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# 🚰 The Sewer Rewrite Gets Its Escape Hatch - Stevenson July '26 Round-up
- URL: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/the-sewer-rewrite-gets-its-escape-hatch-stevenson-july-26-round-up/
- Published: 2026-08-05T07:00:43.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-07T19:56:28.000Z
- Description: Stevenson's sewer rewrite gained an appeal route for failing septics and heads to a final August vote. The Planning Commission refused to decide a rezone that would let ten homes replace one, and asked a question the city cannot currently answer: how much buildable land is left?
- Author: Dispatch Squatch
- Tags: Stevenson, Stevenson City Council, Stevenson Planning Commission, Skamania County

*Enjoy the* [*audio edition on Buzzsprout*](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2605109/episodes/19594978?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)*, or look for "Open Gorge" wherever you get your podcasts.*

## 🏛 July 2026 Stevenson Round-Up

**Agencies Covered:** Stevenson Planning Commission (July 13), Stevenson City Council (July 16)

**The Bottom Line:** The long sewer rewrite finally got the piece residents had been asking for, a way out for owners whose septic fails and who cannot afford to connect, and it goes to a final vote in August. Meanwhile a half-acre rezone request on Attwell Road turned into the city's broadest housing conversation in years, and the Planning Commission declined to decide it.

**The Vibe:** Working rather than fighting, in places. A new chair at the Planning Commission, thanks from two residents who spent the spring objecting to the sewer ordinance, five neighbours who are not persuaded about the rezone, and one question nobody in either room could answer.

### 🔎 What Changed

- The sewer ordinance came back with a **new appeal route**, SMC 13.08.078(G), for owners whose septic system fails and who face a connection they cannot afford. No vote was taken; adoption is expected in August.
- The council advanced **Ordinance No. 2026-1234**, the second phase of its engineering standards overhaul, to a second reading on **August 20**.
- The Planning Commission took up the chair's seat, vacant since March. The recording carries a nomination and a voice vote; we are holding the result until the minutes land.

### ⚠ What Escalated

- A request to rezone one half-acre parcel from suburban residential to R-3 drew five neighbours and one written objection, and exposed how little the city knows about its own remaining capacity.
- The **River Christian Church playground dispute** came back to the council, this time with a second neighbour speaking as well as the adjoining owner who raised it in June.

### 🧭 What's Next

- **August 20:** second reading and expected adoption of the engineering standards, the only date the record actually carries. The sewer ordinance is expected back for a second reading in August, with no date given. The sewer penalty moratorium expires **August 31**.
- **August 10:** the Planning Commission's next scheduled meeting, per the city's published calendar, with staff owing two answers on the rezone.
- **Still waiting:** the Board of Adjustment did not meet in July. The ADU variance on NW Kanaka Creek Road that it continued on June 10, for a clearer site plan, has not been re-noticed, and the city's calendar shows nothing scheduled through August 20.

---

## 🌲 Stevenson Planning Commission, July 13

### 🗣 Public comment: three things from outside the city

The meeting opened with one commenter, Mary Repar, on county business. She urged people to comment on the draft environmental impact statement for a proposed quarry at the west end of Skamania County before the July 30 deadline, saying it would put "500 truck trips" a day onto State Route 14 and use a great deal of water in a drought. She said two bridges on that route need maintenance if not replacement, and reported that the Cascade Transmission Project is still moving.

Those are county and regional matters raised at a city body, and the commission took no action on them. We can confirm because Repar filed the same case in writing with the Gorge Commission the day before.

### 🏘 A half-acre, and the question underneath it

The commission took up **ZON-2026-001**, a request to rezone about half an acre at 201 SW Attwell Road from Suburban Residential to R-3, Multi-Family Residential. The owners of record are Roger DuCloo and Traci Boyle-Galastiantz.

Before testimony, the commission went through the appearance-of-fairness questions, the standard check on whether decision-makers have a financial interest, a relationship with the parties, outside communications, or an unrecorded site visit. One commissioner disclosed that he had driven around the property with his wife, without walking it and with no other parties present. No one raised a challenge. That exchange matters because this is a quasi-judicial hearing whose outcome goes to the City Council and can be appealed to Superior Court.

The arithmetic is what makes the case interesting. Suburban Residential allows one home per 15,000 square feet, so one house plus an accessory unit. R-3 allows one unit per 2,000 square feet. On this parcel that is up to ten. The staff report states the change plainly: "The proposed change would increase the maximum density of the subject parcel by 8 dwelling units."

