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County staff outline choices for where to grow, say about 600 acres outside UGA may be needed
Summary
Spokane County staff presented maps of roughly 3,000 candidate acres and told attendees they expect to narrow the field to about 600 acres outside the current UGA based on infrastructure, transportation and defendability under the Growth Management Act.
Spokane County Planning staff described for attendees how the draft EIS and transportation analyses will narrow roughly 3,000 candidate acres into a smaller, defensible set of lands the county may recommend for new urban growth-area (UGA) designation. Scott Chesney said staffers believe the county can justify roughly 600 acres outside existing UGA boundaries to accommodate projected growth under realistic market assumptions and infrastructure constraints.
Chesney said the 3,000-acre figure represents the first-pass target-area polygons identified by planners; staff must evaluate those polygons against transportation sufficiency, sewer and water availability, and public-cost metrics to produce an "evaluation matrix" that ranks groups of parcels by likely public cost and maintenance. He told attendees that contiguous parcels that can share sewer laterals and other infrastructure rank higher because they reduce per-acre public costs.
Infrastructure capacity differs across providers: staff told the meeting the county's modular sewer system has built-in capacity — citing an 8 million-gallons-per-day modular unit currently operating near 7 MGD and available Riverside facility capacity — while the city's Riverside treatment plant is approaching constraints under an emerging nutrient-based standard and faces land limitations for expansion. That difference, Chesney said, affects where urban densities and UGA expansions are feasible.
Chesney pointed to several candidate areas: Airway Heights, Five Mile Prairie, portions of Medical Lake, the North Metro corridor, Deer Park (noting Deer Park's acquisition of water rights and the unusual large UGA shown around it), and the West Plains. He cautioned that some parcels may be challenged in appeals and that the Board of County Commissioners has the final authority. "We will have to pick those 600 acres and put them on the plan," he said, adding staff hope to retain flexibility through staged or periodic adjustments to UGAs if market conditions change.
Next steps: staff plan to refine rankings, gather public comments during the EIS comment period, and present a recommended preferred alternative to the Planning Commission and then the Board.
