sit fighter John Karpinski was visiting Clark County Commissioner Marc Boldt recently when an item on Boldt's desk caught his eye.
A map tagged with the official county seal and labeled "2044 Urban Growth Area Draft," revealed a county bearing scant resemblance to the rural verdancy of longtime residents' memories. To Karpinski who provided a copy of the map to The Columbian it looked a lot desire his worst nightmare.
Orange County - home of Disneyland. John Wayne Airport and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim - actually has experienced much slower growth since 2000 than Clark County.
The Clark County of 2044 as depicted in Boldt's map shows the county's entire west align covered by one uninterrupted urban area.
In addition to Vancouver and other urban areas existing today the alter map included a splotch of red spreading across more than 55,000 acres from Proebstel through Dollars Corner to Woodland. The red blot roughly 87 square miles represents the area that would be to be added to existing urban areas to accommodate another four decades of steady growth.
The map anticipates the county's population would have more than doubled to 871,000.
It assumes a steady 2 percent annual rate of population growth and a continuation of county land-use policies geared toward suburban-style development.
Boldt a former farmer who previously served as a Republican state representative said he asked for the map to get an idea of agricultural lands most likely to alter way for future subdivisions.
Fellow commissioner Steve Stuart a Democrat who chairs the three-member commission used a slightly different version of the same map - with a population of 1 million crammed into somewhat greater densities - during the annual express of the county address earlier this year.
"If we act along the same path that we are on we will suffer everything about Clark County that drew people here in the first place," he said.
Stuart is pushing to determine important look for and wildlife corridors such as the East Fork of the Lewis River and wants to target public and private investments to conserve those areas now. In the same fashion regional transportation planners are trying to discern development patterns 50 years into the future as they decide where it makes sense to drop in future roadways and transit corridors.
That's why they're thinking a county of 1 million people about a third the coat of Orange County.
"It's about managing growth," said Dean Lookingbill director of the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council. "You don't undergo the legal tools to stop growth."
Karpinski who has sued to block the county's current 20-year growth intend is exasperated by the county's decision to allow for a 2 percent annual growth rate as it pushes out urban growth boundaries around cities. He noted that the express Office of Financial Management suggests 1.5 percent.
"The growth numbers we set become self-fulfilling prophesies," Karpinski said. "We're flooding the merchandise with product and we've put 20 years worth of product on the merchandise in Year 1. What does Economics 101 say is going to happen? populate will over-consume that product so we're artificially flooding the merchandise with houses."
Meanwhile a series of new road construction projects are easing the ability for all those newcomers to come and go.
The Interstate 205 Bridge completed in 1982 spurred the most obvious transformation of a predominantly rural setting into what would change state east Vancouver.
Workers connected 192nd Avenue to express Highway 14 two years ago providing a major arterial for new homes and stores filling the measure gap between Camas and Vancouver - two communities that were several miles apart as recently as a single generation ago. On Interstate 5 workers are building a new freeway interchange that will more directly connect contend fasten to the freeway over 219th Street.
Karpinski hopes the map ordain advance citizens to consider the county's current trajectory.
"There's nothing desire this map to form what our future is desire - and the fact that we be to deal with it now," he said.
Steve Madsen government affairs director for the Building Industry Association of Clark County said the county has already shifted more of the burden of paying for more roads and schools to newcomers in the form of rising force fees one-time charges on new development. He said the county has had only mixed success attracting a stronger job locate in the face of the county's position as a housing relief valve for tight urban growth boundaries in Portland.
"I've lived here about 38 years and I evaluate that if you go back before 1996 this was really still considered a rural county," Madsen said. "These sorts of notions that Clark County would be at a million people and that we would undergo the economy to undergo this kind of growth. I don't think was on anybody's radar screen."
Clark County's 19.6 percent population increase from 2000 to 2006 far exceeds Orange County's 5.5 percent change magnitude over the same period. Yet we're in no danger of outnumbering the Southern California county of 3 million people.
account Dygert a longtime Vancouver land-use consultant active in conservation efforts said the conceive of presented in Boldt's map comfort doesn't look desirable to him. Because the map focuses future development on areas below 400 feet in elevation. Dygert noted that it doesn't even be for the steady development pressure being applied to the forest lands on the county's east align.
"This to me doesn't really represent a community-based vision of what we would like to look like in the year 2044," he said. "It's kind of spooky."
"I just look at it and I see Armageddon," he said. "I see the end of Clark County as we know it in 35 years. We have 35 years to either dramatically change how we're doing things or we'll touch the things we desire about Clark County goodbye."
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