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Friday, June 23,
2006
Contributed by: Marj
Charlier
GUEMES ISLAND –
It was a beautiful early summer night on this island far north in
Puget Sound. Yet, instead of paddling out in boats to view the
sunset or share a beer on the porch of the general store with
friends, 188 of the 800 island residents crowded into the small
community hall here, many standing along the walls as the chairs
filled up.
The topic, however, wasn’t the kind of sudden catastrophe that
generally brings communities together in meeting halls, but a
concern about the distant future – about the sustainability of
their island.
The meeting marked
the end of a three-day Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT)
visit sponsored by the AIA’s Center for Communities by Design.
The SDAT method is a charrette process designed to help communities
committed to planning for a sustainable future by recruiting
out-of-town (usually out-of-state), objective experts in
architecture, landscape architecture, ecology, economics,
transportation and other specialties who volunteer to help
communities assess their choices and issues and clear a trail
toward formulating strategies and solutions.
“This process
isn’t about losing – losing rights or independence or
anything. It’s about gaining – gaining as an individual,
as neighbors, as a community,” Erica Gees, team leader for the
community planning process, told the gathered community.
The Guemes Island
Planning Advisory Committee (GIPAC) applied for the SDAT grant and
assistance as a way to accelerate the development of its sub-area
plan, a part of the Skagit County Comprehensive plan.
The charrette, held
mainly at Guemes Island’s Community Center June 20th through
22nd, included a community tour for the visiting SDAT team and two
public meetings along with a day and a half of roundtable meetings
where about 60 community stakeholders discussed five areas of
interest: transportation; alternative energy; rural character;
water supply and quality; and wildlife, shoreline and open space as
well as other issues that were on their mind.
(See http://www.aia.org/liv_sdat
for more details about the process and the SDAT program.)
 Following the
roundtable discussions, the AIA team members prepared findings and
recommendations, including some short-term strategies and long-term
policies that could help:
• preserve the island’s rural character,
• conserve water and protect the quality of the island’s
sole source aquifer,
• resolve transportation disagreements,
• protect wildlife and shoreline habitat, and
• increase island energy independence.
They presented their
findings at the Thursday night meeting.
“The keys to
this process are that we bring the objectivity of outside experts
that form a multidisciplinary team and we focus on public
participation,” said Ann Livingston, Director, Community by
Design, a program of the AIA. SDAT team leader Gees, an associate
with Kuhn Riddle Architects, Amherst, Mass., stressed that focusing
on sustainability, and its three components – the economy, the
environment and social/cultural traditions and equity –
provided a basis for all community stakeholders to participate in
the process by providing a lens through which differing points of
view can find common ground.
Illustrating that
point was the attendance at the charrette by Skagit County
officials, including Don Munks, County Commissioner; Jeanne King
and Corrine Storey, of the Skagit County Health Department; Steve
Cox, Guemes Ferry Manager; and Jeroldine Hallberg, Betsy Stephensen
and Ann Bylin, of the County Planning Department. The relationship
between the county and island residents has been severely strained
of late over such things as expanded ferry schedules and the
interest in self-determination expressed by some island
residents.
“It’s
gratifying that these county officials saw enough merit in the SDAT
process and care enough about the island’s future to put aside
their differences and attend the meetings, “ said Gees. After
the first few meetings in Guemes, county officials asked Gees if
the AIA could help coordinate charrettes in other sub-areas in the
county to help resolve log-jams in their planning processes as
well, she said. “I’m proud that we have brought a process
to the table that will allow the county and its residents to get
back together and work out their conflicts.”
Guemes Island had
been warned that it would be some time before the county would have
the funds to address Guemes Island’s issues, but the community
felt development pressures on the eight-square-mile island with
incredible coastline views were calling for a more immediate
response. The process also brought out the best in the local
community, local leaders of the island effort said.
“I was
overwhelmed by the public response,” said Roz Glazer, vice
chairman of GIPAC. “People seemed to understand the importance
of sustainability. They had been thinking about the issues, they
came prepared to contribute to the discussion, and they did so in
meaningful, constructive and creative ways.” She gives credit
to the process, but also to the sensitivity and attitude of the AIA
team members. “I think their presence gave this community
comfort so that they didn’t feel threatened, even though the
experts came from more than 50 miles away,” Glazer said,
poking a little fun at the natural provincialism of her adopted,
somewhat isolated island.
