December 19,  2022. We, the public, are not being given information in enough time to  respond. We, the public, have also hardly been fed any information about  this project until the planning stages were very far along. It is a  hallmark style of our current County Executive’s office that people  should remember if he decides to move on to another political office  after 2024. A pretty face and charming words may conceal more  detrimental plans beneath the surface. In his tenure, many wetlands have  been scraped off the face of the earth in Pierce County. (Brookdale  Golf Course, 208th Street farm, Parkland near Christiansen School for a  few). Pierce Communities Coalition has been trying to get in comments  whenever possible and our wetlands friends in the watershed committees  have been grumbling through many emails. Low-income housing and homeless  issues have increased due to the buying up of low-income apartments and  rentals that are being replaced by large scale warehouse projects in  Lakewood’s American Lake Gardens, Spanaway, Frederickson and Elk Plain.

December 13, 2022, there was Planning Commission hearing, here is the presentation.  Proposed Amendment:  Allow shared housing villages as a conditional use  in the Residential Resource (RR) zone in the Parkland-Spanaway-Midland  Communities Plan Area.

January 3, 2023 is a Planning Commission Public Hearing on the project according to linked documentation. 2023 meetings are not  yet listed on the page for the Planning Commission. On the same date  and time is a Project Open House on January 3, 2023 @ 7pm at Sprinker  Recreation Center in the Rainier Room for an open house focused on the  proposed Pierce County Village. The open house will be in person and  live streamed on the website. The open house will include a presentation  and a question and answering session. Sprinker Recreation Center –  Rainier Room, 14824 C St S, Tacoma, WA 98444.

County residents can provide comments and sign their name in support of the project here.

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Written  comment. To submit written comments to the Planning Commission, please  email ppwlongrangeadmin@piercecountywa.gov. If you wish your comments to  be distributed to the Commission in advance of a hearing, comments must  be received via email by the Clerk of the Commission 48 hours before  the hearing.

The Tiny Homes Village site will be  accessible from the end of 176th Street where it turns onto Spanaway  Loop Road. If you have ever taken a walk up there, you know how the area  sits peaceful, undisturbed and very wet surrounding Coffee Creek which  flows into Spanaway Lake’s southeast corner.

The City of Lakewood had a hearing on  December 12 regarding a million dollar donation to this Tiny Home  Village Project, but the funds have not yet been released as there were  citizens raising questions about the use of septics rather than sewers  and water quality issues affecting the groundwater in the entire region.  

Please, add your voice to Pierce County’s project proposal.