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Council reviews proposed amendment to 2018 wastewater plan to restore technical amendment route for basin changes
Summary
Public works staff proposed a resolution to amend section 1.4.0.2 of the 2018 wastewater comprehensive plan to clarify when basin-boundary changes can be treated as technical amendments and when they must go through the city comprehensive plan process; staff said the resolution could appear on the Jan. 27 council agenda.
Public Works Director Jeff Langdon briefed the Gig Harbor City Council on a proposed amendment to the city’s 2018 wastewater comprehensive plan that would clarify when amendments are handled as short technical changes and when a full city comprehensive-plan amendment is required.
Langdon said the wastewater comprehensive plan (the city’s “general sewer plan” under state law) and related municipal codes and public works standards guide basin boundaries and sewer planning. He explained that basin boundaries in the plan are currently identified using lidar and digital mapping and that developers sometimes submit higher-precision survey data that reveals small vertical differences that can change the practical flow direction of gravity sewer lines.
Langdon said section 1.4.0.2 of the wastewater comprehensive plan historically distinguished between technical amendments (typically boundary or map fixes processed quickly) and amendments that could “adversely affect” wastewater treatment capacity, which must go through the longer city comprehensive-plan amendment process. In 2023 staff and the city attorney identified ambiguous wording in 1.4.0.2 and began processing basin-boundary requests through the full comprehensive-plan amendment path to avoid risk.
The proposed resolution restores clearer criteria: basin-boundary and most map amendments would revert to a technical amendment process (a shorter, staff-led review that typically took two to three months in the past) except where an amendment would adversely affect treatment plant capacity; those cases would still proceed through the city comprehensive-plan amendment process (a year or more, depending on scope). Langdon said staff are prepared to bring that resolution to the Jan. 27 city council meeting.
Councilmembers asked how the change would affect housing and rezoning requests. Councilmember Harris raised a concern that the draft language could require a city comprehensive-plan amendment for changes that increase housing or employment density, which he warned could impose long timelines on applicants. Langdon and City Administrator Newsom replied that if a developer seeks a rezoning that requires a comprehensive-plan designation change, the sewer analysis would run concurrently with the comp-plan amendment and would not add time on top of the comp-plan calendar. They also emphasized that technical amendments historically required only short staff review when they did not affect treatment capacity.
Langdon said staff will send an explanatory memo about a pending developer request to adjust basin boundaries and explained staff and Planning Commission recommendations on that project. He recommended the council consider returning the amendment language to the pre-2023 approach so routine boundary corrections can be processed efficiently while preserving the more rigorous route where capacity impacts exist.
Staff said it can return a resolution for council adoption on Jan. 27 and will notify councilmembers via email about the pending basin-boundary application and staff analysis beforehand.
