Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the SEPA topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
County withdraws and reissues SEPA determination after tribal-notification oversight
Summary
Planner Alan Thomson said the county withdrew an earlier SEPA determination because legal counsel indicated tribes had not been notified; a new SEPA was to be issued the next morning with a 14-day comment period ending Jan. 22.
Alan Thomson, Whitman County Planner, told the Planning Commission that the county officially withdrew its previous SEPA determination because legal counsel said the tribes had not been notified. "The previous SEPA decision has been withdrawn officially... legal counsel felt that it was necessary to notify the tribes about the decision," Thomson said, and staff planned to reissue the SEPA the following morning to start a new 14-day comment period.
Thomson emphasized that withdrawing the SEPA restarts the comment timeline but does not automatically change the substantive record created at prior hearings: "This pulling back of the DNS and the reissuing, it doesn't change the result of the hearing, and it doesn't imply a need to invalidate the hearing and rehaul it," a commissioner observed during the meeting. A member of the public later asked why tribes had been omitted; Thomson acknowledged the omission as "an oversight" and said the SEPA would be reposted with proper notice.
