(1) GMA Goals. Reduce the inappropriate conversion of undeveloped land into sprawling, low-density development.

Encourage the retention of open space and development of recreational opportunities, conserve fish and wildlife habitat, increase access to natural resource lands and water, and develop parks.

Protect the environment and enhance the State’s high quality of life, including air and water quality, and the availability of water.

Maintain and enhance natural resource-based industries, including productive timber, agricultural, and fisheries industries. Encourage the conservation of productive forest lands and productive agricultural lands, and discourage incompatible uses.

Identify and encourage the preservation of lands, sites, and structures that have historical or archaeological significance.

Encourage the involvement of citizens in the planning process and ensure coordination between communities and jurisdictions to reconcile conflicts.

(2) Watershed Goals. Protect beneficial uses of water from nonpoint sources of pollution in the Port Angeles watershed, including the effects of pathogens, chemicals, sediment, and nutrients on both surface and ground water resources.

Ensure long-term, sustainable, environmental and economic health of the watershed.

Ensure cooperation and coordination in resource management.

(3) A Vision for Rural Lands in Clallam County. We envision the rural lands in the Port Angeles planning area as a scenic patchwork of large open fields and woodlots interspersed with rural homesteads and serviced by neighborhood or tourist commercial clusters. Neighborhood/tourist commercial clusters are located at their present positions along the highway and have blended into the rural environment through the application of landscaping standards and rural design guidelines which emphasize the preservation of rural views. Recreational uses which promote open space values such as golf courses, driving ranges and horse stables are encouraged to locate along major highways to improve scenic vistas and buffer residential uses. Overly rigid development patterns which saw large areas of land divided up into uniform lot sizes with no provisions for intervening larger lot sizes or open space have been replaced by a more natural rural character conservation development pattern in rural lands. This Comprehensive Plan designation encourages land owners to create a variety of residential lot sizes ranging from one-half acre residential lots to 40-acre open spaces. Allowing for a variety of lot sizes without increasing existing densities allows farmsteads, woodlots and affordable housing options to coexist in the same general area, providing much more choice, affordability and variety than that which existed under uniform development patterns. The County’s strategy for preserving rural character has focused on maintaining open spaces, retaining a diversity of lot sizes, allowing rural growth to occur on smaller lots without increasing current densities and concentrating rural commercial enterprises at existing locations along highways.

A clear boundary exists between rural and urban areas. Average density in the rural areas is less than one home per five acres. Rural character conservation designations have been established in the rural areas which has allowed rural character to be preserved far into the future rather than allowing it to gradually degrade as unplanned development took place, as was occurring prior to the adoption of the new comprehensive plan in 1995. Several pre-existing urban density developments are found within the rural area in the vicinity of the Bluffs Subdivision, on Place Road and at Lake Sutherland. Infill development within these suburban pockets is encouraged. Many critical areas, important agricultural lands and forest lands have been permanently protected through purchase of development rights, rural character conservation open space agreements and conservation easements. Forest resource lands, farms and important open space resource lands first identified in 1992 and 1993 remain in resource use.

Critical areas in the rural portion of the County are protected and environmental enhancement projects have restored many acres of wetlands and miles of streams to salmon runs. Both the Comprehensive Plan and its implementing ordinances recognize the need to allow natural systems to be the key determinant of planning and land use activity. Incentive-based programs and ordinances seek to link, protect and enhance natural systems through appropriate zoning, conservation easements, covenants or other innovative means. Structures, roads and utility systems are placed in such a way as to minimize the alteration of the landscape and to preserve the operation of the natural systems and wildlife corridors. Water is clean and abundant due to conservation efforts. Careful stewardship has ensured the conservation of our land, air, water and energy resources for future generations and has enhanced present day property values and public safety.

(4) Defining Rural Character. The Growth Management Act defines rural lands by identifying them as the areas which are not urban growth areas and are not identified for long-term commercial production of agricultural, forest, and mineral resources. The intent of the Growth Management Act is that “rural lands” and what constitutes “rural character” are to be defined at the local level. Sprawling, estate type lots which are too small for productive woodlots or small-scale agricultural uses are to be discouraged in rural areas.