And then the staff report does something unusual. It declines to recommend. "Staff do not have a recommendation currently," it reads. "The Planning Commission should weigh the potential change to the surrounding neighborhood resulting from a density increase." The city's future land use map already designates the parcel high density residential, which the report says "would support both the existing zoning designation and the requested change." The map permits the rezone. It does not require it.

One written comment was in the packet. Bernie Bacon of 85 SW Monda Road argued that rezoning parcel by parcel lets the shape of a neighbourhood emerge by accident rather than by design, and put the point in one line: "Zoning is permanent. Ownership is not."

The applicant's architect joined by phone partway through, after the chair had called for the applicant's presentation and been told there wasn't one. He gave his first name as Nathaniel and works for R2 Architecture+Planning, which prepared the application. He said the owners intend to retire to the property, that maximizing the site is not the goal, and described the project as middle housing for mid-term and seasonal workers. The typed application puts the plan at five to seven units within a maximum of ten. He pointed to the Hegewald Center transit stop about a six-minute walk away. "This isn't a speculative project," he said. "The owner is, they want to be here."

Five people testified. Three asked the commission to reject the rezone. Two said they were not opposed to more density here in principle, but wanted a smaller step or more information first.

A neighbour on SW Attwell Road described a street where cars already park in the roadway, and did the setback arithmetic out loud: under the current zoning his house and a new one would sit thirty feet apart, and under R-3, by his reading, that could drop to five. A later speaker corrected the figure to ten feet where R-3 abuts a lower zone, which is this parcel's situation. Neither number appears in the packet, and the setback standards were never read into the record.

An adjoining owner on the southwest corner opened with an explicitly qualified position: "I'm not totally against density over there, but it's how it's done." His objection was to spot zoning across Ryan Allen Road, which he called "kind of a natural barrier," and he flagged an unmapped drainage at the lower corner and a riparian zone that would likely have to be cleared for the site plan as drawn. "We bought the property because it was SR," he said.

A neighbour on Ryan Allen Road was the one who asked for a middle option, and she is worth quoting at length for it: "I'm not entirely opposed, but I just want a lot more information about it, and wondering if there could be a step down from R3, and a kind of a compromise there." Her concerns were the old oak and fir on a steep lot, a drop-off she put at twenty feet or more, and what removing the root system would do to the two houses proposed below it.

Mary Repar, who also sits on the city's Board of Adjustment, put on the record in person the argument the packet had already received in writing. "The promises that are made in the permit application are not enforceable," she said. "If the applicant changes their mind, or minds, in the future, they can not do anything. They're claiming that they're going to build affordable housing. That is not enforceable by this planning commission or the city council or anybody." She also drew the comparison the room was already thinking about: "Didn't we just go through this a few months ago about expanding density with the 17 camp sites that were not approved?"

The commission did deny that campground permit three to one on May 11, on the hop farm at 365 SW Foster Creek Road, with written findings that it "is not satisfied" the proposal met the four conditional use criteria. The two are different instruments, though: that was a conditional use permit under existing zoning, and this is a request to change the zoning itself. Those findings were still draft minutes until this meeting, which took them up as its first item of business and adopted them.

There is a further irony sitting in the staff report's own use table: campgrounds are conditionally allowed in Suburban Residential and **prohibited** in R-3.

### 🧭 The commission refused to decide, and asked a better question

Deliberation kept circling one thing. As one speaker put it, the comprehensive plan holds "a huge amount of potential density" in Stevenson, so the real question is not whether density should ever come, but "how about here now."

Two answers were missing. First, nobody in the room knew how much vacant, buildable R-3 land Stevenson already has, and there is a large empty R-3 parcel directly across the street from this one. Two people looked the figure up with an AI chatbot during the meeting and got answers that did not match each other, so none of those numbers appear here. Second, the R-3 immediately north of this parcel is not ordinary R-3\. It carries an overlay, described in the hearing as applying special design, landscaping and parking standards to properties near Rock Cove. Nobody could say what applying that overlay here would do.

So the commission continued the hearing and directed staff to research both: how much buildable R-3 land remains, and what the overlay would change if it came with the rezone. The motion carried.

One exchange is worth noting for what it says about how Stevenson governs. Jeff Breckel now sits on the City Council and attends the commission as a non-voting ex-officio member. Asked for his view, he declined to discuss the proposal itself, "Since I'll be saying this on city council, I don't want to talk about this particular proposal," and confined himself to how the commission has handled rezones before: that when one owner asks, the commission has often gone back and asked whether a larger block of properties should be looked at together.

### 🪑 A new chair

The seat has been open since Breckel moved to the council in March. It should have been filled in June, but that meeting was cancelled for lack of a quorum, which is also why the May minutes and the officer election both carried forward to July. On the recording a commissioner was nominated, seconded twice, and carried on a voice vote with no count taken. The vice-chair seat was not reopened, because that term runs to the end of the year.

