Ordinance No. 20208 - Laserfiche WebLink

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The designation of a substantial acreage of wetlands for Development reflects an effort to minimize the economic hardship of wetland protection on the property owner. The wetlands designated for Protection and Restoration would be eligible for acquisition under the West Eugene Wetlands Acquisition program administered by the Bureau of Land Management. Such acquisition would also help to minimize economic hardship. We conclude that although neither of these actions eliminates economic hardship, they do show a good faith effort to minimize them, and therefore we conclude the wetland designations for the Speedway site are consistent with Goal 3.2. Goal 3.3 "Minimize adverse impacts to protected wetlands from adjacent development. " The wetland designations for the Speedway site include substantial areas designated for Development. The West Eugene Wetlands Plan and its implementing ordinances do not require setbacks upon areas of fill authorized within wetlands. This policy is intended to reduce the financial burden of developing within wetlands designated for Development. In order, then, to minimize impacts from development on this 'site, the area of protection and restoration must be sufficiently wide so that most of the wetland area is not immediately next to the development. In this respect, a wider Protection/Restoration corridor provides more protection for the wetlands in that corridor than a narrower corridor would. A wider corridor would also provide more buffering effect for the WCNA by keeping development further from sensitive rare plant areas on the south side of 18th Avenue. We conClude, therefore, that the existing wetland designations for this site, which include a 900 foot corridor along the east side of the property, are consistent with Goal 3.3. Goal 3.5 "Protect and expand current populations and habitats of rare plants and animals that currently exist in west Eugene." This site contains several plant species that are listed as "rare" in the West Eugene Wetlands Plan. . The wetland designations for this site would protect nearly all of the existing rare plants, and would allow for suitable habitat between these existing plants for expansion of these populations. If only the areas immediately surrounding the existing plants were protected or restored, little opportunity would exist for expansion of the populations. We conclude that the wetland designations for this site would protect and allow expansion of current rare plant populations. Therefore, these designations are consistent with Goal 3.5. Goal 3.6 . "Achieve state and federal requirement of 'no net loss' of wetlands in both quantity (area) and quality (functions and values)." "No net loss" can be pursued through a combination of avoiding wetland impacts where possible, and replacing those low quality wetlands where development values outweigh Speedway Site Ordinance, Exhibit C (Refinement Plan Amendment Findings) Page 21