Throughout the SDAT
meetings, community participants commented that the sessions were
far more valuable in examining the bases of their prejudices,
wishes and positions than they had expected. “One of the
things that really impressed me was how many different voices and
people, who often disagree, were brought together in this
process,” said Edith Walden, an orchard owner on Guemes
Island, a local business woman, and one of the roundtable
participants. “Having all their input has made us all aware
that we do have a community with a common vision. It’s made us
all energized and hopeful about our future.”
The results from the
SDAT meetings will be used to help develop the island’s
sub-area plan, ensuring the AIA and the community that the
proposals don’t sit on a shelf and gather dust. Among the
recommendations in their final reports were:
Energy
independence: Guemes Island has numerous solar, wind and
other alternative energy producers among its 800 permanent
residents, and the island should work to foster continued
experimentation and leadership in energy independence, said David
Stecher, a mechanical engineer with The Ecological Construction
Laboratory of Urbana, Illinois, a non-profit organization that
designs highly energy-efficient and healthy houses. In addition,
the island should work with state and county officials to promote
use of subsidized weatherization programs, investigate building a
small scale biodiesel plant for island vehicles, and start a Guemes
Energy Efficiency Club (GEEC) to help promote energy efficiency and
alternative energy production among officials, businesses and
residents. Before the three-day work session had ended, the members
of the energy roundtable had agreed to set up the club, and many
volunteered to work on it.
Transportation: Jack Werner,
a consultant from the Climate Institute of Washington, D.C.,
recommended that islanders improve their communications with city
of Anacortes and county officials and to help resolve disputes over
their ferry service, which provides the only public access to the
island. His roundtable developed several recommendations for the
county for capital improvements to parking, landings, waiting areas
and bicycle storage at the ferry terminals. They also developed
suggestions for fare structures that would encourage car-free
travel, recommended that islanders improve road signage to reduce
speeding and improve safety for bicycle traffic, expand biodiesel
production on the island to fuel the ferry and other vehicles,
develop photovoltaic charging stations for electric vehicles and
explore the possibility of producing ethanol on the island.
Rural
character: To preserve the unpretentiousness and small
scale of island buildings, Walt Cudnohufsky, a landscape architect
from western Massachusetts, encouraged the islanders
to establish voluntary architectural guidelines for new
construction to help newcomers understand the island’s culture
and style. “Islanders embrace values reflecting a strong sense
of community, neighborliness, an unhurried pace of life, respect
for privacy, awareness of history, stewardship for land and shore,
creativity and an independent spirit,” said Cudnohufsky. He
also suggested that islanders seek to cluster development and to
initiate an island open space fund in order to keep the rural open
space even as new residents come to the island. Islanders can help
preserve their rural culture and introduce newcomers to it by
developing an inclusive welcome-wagon program and by offering more
tours of gardens, art, forestlands, wildlife and innovative energy
projects.
Water
resources: Warren Flint, an ecologist and sustainability
consultant with Five E’s Unlimited in Seattle, commented that
the island should work to collect important data of the overall
island water supply to develop a scientifically based water budget
for the Guemes Island system that is understandable by all
stakeholders. He also recommended that the island conduct education
and awareness regarding Island water resources, encourage
cooperation between Washington Department of Ecology and Skagit
Country Planning and Health Departments, insure that all wells and
homes are metered for water use, limit impervious surfaces on the
island to enhance recharge capacity and minimize freshwater runoff,
encourage clustered domestic waste water treatment facilities for
failed septic systems, encourage home water conservation, increase
shoreline setbacks, and reduce the allowable building size to lot
size ratio.
Wildlife,
shorelines and open space: About 70% of the island’s
shoreline properties are owned by senior citizens, and in light of
their imminent transfer, islanders should find ways to protect or
acquire them for wildlife and public access, said Glenn Acomb, a
landscape architect from the University of Florida. In addition, he
recommended that islanders protect or restore interior island lands
that are important to open space, wildlife or for the island’s
aquifer by working with state wildlife agencies and educating the
public about the importance of protection.
In addition to the
specific interest area recommendations, team leader Gees suggested
that the community forge new relationships with neighboring
communities to help resolve issues, and to continue to work with
the Samish tribe, whose interests in their former tribal lands are
in line with the interest on the part of the island to protect its
rural character, island ecology and cultural heritage.
