Housing lots are set to be approved

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, July 14, 2026

PORT ANGELES — A housing project that started before the COVID-19 pandemic is set to get approval from the Clallam County commissioners today.

The commissioners discussed the request for final approval of a 66-lot binding site plan to create a 55-year-old-plus manufactured home park during their work session Monday.

“So you would notice that (the application) is a very old one,” said Donella Clark, a Department of Community Development (DCD) principal planner. “That’s because it got appealed in court.”

After an open record hearing for the project on Feb. 7, 2019, the hearing examiner issued a decision of approval for the project with 34 conditions. That decision was appealed to Clallam County Superior Court, which remanded back to the hearing examiner on Jan. 30, 2020, according to county documents.

Following an open record remand hearing July 16, 2020, the hearing examiner issued a “decision upon remand” supplementing the previous decision and incorporating the 34 conditions, according to county documents.

“So now, there are 34 conditions that have been reviewed,” Clark said Monday. “Staff has reviewed those final documents and determined that the conditions for approval have been met.”

The project will be on about 8.8 acres of an undeveloped 15.5-acre property near the corner of Hooker and Atterberry roads in the Carlsborg Urban Growth Area on a site that’s connected to Clallam County PUD water and the Carlsborg sewer, Clark said.

The property will include critical area buffers and designated open space, according to county documents. There also will be landscaping, fencing and stormwater infrastructure.

During Monday’s meeting, Commissioner Randy Johnson expressed concerns about the required landscaping, stating that he always likes to make sure the plants are still alive two or three years later.

“When we were out doing our landscaping review, we saw that it was irrigated and saw that I think they had already removed some dead things,” Clark said.

Commissioner Mike French called the process for this development “a long saga.”

“I’m hoping that they finally found a place where everybody’s going to be happy,” French said. “That the development can be successful and it can be a positive contribution to the community.”

Streamkeepers

Monday’s meeting also included a mid-year update on funding the county has provided to the Streamkeepers program.

“The Streamkeepers program last year during the budget cycle we were asked to provide some updates as to how the program is going both in an end-of-the-year report and then a mid-year report,” DCD Deputy Director Tim Havel said.

He described an “all-hands-on-deck situation” the program has gone through since the Streamkeeper coordinator retired in late February. During that time, stakeholders, including the city of Port Angeles, county environmental health and Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, have worked together and with volunteers to get work done.

“As a result, our final numbers are kind of skewed a little bit because we didn’t have one person to point to,” Havel said.

With that in mind, from January through June, Streamkeepers has spent $28,512 in salary and benefits, he said.

The program brought in $20,387.44 in revenues with an additional $7,597.59 invoiced but still pending receipt, which represents 98.1 percent of the total expenditures and exceeds the board’s 50 percent revenue-funding target, according to county documents.

The new Streamkeepers coordinator is slated to begin work this week, commissioners were told.

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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.