The city of Renton is making changes to its Critical Areas Ordinance to meet state regulations.

The Critical Areas Ordinance consists of local development regulations cities must adopt and enforce to protect specific environmentally sensitive areas, and it safeguards the public from natural hazards, according to Renton Associate Planner Mariah Kerrihard. The ordinance is mandated by the state’s Growth Management Act.

“It protects environmentally sensitive areas, which for us includes wetlands, streams, flood hazard zones, wellhead protection areas, geologically hazardous areas and fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas,” Kerrihard said.

Renton Principal Planner Paul Hintz said regulations depend on the critical area where the construction is wanted. He said it is important to be conscientious where they are putting people and infrastructure.

“A landslide can take out a roadway or, even worse, people’s lives and property,” Hintz said. “It is important that we make sure we are protecting people as much as we can by adopting these regulations.”

Hintz said there are three categories for the changes they are making to the ordinance.

First, the city is working to make the language in the code more clear and understandable. This also includes updating the environmental studies cited in the code to the most up-to-date studies.

Hintz said the code incorporates regulations around channel migration zones, or the area around a river that the river may move to over time, into the ordinance in order to protect the full width of the channel migration zones (CMZ). He said it allows for a member of the public to challenge the county’s mapping of the CMZ.

“It’s possible that maybe local knowledge of river stabilization efforts are not recognized in their study, so it is important that we provide means to challenge CMZ boundaries by having their own study conducted,” Hintz said.

The last category is wetlands, where Hintz said they will see the most changes with the update. He said in most cities and counties in Western Washington, the buffer that surrounds wetlands is increasing depending on the category of the function of the wetland.

“These increases are meant to protect the functionality of wetlands and make sure they are doing their jobs of filtering water and providing a habitat for fish and wildlife,” Hintz said.

Hintz said they mostly have to conform to what the state regulates, but they are meant to provide reasonable exceptions to take care of existing structures and prevent new structures in areas that might be an issue in the future. He said Renton is adopting the minimum required by the state because their regulations are “pretty robust.”

“For the average person, this ordinance really doesn’t have an impact. It really only impacts people who want to develop their land and are in close proximity to a critical area or developers who want to develop land,” Hintz said.

Kerrihard said they have introduced the new critical areas ordinance update and have been at different public events during the summer to better inform the public about the changes. Updates to the ordinance must be completed by the end of the year.