The Clallam County County-Wide Planning Policies provide guidance to the densities which are not rural in character. These policies identify a density of one unit per acre as urban/suburban, indicating that one acre per home densities without offsetting provision of open space would not be considered as “rural” in character. Several locally conducted visual preference surveys, questionnaires and comments at various public meetings indicate that many local residents think of rural lands as areas exhibiting low residential densities (one home per 10 acres or less) that provide a mixture of rural land uses. Local residents indicate that rural land uses include farms, woodlots, and natural open spaces which are clearly distinguished from urban/suburban areas that are characterized by uniform lot sizes, lack of open areas and higher densities. The County-Wide Planning Policies also indicate that maximum densities should be set for areas outside of urban growth areas, provide that the County’s Comprehensive Plan shall permit only those land uses that are compatible with the rural character of such lands and that the rural element provide for a variety of rural densities and development patterns, including the use of cluster housing concepts to encourage conservation of open space and resource lands. Lastly, the County-Wide Planning Policies suggest that rural areas abutting urban areas should provide for reduced densities or cluster development options in order to allow for future expansion of urban areas.

The region’s current “rural character” is characterized by large open spaces and pockets of concentrated residential development along the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Residential communities are separated by a highly mixed rural development pattern of diverse lot sizes and land uses.

The draft vision statement for rural lands in the Port Angeles region establishes the 20-year vision for retaining rural character. Drawing from the vision statement, “rural character” is defined as a scenic patchwork of large open fields and woodlots interspersed with rural homesteads and serviced by neighborhood/tourist commercial clusters at existing locations. Density is less than one home per five acres and uniform lot sizes developed over large areas are not encouraged. Rural character conservation designations would be established to ensure that rural lot sizes exceeding 10 acres in size will be interspersed throughout the rural area and that rural character could be maintained far into the future.

(5) Rural Growth Issues and Current Trends. Achieving the goals of this plan to maintain a high quality of life for those County residents that live in rural portions of the Port Angeles planning area will require positive changes to current County policies and regulations. Current policies, regulations and market structure encourage people to locate in rural areas while at the same time allowing development to occur at densities and in patterns which diminish the very rural character that caused people to move there in the first place. A simple study of parcel maps in the County documents the trend of recent development practices to divide the landscape into uniform residential lots at densities in between urban and rural densities leading to land use patterns that can only be defined as sprawl. Rural areas in Clallam County and this planning region are rapidly being divided into one-acre, 2.4-acre and five-acre lot sizes. Land use studies show that there are already 2,500 vacant parcels in these size ranges which could meet all of the land use demand for this type of lot over the next 20 years. These individual lots contain some private open area but make no provision for productive uses of the land for raising livestock, growing timber or just leaving some open areas for wildlife habitat.

Over the past 10 years, the unincorporated or rural areas of the Port Angeles planning area have experienced over 65 percent of the decade’s growth, with the remainder of the growth occurring in the planning area’s one incorporated place, the City of Port Angeles. It appears that many people moving to this County are looking for a rural lifestyle and do not see much advantage to choosing to live in urban areas. These rural growth trends do not satisfy growth management objectives of encouraging development in urban areas where adequate public facilities and services can be provided in an efficient manner. Without change, rural areas will continue to experience intense development pressures and a rapid decrease in rural quality of life. If sprawl is to be controlled, then urban growth at urban densities should be encouraged in urban areas and should not be encouraged in rural areas.

The City of Port Angeles is the only urban growth area within the Port Angeles planning area. The unincorporated portion of the urban growth area covers more than 3,000 acres. Moderate to high density development will be encouraged within the urban growth area. The availability of high density and cost-efficient services within the urban growth area should make it more cost effective to develop within the urban growth area than outside of it. This “cost of development” advantage should help to reverse the trend toward rural development and ease the development pressure currently experienced in these areas. It should be noted that all of the planned population for the entire planning area could be accommodated within this urban growth area.

(6) Defining Sprawl. It has been maintained by land use researchers in Washington that, “A new rural sprawl is consuming large amounts of land, splitting wide open spaces into fragments that are useless for agriculture, wildlife habitat, or other rural open space purposes.” Sprawl development has the following characteristics:

(7) Why Keep Rural Areas Rural? There are many reasons for maintaining rural character in rural areas. Preservation of rural character has been a strong concern for residents of the Port Angeles watershed as evidenced by area-wide survey results. Economic reasons also provide a strong justification for retaining productive land uses. Some additional rationale are provided below:

(8) What Happens to Rural Character under Conventional Development? Further application of current development patterns allowed in rural areas will not result in retention of “rural character” or a high quality of rural living. The typical one-acre to five-acre lot in a conventional zoning district will seem “rural” only so long as it borders pasture lands or woodlots of neighboring properties. However this is “borrowed” open space, temporary in nature. When those abutting properties are also developed for home sites, the surroundings will be suburban in character and the feeling of “living in the County” will be lost. After viewing fully developed areas of one-acre, 2.4-acre and even five-acre zoning, Clallam County residents participating in visual preference surveys indicated that these areas did not look rural. The majority of land in these suburban density subdivisions will be devoted to large yards and a high percentage of the area utilized merely to provide road access to each lot. Similarly, allowing intensive urban type developments such as Sunland or Diamond Point does not retain rural character as revealed in the fact that both developments have now been designated as urban growth areas where a full suite of urban level services must be provided. The large urban growth areas adopted by Clallam County provide ample vacant land for future urban type developments.

(9) Rural Character Conservation. With these facts in mind, the plan for the Port Angeles region calls for widespread utilization of a rural character conserving development pattern. The purpose of the rural character conservation approach is to increase the variety of lot sizes available in rural areas and to permit a reasonable amount of residential development while retaining the large lots, open spaces, sensitive natural areas, and rural community character that would be lost under conventional development at these same densities. Under the rural character conservation approach, residential lot sizes could be reduced to as small as one-half acre with the typical lot size in the one-acre size range. By reducing the area required for most of the rural home sites to that which is actually needed for residential use, the remaining acreage normally contained in individual lots would be utilized to create a large remainder residential lot within each development which will range in size from eight acres to more than 100 acres depending on the size of the development proposal. Retention of larger residential lots in rural areas works to conserve the rural character of rural areas. The large remainder lot can provide for open spaces between residences, reduces the perceived density of development, provides privacy and neighborhood identity and retains natural features, woodlots and pasture land. This open space can be owned in several ways. It could be owned as one large residential lot by the property owner or it could be owned and managed by a homeowners’ association. Since all the development rights will have been utilized, it will not be further subdivided but will remain in productive rural residential use as a large lot contributing to the rural character of the area. Should the property owner decide that the rural character conservation approach will not work for him, he may still divide the property down to a rural lot size of 10 acres or larger. The rural character conservation development approach allows for lot size flexibility in developments larger than 19 acres by utilizing a sliding scale to determine the size of the remainder residential or open space lot. Lots between 19.1 and 60 acres in size would allow development of up to 30 percent of the site in small lots with 70 percent in the large remainder lot. Lots between 60.1 acres and 100 acres would allow development of 40 percent of the site in smaller lots with 60 percent in the large remainder lot. Lots larger than 100 acres would allow development of up to 45 percent of the site with 55 percent in the large remainder lot or open space.

Design guidelines in a rural character conservation development would ensure that most properties fronted on open space for enjoyment of rural vistas and that individual housing clusters were limited in size to avoid the appearance of an urban housing development. Housing would be encouraged to locate in or near the timbered portion of the property and away from existing residences to reduce its visual impact on adjacent properties and the exterior roads. The rural character conservation approach ensures that large lot sizes (10 acres or greater) and open spaces vital to the retention of rural character will be retained in rural areas. It allows most rural property owners to use their current development rights. Smaller lots still under one ownership or joint ownership could be recombined to ensure that this option is available to many property owners. Existing lots or ownerships smaller than 11 acres in size (contiguous ownership at the time of interim zoning adoption will be utilized to determine the 11-acre threshold) located within a rural character conservation designation will be allowed to subdivide to the underlying density of the zoning district in a large lot/small lot pattern.

The rural character conservation approach has many positive features. Since the amount of land utilized in residential home sites is reduced to the actual amount needed for residential use, a significant percentage of each development could remain in open space tax classification and uses. This feature limits the tax penalties incurred by the developing property owner while allowing him the possibility of producing the same income from his property if he does a well designed development. Case studies of existing open space developments in the Port Angeles area support the claim that buyers will pay as much or more for a lot in a well designed open space development as they will for a five-acre lot. This development approach would minimize public expenses involved in maintaining roads since less roads would be needed to service compact, open space developments. Woodlots and farms retained under this approach would not only provide for productive use of the land and enjoyment for the residents of the developments but could be utilized in combination to protect critical areas, connect wildlife corridors, provide space for livestock keeping, and otherwise minimize the impacts of development on the natural systems in the watershed. Problems with cluster ordinances would be avoided by providing only minor increases in density for utilizing this approach and through careful application of design guidelines to ensure the maintenance of rural character within such development areas.

