Agenda - Planning Commission - 05/03/2012

Home

March 10, 2012 I Volume 6 I No. 5 Zoning Bulletin to put a used mobile home on lot 17. The County Building Official de- nied the permit. The denial was based on a determination that the Park was in a floodway, per a November 2009 revised FEMA map. State law, RCW 86.16.051 (Flood Plain Management Ordinances), prohibited new residential construction in floodways. The County's flood management ordinance, 16A.0520 YCC, adopted the state statute's restrictions on floodway construction. Cradduck petitioned the court to review the County's decision. Among other things, she argued that the decision violated her rights to substantive due process. The court agreed, finding the statutes were unduly burdensome to Cradduck. The court reversed the County's denial of the permit. The County and the State's Department of Ecology appealed. DECISION: Reversed. The Court of Appeals of Washington, Division 3, held that the stat- ute and ordinance, prohibiting construction in floodways, did not violate Cradduck's substantive due process rights. In so concluding, the court applied a three -prong analysis, which asked: (1) whether the regulations were aimed at achieving a legitimate public purpose; (2) whether the regulations used means that were rea- sonably necessary to achieve that purpose; and (3) whether the regula- tions were unduly oppressive on the land owner (i.e., Cradduck). The court found that preventing flood damage was most certainly a le- gitimate public purpose. The goals of the regulations (i.e., the statute and the County ordinance) were to prevent damages to private property and to pro- tect public health and safety —thus supporting legitimate public purposes. The court also found that the regulations used means that were rea- sonably necessary to achieve those purposes. Regulations met this "rea- sonably related" standard, said the court, if they tended to solve a public problem. Here, found the court, the statute and ordinance tended to solve the problem of reoccurring flood damage to private property with its at- tendant risk to public health and safety. "Prohibiting new residences from building built and prohibiting repairs to residences that are more than 50 percent destroyed in floodways tends to solve the problem of flood damage ... because there will be less reoccurring flood damage to private property if there are fewer people living in homes in the floodway." Finally, after balancing the public interest against Cradduck's interest, the court concluded that the regulations were not unduly oppressive on Cradduck. The court found the statute and ordinance "protect[ed] the pub- lic against a serious threat on one hand, while trying to minimize burdens to floodway landowners on the other hand." The statute did not "force out those who live or work in the floodplain." Rather, it actually allowed re- 8 ©2012 Thomson Reuters