HB2550 – Makes achievement of net ecological gain in environmental, land use, and development laws the State’s policy.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Lekanoff (D; 40th District; San Juan Islands and Anacortes) (Co-Sponsors Shewmake, Kloba, Lekanoff, Callan, Ramel, and Pollet)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy January 28th. A much less ambitious substitute bill passed out of committee February 4th. Had a hearing in the House Committee on Appropriations February 8th; did not pass out of Appropriations by the cutoff for finance committees; dead bill.
Next step would be –
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
The substitute retains the requirement for a report on the issue, and drops everything else. (It also rewrites the definition of “net ecological gain”, but I don’t think the changes are substantive.)

Summary –
The bill says it’s the policy of the state that the laws in the Shoreline Management Act, the Growth Management Act, the Model Toxics Control Act, and the section of the code governing construction projects in the waters of the State result in the achievement of net ecological gain, except where otherwise specified in statute. Net ecological gain is defined as a standard for a project, policy, plan, or activity in which the impacts on ecological integrity caused by the development are outweighed enough by measures taken to avoid and minimize the impacts, undertake site restoration, and compensate for any remaining impacts so that the gains exceed the losses.

The measures are to be applied according to a mitigation hierarchy, in the following order – first avoiding impacts; then minimizing unavoidable ones; then rehabilitating or restoring sites; and then offsetting remaining impacts through positive management interventions such as restoration of other degraded habitat, averted risks to habitats or ecosystems, and protection of areas where there is imminent or projected loss of ecological integrity. Measures to compensate for or pay damages for loss of ecological integrity caused by a project, policy, plan, or activity that falls short of achieving net ecological gain are the final, least acceptable stage. Agencies that have the authority to establish a standard of ecological or habitat protection or are not otherwise bound to a different standard of ecological protectiveness would be required to use these.

The Office of Financial Management would be required to report to the Legislature assessing how to incorporate this standard into the State’s land use, development, and environmental laws and rules, addressing each of those where the existing standard is less protective of ecological integrity than the new standards. The report would include an assessment of opportunities and challenges for local government implementation of the standard under different environmental, development, and land use laws; recommendations on funding, incentives, technical assistance, monitoring and other use of scientific data, and other considerations about integrating the standard into each environmental, development, and land use law or rule; recommendations on instances in which it could be achieved using voluntary or incentive-based programs and on where regulations would probably be required; and assessments of how applying this standard is likely to achieve substantial environmental or social co-benefits.

The bill includes activities regulated under the Puget Sound Water Quality Act in the definition of “infrastructure development” in the Aquatic Resources Mitigation Act. It would require the approval of an aquatic resources mitigation plan through a memorandum of agreement between the project proponent and either the Department of Ecology or the Department of Fish and Wildlife, or both, rather than having that be a possibility. (It also removes the provisions about mitigation for “non-infrastructure development”, for reasons that aren’t clear to me – perhaps because they were only intended to cover the Puget Sound Water Quality activities that are now included under the “infrastructure development, or perhaps because the new net ecological gain standards would cover them…)