Over the next year,
the SDAT team members and AIA staff will be available to the
community leadership for consultation, and a couple of team members
will revisit the community after a year to provide additional
feedback and expertise as needed.
Thursday, June 22,
2006
Contributed by: Marj
Charlier
GUEMES ISLAND – Wednesday (June 21)
was the longest day of the year north of the equator. But for the
residents and AIA volunteers and staff working on a plan for Guemes
Island’s future, it
was barely long enough. Residents of this far-northwestern
island of Washington State began showing up at 7:30 in the morning
to get started working with the AIA’s Sustainable Design
Assessment Team (SDAT). Pads and pens in hand, they drifted into
the Guemes Community Center in khakis, dress pants, long peasant
skirts, Birkenstocks, cowboy boots and loafers, their dress visibly
representing the diversity and various professions and stages of
life of the residents of the island.
“I am always impressed with how many people really get
involved” in the community, said Joost Businger, chairman of
the Guemes Island Planning Advisory Committee (GIPAC).
This motivated and eclectic group of islanders, brought together
by the AIA’s Center for Communities by Design’s SDAT
Program and (GIPAC), all shared one goal: the hope that their work
will provide much of the philosophy, direction and tools that will
eventually be adopted as the island’s land-use plan by Skagit
County. (See http://www.aia.org/liv_sdat for more
details about the process and the SDAT program.)
“What’s very, very clear is that your main concern is
controlling growth that’s compromising your rural
future,” said Erica Gees, team leader for the Guemes Island
SDAT, as she sent the volunteers home Tuesday night, following a
public meeting that allowed all citizens to come and express their
hopes and concerns for their 8-square-mile island. Harvesting that
passion for the island’s rural nature set the agenda for
Wednesday, as about 60 of the island’s 800 residents in five
roundtables began sifting through their opinions and preferences,
and sorting them into a concrete set of proposals for preserving
their island way of life.
The roundtables and a sample of their discussions so far
are:
Renewable Energy: In applying for the SDAT
grant, GIPAC told the AIA that one of its highest priorities was
reducing dependency on off-island power and fuel supplies. Even
before gasoline hit $3 a gallon around the country, Guemes
Islanders were feeling the pinch of high energy costs. There is no
natural gas on the island, propane for furnaces has to be trucked
across to the island by ferry and there is no public
transportation. Further, many Guemes Island residents were already
experimenting with alternative energy schemes, including
photovoltaic electricity production, passive solar construction and
wind generation. Conversations overheard in the local general
store’s bar are as likely to be about alternative energy
technologies as about the latest TV shows.
The energy roundtable decided to focus its work on three major
areas: producing its own fuel and energy such as biodiesel, wind
and solar; encouraging conservation; and educating key players in
real estate and building professions and regulatory agencies.
“We’re leaning toward volunteering ourselves as a
permanent group to create a culture of energy efficiency on Guemes
Island,” one of the resident volunteers reported. “Being
aware of our island culture, we decided it would be better to
assist, not mandate or regulate.”
The group was led by David Stecher, a mechanical engineer with
The Ecological Construction Laboratory of Urbana, Illinois, a
non-profit organization that designs highly energy-efficient and
healthy houses.
Rural Character: With only 800 permanent
residents, Guemes Island is a place where people feel part of a
community and value public participation, but where they live
– largely in small homes – at the end of quiet lanes
among large open spaces and forests. They value their personal
safety and they value thelack of pretension in their modest homes,
and they worry that rising real estate values and the recent
appearance of huge second homes on the island’s coasts
are going to change the rural nature of the island.
Focusing at one point on the iconic
expression of this change – the big house –SDAT team
members Walt Cudnohufsky asked the roundtable to discuss what they
feared they wouldlose if more big houses were built on the island.
“Why are big houses such a problem?” he asked. That led
the group to discuss how to mitigate those losses: How to ensure
homes fit into the rural context, how to reduce wasteful
consumption, how to ensure economic and social diversity in the
population, and how to buffer the impact ofrising real estate
values on property taxes.
The group also identified special places
on the island that helped the community retain its rural character,
and discussed what can be done immediately to be sure that the
rural values of those places are protected, given the potential
that their ownership or use will change.
