SNR: A Focused Look at Fish and Wildlife Habitat

Changes to County plans and regulations are available for review

The SNR: A Focused Look at Fish and Wildlife Habitat project has reached a big milestone. We finished the draft of the proposed plan and code changes, including updated natural resource maps. For these changes to be adopted by the County, they must be officially submitted or “filed” as ordinances.

Ordinance No. 901 proposes changes to the Comprehensive Framework Plan for the Urban Area (CFP) and all of the community plans for the urban unincorporated area to reflect updates to the County’s statewide planning Goal 5 Significant Natural Resources (SNR) program.

Ordinance No. 902 proposes changes to the Community Development Code related to SNRs in the urban unincorporated area to ensure they are clear and objective and meet statewide planning Goal 5 and Metro Title 13 requirements.

The Planning Commission and Board of Commissioners will hold hearings on the ordinances this summer. The hearings are further opportunities for community members to provide feedback on the proposed changes.

SNR interactive inventory map (Updated 6/28/2024)

The SNR interactive map for Washington County’s urban unincorporated area shows the latest Riparian Wildlife and Upland Wildlife Habitat mapping, including revisions based on community input and further technical review. As part of Ordinance No. 901, this information is also incorporated into the draft SNR maps for each Community Plan area and the Comprehensive Framework Plan for the Urban Area, Policy 41 for future development.

Follow these instructions:

1. Open the mapping tool
2. Enter the address or tax lot number in the "Find address or place" bar at the top left corner of the map screen.
   1. Don't know the address or tax lot number? Search visually by dragging the map and zooming in.
   2. There is a legend at the far left corner. Click on that to see how the different map elements are displayed.
3. Once you find the property of interest, click/tap in it to see Significant Natural Resource areas.

Spring Community Forums

In March and April we held three community outreach opportunities to share our work finalizing the County’s Significant Natural Resource inventory map and considering the best approach for regulating development in natural resource areas.

A recording of the virtual forum is available and the forum exhibits are in the Resources section below.

During these presentations we polled attendees for their thoughts:

How do you feel about this topic?

Which of these exceptions do you support? (select all that apply) You can easily remove...

For most areas we are considering requiring 50% of the tree value points on a development site to be retained or replaced. Do you believe this is...

We are considering allowing off-site tree replacement or payment of fee-in-lieu of tree replacement if a development cannot accommodate onsite replacement trees. Which of these possible options would you support?

Now that you have heard more about this project and the concepts for how our regulations will work, how are you feeling about this topic?

Resources

Oregon Statewide Planning Goal 5 overview

Oregon's Statewide Planning Goals & Guidelines- Goal 5 text

OAR 660-023- Procedures and requirements for complying with Goal 5