Guest Column: Growth Management Act Ed Kilduff | Environmental Consultant Ed Kilduff lives in San Juan County and has been an environmental consultant for more than 20 years, including projects in Whatcom County. Primarily, Kilduff has worked on environmental cleanups for the Navy and the Department of Energy in California and Washington, where he is licensed as both a hydrogeologist and engineering geologist. He earned a BS in geology and mathematics from Tufts University, an MS in geophysics from the Colorado School of Mines, and an MS from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Kilduff has been involved in the founding and running of several businesses, and he is a board member of the Common Sense Alliance, a nonprofit community group based in San Juan County dedicated to environment, community, and economy. He frequently writes and speaks on environmental issues.
Growth Management Act has created explosive growth... in planning profession W
ashington State’s Growth Management Act (GMA) was adopted in 1990 ostensibly because the Washington State Legislature wanted to: “…Recognize the importance of rural lands and rural character to Washington’s economy, its people, and its environment, while respecting regional differences. Rural lands and rural-based economies enhance the economic desirability of the state, help to preserve traditional economic activities, and contribute to the state’s overall quality of life.” In reality, nothing could have been further from the truth. The GMA came not to praise rural lands, but to bury them. Was the GMA the culmination of some great rural rights struggle, the Green Acres equivalent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? No. Its genesis wasn’t rural at all. The GMA was a Trojan horse for urban planners, who aggressively promoted the specious notion that we can’t live without them – that the antidote to unmanaged and uncoordinated growth is unmanaged and uncoordinated bureaucracy. The fact is that much of what makes up “rural character” is unplanned, or even substandard. The one-lane bridge, the funky house, and neighbors coming 80 | BUSINESSPULSE.COM
together for a barn-raising occur out of necessity and ingenuity, not planning. Recently, I attended an event at my local history museum. Nostalgic tales were told, including one about a fire in the early 1900s that wiped out the home and livelihood of a local family. Our early-20th-century forebearers sprang into action; 50 men moved an unused house from one side of our island to the burn site on the other; neighbors prepared food;
“The GMA was a Trojan horse for urban planners, who aggressively promoted the specious notion that we can’t live without them —that the antidote to unmanaged and uncoordinated growth is unmanaged and uncoordinated bureaucracy.” friends donated clothing, and in short order the family was back in business with a new home. The sentimentality of the retold tale had a palpable effect on the
history museum audience that wondered aloud why that sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore. Answer – because much of the spontaneous generosity of idyllic rural life is now illegal. We can’t just move houses, raise barns, or even sometimes prepare food for large gatherings without government permission. It’s deliberate. On its website, the Washington Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA) has a link to a 24-year-old document describing the origins of the GMA. Toward a Growth Strategy for Washington was developed at a planning conference in late 1989. It says we should be “working toward a central vision of the desired future.” Local control and individuality are “inconsistencies undermining effective planning … [w]ithout a mandate to plan and to do so cooperatively, local governments take a piecemeal, reactive, and adversarial approach to resolving mutual impacts.” The APA document recommended that the GMA incorporate nine points. I won’t repeat all of the points here, but they will be depressingly familiar to anyone who has bumped up against GMA believers. With a hint of things to come, the authors even announce that “The degree of consensus achieved at our conference was surprising in view of the