Cudnohufsky is a landscape architect from western Massachusetts,
who participated as a local volunteer in an SDAT project in western
Massachusetts before agreeing to volunteer as an SDAT team member
on Guemes Island.
Transportation: The transportation group
decided to organize its discussions in three areas – the ferry
(which provides the only access to the island), the state of the
island’s roads, and alternative modes of transportation. Much
of the group’s work focused on the issues of ferry schedules
and costs, as the island’s residents have long believed that
the limited ferry hours were a major tool in limiting the
island’s growth. Through the SDAT process, however, the
participants also began to recognize how the ferry served as an
informal community “place” where neighbors meet neighbors
and news is exchanged.
At the end of the working sessions, the group adopted a vision
statement calling for a “comprehensive public transport
system, seamlessly integrated with the county-wide transit
system” that is “affordable, sustainable and fueled by
alternative energy sources,” involves education, public
participation and incentives for alternative modes of
transportation, and “promotes the island’s rural
character.”
Water resources: One of the most limited
resources on Guemes Island is the water supply, of which about 90%
comes from the sole source aquifer that underlies the island.
Already, seawater intrusion into the aquifer has required some
areas of the island to rely on expensive reverse osmosis water
treatment. And, in defense, many homeowners have turned to
rainwater collection for both potable and non-potable water
uses.
The roundtable led by R. Warren Flint, an ecologist and
sustainability consultant with Five E’s Unlimited in Seattle,
approached the task of identifying alternatives for regulating
water use and providing
alternative water supply by imagining seven potential futures for
the island’s development, from catastrophic water failure to
stopping growth entirely. Identifying water supply and quality
problems associated with each of those potential scenarios provided
the team an opportunity to also suggest potential solutions to each
of those problems, resulting in a list of potential actions for
final consideration.
Open Space, Wildlife and Shoreline: According
to GIPAC, one of the highly valued characteristics of the island
for residents is the wildlife, marine life and open space of the
island. However, as the roundtable focusing on this area quickly
discovered, island residents had a variety of perspectives on
wildlife. Further, the island appeared to have no pressing critical
wildlife issues, such as endangered species.
Therefore, rather than focus on specific wildlife species or
regulations, SDAT team member Glenn Acomb, a landscape architect
from the University of Florida, asked the group to identify a list
of potential actions that the island could take to protect open
space and important wildlife areas into the future. In addition,
the group discussed how to better protect shoreline quality, and
how to enlist shoreline property owner assistance in protecting
that property. The group also discussed recommendations for
reaching out to large landowners with information about open space
preserves, land trusts and low-impact development, and reaching out
to homeowners with information about encouraging diversity in
backyard flora and fauna.
On Thursday, following the roundtable sessions, the SDAT team
will take the collected wisdom of the community and form a proposal
for action. Thursday night, the experts will present their proposal
at a public meeting, where they will receive feedback for a final
report that will be completed following the visit.
Wednesday, June 21,
2006
Contributed by: Marj
Charlier
Residents of tiny Guemes Island, located off the tip of a
peninsula on Puget Sound, are worried.
For decades, they trusted that their quiet, crime-free rural
lifestyle was unassailable. Far enough from Seattle to avoid being
a bedroom community, they felt safely isolated from big-city
pressures. Although it takes only seven minutes to reach the
island from Anacortes, WA, by ferry, the service’s limited
hours of operation provided a far more effective buffer from
strangers and traffic than its short trip would suggest. And since
the mid-60s, when islanders successfully beat back a proposal to
build a huge aluminum smelter on their 8-square-mile oasis,
large-scale and industrial economic development has been pretty
much off the table as a topic of discussion.
But enter the era of retiring baby-boomers and their oversized
second homes, and suddenly, things have started to change. Small
cabins on tiny parcels along the beaches have been scraped and
replaced with lot-sized mansions. The county has decided to
increase the ferry service to Anacortes to 10 p.m. (from 6 p.m.) on
weekday nights, threatening to bring more strangers on the island
past dark. More people and more houses are threatening to overtax
the island’s water supply; its aquifer isn’t recharging
fast enough to keep saltwater from seeping into some coastline
wells and water systems.
“It wasn’t any one certain thing” that sparked
the island to action, says Joost Businger, chairman of the Guemes
Island Planning Advisory Committee (GIPAC). “But there’s
always been a feeling that the island wanted to have some say about
our own development.”
