"Natural" resourse "protection"

The "Healthy Ecosystems" portion of the Comprehensive Plan is being finalized - finally.  There is a lot to be happy about with the new plan and it will be a relief to many land owners in the city.

Lake Oswego has created an alternate path to achieving Metro's natural resource protection goals.  Existing regulations encumber 10% of residents' private property with uplands tree grove and riparian resource protection.

The Planning Commission will be reviewing the new Healthy Ecosystems Comp Plan section on Monday night, May 11, and will hold a public hearing on May 27.  After the PC hears public testimony and makes it findings and recommendations, the Healthy Ecosystems section will be sent to the City Council for a public hearing, potential changes, and then approval.  If you want to make comments, you don't have to wait for this Monday or the 27th.  Write to the Planning Commission and mark your communications as "testimony".  The sooner you comment, the more opportunity
 the Commission (and Council) will have to consider your points.  As always, be specific.

The plan isn't perfect and still needs YOUR eyes on it before it concludes.  In the new plan, there are some curious changes to the riparian areas, and some changes that should have occurred that didn't - see examples below.  Read the draft Healthy Ecosystems plan and see if it needs more doctoring.

The Case of The Disappearing Wetlands
There has been much hand wringing about the wetlands on the WEB property.  The size of the wetlands area put about 7 acres off limits to development and discouraged some purchasers from making a clean offer.

No worries!  The wetlands are gone!  The city took care of this messy detail last year when they took the wetlands on the property off the map.  At that time, the city said that due to a convoluted technicality in in how they handled the resource protection designation in 1998, the designation was illegal and therefore no wetlands existed.  Huh?  They did leave little blue lines to note streams that have no buffers.  These are very polite (and unnatural) streams.

Even then as now, as owners of the property, the city can undo the error of its ways and put the riparian zones back on the resource protection map, but that would be very inconvenient. This riparian resource area should have remained on the map as determined in 1998 just as it was on other private land.  Don't look to the state to correct this - resourse designation is purely in the hands of the local jurisdiction, aka the city council.

The takeaway is: Natural resources are political decisions and are not based on scientific fact. 

The Case of The Invisible Lake
Oswego Lake has been left off the natural resources map since it was created in the '90s.  Even though the lake is the largest body of water with the most fish and wildlife dependent upon its habitat  for survival, the Sensitive Lands Map never included the lake, and the new Water Resource Area map doesn't correct this.  

"The Title 3 model codes states that “natural lakes” are Primary Protected Water Features. Oswego Lake is considered a man-made lake and therefore is not identified as a Protected Water Feature on the “Metro Water Quality and Flood Management Area Map” (Metro’s adopted Title 3 map)"


It depends upon what your definition of the word "man made" is.  According to Metro's riparian resource map, it looks like Metro thinks Oswego Lake, the Canal, and the WEB property all have abundant water resources, as do many, many homeowners' properties.

The takeaway is: Natural resources are political decisions and are not based on scientific fact. 

My intention here is to point out the inconsistencies that are readily apparent from one property to the next when evaluating what is and is not a natural resource.  When glaring errors in fact are so obvious (and there are more), the whole set of documents - both Comp Plan update and The Codes that follow are not worthy of trust.

The citizens of Lake Oswego deserve better.