(10) Flexible Zoning. A second approach will also be utilized in rural areas outside of areas designated for rural character conservation to allow for an increased diversity of rural lot sizes. Flexible zoning would allow the transfer of density within the ownership boundaries subject to a proposed land division, with no new lot being created less than one acre in area, and total number of lots determined based on the underlying zoning density. For example, a 20-acre parcel is designated as rural low (one home per 4.8 acres). This allows the owner four dwelling units. The owner decides to divide the property into two 2.5-acre lots, one five-acre lot, and one 10-acre lot. This flexible zoning technique may achieve some affordable housing goals and preserve the rural character by having a variety of housing lot sizes scattered throughout rural areas. While this approach encourages creativity, it does not ensure that the property owner retain any larger, rural sized lots which would retain rural character. The property owner is still free to develop a gridlike pattern of development which will not retain rural character at densities greater than one home per 10 acres. For this reason, this particular technique will not be utilized in rural character conservation designations where current large land ownership patterns allow for rural character to be fully retained.

(11) Urban Density Development Allowed in Rural Areas by the GMA. The Growth Management Act does provide for limited urban density growth outside urban growth areas in master planned resorts. Master planned resorts (240 acres minimum acreage) are self-contained and fully integrated planned unit developments, in a setting of significant natural amenities, with a primary focus on destination resort facilities with developed on-site indoor and outdoor recreation facilities. The County can develop policies to guide the development of these type of facilities.

(12) Controlling Sprawl by Limiting Nonresidential Uses in Rural Areas. There are three types of nonresidential uses found in the rural areas which need to be carefully controlled in order to preserve rural character. Shadow Mountain Store and RV at Lake Sutherland, Laird’s Corner and Granny’s on US 101 are examples of tourist or neighborhood commercial developments. While this type of development provides needed services to tourists and rural residents alike, it should be maintained within a set size limit or length along the highway and should occur no closer than at three-mile intervals to promote compact rural commercial service centers.

The Growth Management Act would indicate that some of the commercial and industrial uses found just east of the O’Brien Road intersection and west of Dry Creek Road have exceeded those which should be found in rural area. This second type of commercial and industrial development should be limited to these locations and further growth outside of a defined area at these locations should not be permitted. The visual impact of these uses should be reduced through the use of high quality landscaping and design guidelines.

Lastly, several industrially zoned but unutilized/utilized log yards are found outside the urban growth area. The Corey and Sons site east of Dry Creek Road is recommended for change to a rural neighborhood commercial designation in this plan to allow for appropriate use on the site while limiting further water pollution to Dry Creek which had been common under its prior use. Remote industrial sites west of the Elwha River have been recommended for designation as commercial forestry or rural land uses depending on surrounding land uses.

(13) Controlling Sprawl by Limiting Public Services Provided in Rural Areas. Public facilities and services to be provided in rural areas must be defined. Many rural areas in the Port Angeles planning area are within the service area of a public water system. Where densities greater than one home per 20 acres have been applied in the past, the only workable approach to retaining rural character at these densities is to encourage development which combines smaller residential lots with permanently retained larger rural lot sizes. Where this rural character conserving pattern is encouraged, public water systems are needed to serve compact development. Without public water, lot sizes should be five acres or larger to allow development of individual wells which do not adversely impact aquifers. Rural densities should not require extension of sewer. While police, fire and transportation systems will be provided in rural areas, expected levels of service will be much less than that found in UGAs.

(14) Implementing the 20-Year Rural Vision. Realizing the 20-year vision for the rural lands of the Port Angeles planning region will require development of rural goals, policies, and implementing actions that both encourage and ensure preservation of rural character. The types of housing developments considered appropriate for the rural areas varies within the Port Angeles planning area. Some areas have developed at one home per 2.4- to five-acre densities and designations which recognize these densities have been used in these areas. Larger lots characterize the Olympic foothills and the areas more than one-third mile from County roads. Many of these areas have been included in the rural character conservation designation which recognizes their pre-existing densities but ensures retention of rural character.

The proposed rural land use categories offer a range of rural residential densities (from one dwelling per 4.8 acres to one dwelling per 20 acres), some of which are subject to optional innovative zoning techniques. A number of LAMIRDs are designated according to the provisions of CCC 31.02.263.