Anxious to take control of its future, in 1991, the island
elected the GIPAC to make recommendations for the island’s
land-use plan. But, tough as things look for island residents, they
aren’t bad enough to make it one of the highest priority
planning areas for Skagit County Commissioners. More than ten years
later, the island is still waiting for action on its sub-area plan.
And recently, the county informed the island that it won’t
have the funds to support the island’s “sub-area
planning” process as part of the county’s new
comprehensive land-use plan for the foreseeable future.
“We weren’t really surprised at that,” says
Businger. “We just said, ‘Well, we’ll do the work
ourselves.’”
 Starting this
week, a team of architects, landscape architects, water
specialists, energy engineers and transportation experts from
around the U.S. is helping the island do just that. The experts
were pulled together as a Sustainable Design Assessment Team
(SDAT), a program of the AIA’s Center for Communities by
Design, after Guemes Island was chosen as one of eight communities
to receive technical assistance under the SDAT program in 2006.
Through its charrette process, the SDAT team will help community
residents and their planning committee create the blueprint that
the island will then recommend as its sub-area plan to the
county’s commissioners. (For more information on the SDAT
program, and for a list of the 2006 communities, see http://www.aia.org/liv_sdat.)
“You are doing something that is rare in taking it upon
yourselves to be involved in determining what you want your island
to look like,” said Commissioner Don Monk at the introductory
meeting of the team and the community Tuesday (6/20) in the
island’s community hall. “Guemes Island has moved
itself up in list and could become the model for sub-area planning
in the county.”
The SDAT program is based on the principle that environmental,
social, cultural and economic systems are interconnected and are
all essential to ensuring sustainability, said Erica Gees, team
leader for the Guemes Island project, AIA past president from
Western Massachusetts and the president elect for AIA New England,
at the opening meeting. In making sustainability the goal,
disparate groups with widely varied opinions can discover common
ground and find agreement where they thought they could only
disagree. “By everyone looking through the same pair of
glasses and focusing on sustainability, we have found that we can
bring people together and build a solid consensus,” she told
the gathering of
some 100 community residents. “People can see that there are
benefits for everyone in creating sustainable
communities.”
As a community that already understands sustainability issues,
Guemes Island was a natural choice for the SDAT process, said Ann
Livingston, Director, Center for Communities by Design. “In
order to be approved for an SDAT a community has to have a basic
understanding of sustainability and its economic, social, cultural
and environmental components as well as the long-term time frame;
the Guemes Island residents clearly understand the concept of
sustainability and have been working passionately to become more
sustainable.”
Guemes Island illustrated that in grand fashion Tuesday morning
– in grand fashion for a rural island with only 800 residents.
In a three-hour tour of the island put together for the assembled
AIA experts, dozens of community residents showed off their energy
efficient homes (some totally “off the grid”),
rain-harvesting projects, sustainable ranches, successful small
artists and other businesses, and open space and wetland preserves.
Set among the natural resources of a beautiful coastline, abundant
wildlife, and tall trees, and blessed with a bright sunny day, the
tour did its job.
“You have a wonderful island here,” said team leader
Gees. “You have entrepreneurship, creativity
and problem solving.”
Over the three days of the charrette process, the SDAT team and
the community will work to hone its recommendations on six areas of
concern identified by the island’s planning committee:
• Water resources and the limited, sole-source aquifer
• Transportation issues and alternatives
• Preserving the sense of community and rural character
• Reducing energy consumption and dependency on non-renewable
energy sources
• Maintaining the predominant scale of homes on the island,
and
• Maintaining the quality and quantity of wildlife habitat in
harmony with residential development.
The group started its work Tuesday afternoon, splitting into
five roundtables of community members and experts who agreed to
discuss these key issues and identify the community’s goals
and priorities. A public meeting on Tuesday night allowed all
residents to come and express their opinions about their
island’s future and the SDAT process. At the meeting, the
experts promised to develop recommendations to help the community
form their draft sub-area plan. But at the same time, the experts
warned residents that they needed to do some work as well, defining
exactly why they are concerned about growth and their future.
“Why are you concerned about big houses” being built on
the island? asked Walt Cudnohufsky, a landscape architect from
Massachusetts. “You can’t stay on an emotional
level.”
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