---

## 🏛 Stevenson City Council, July 16

Mayor Jenny Taylor was away, and the city attorney addresses the presiding councilmember on the recording as interim Mayor Cox.

### 🚰 The sewer ordinance gets its escape hatch

This is the rewrite that began with the connection rollout the council adopted in August 2025, and it is the closest it has come to done.

The ordinance's drafter sent a redrafted version out the afternoon of the meeting, which is late, and he said so. The change that matters is a new standalone section, **SMC 13.08.078(G)**, a "qualifying single-family failing-OSS appeal." It applies to the situation residents have been describing all spring: your septic system fails, you have to replace it, and the ordinance says that because sewer is available you must connect instead.

Under the new section the council **shall** consider whether the cost is prohibitive to the owner, comparing the repair cost against the connection cost, along with environmental and public health effects and the sewer system's own performance and financing. The example given on the record was direct: "Look, it's going to cost me $10,000 to make this repair and replace, but it's going to cost me 15,000 to connect." Then the council can grant relief so the permitting authority can consider the repair.

Two other changes are worth knowing. The connection incentive, previously written for owners affected when the ordinance takes effect, now also reaches "existing lots to which public sewer becomes available after the effective date." Someone on the dais summed that up as "extended in perpetuity for all lot owners as the city grows," and the drafter agreed. That closes the "remaining time left" defect a councilmember caught on the record in June. And the appeal filing window widens from 30 days to 90.

Four residents, in three letters, wrote in beforehand objecting that the published draft had not carried out the council's June direction: former councilmember Pat Rice, Bob and Rosie Wertheimer, and Brian McNamara. Their letters were written against the published draft and reached City Hall one to two days before the revision went out on the afternoon of the meeting, so they read against a text that had already been superseded. A clean consolidated version is to be posted on the city website ahead of the August second reading.

None of those letters raised inspection cadence, but it is worth stating where the ordinance lands, because a three-year figure surfaced in June's discussion and has been circulating since. The ordinance requires an owner with an operating septic **on a lot where public sewer is available** to provide an inspection report at least every five years, and cites WAC Chapter 246-272A. There is no three-year requirement anywhere in the packet.

Public comment on this item was, unusually, thanks. "I think everybody's working towards a balanced approach and a fair approach," one resident said. Another, who has raised objections before and said so, put it this way: "It's never too late to do the right thing, is what I said before."

Council took no vote. On the recording the drafter invited the council to treat the night as a first reading with adoption in August. The typed agenda still describes the item as a review of changes requested during June's second reading, so the two tiers describe the same evening differently. Read our coverage of [June's second reading](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/parking-reform-comes-to-stevenson-citywide-round-up-june-26/) for how it got here.

### 🚧 Engineering standards, first reading

**Ordinance No. 2026-1234** would adopt the 2026 edition of Stevenson's Engineering Standards for Public Works Construction, six chapters covering planning and approval, land altering activities, streets, storm drainage, water and wastewater. It is the second phase of an overhaul that began with Ordinance 2025-1231, adopted last September. The public works director told the council he thought the last large update to these chapters was around 1999, though the recording is the only source for that date.

The practical value is enforcement. As it was explained to the council, the city approves plans with a note saying you must comply with all engineering standards, and then "we've had certain people come back and go, 'You didn't put it on my plans to do X, Y, and Z, so I'm not going to do it.'" Shorter, clearer standards make that letter easier to write. The draft went out to local contractors and developers, the county and other agencies, and changed based on what came back. Asked about the scale of it, the director put the standards at some two hundred pages and said the rewrite made them less restrictive in a number of places, calling it a living document.

One clause got pulled for review before August. Section 1.00(E) requires a two-year maintenance bond of at least twenty percent of construction cost for public improvements "and any private improvements that directly connect to or otherwise effect City utilities," and directs that "The contractor shall use State Prevailing Wage costs to develop estimate." A councilmember asked why a private developer would have to pay state prevailing wages. In the discussion that followed, another voice raised an affordable-housing concern. The sentence sits inside a paragraph about how the contractor is to itemize costs so the bond can be sized, staff said they had not written that clause, and nobody in the room resolved it. "Council, why don't we take a look at that?" someone said.

The motion to advance to a second reading on August 20 carried.

### 🏗 Public works

Delivered by Public Works Director Cody Rosander.

- **Cascade Avenue is finished.** A letter of completion went to the contractor, the county has been chip sealing and fog sealing, the bond company was notified and no claim is open. Early read on the budget is well under, which the director tied to the cuts made to the project.
- **Rock Creek is holding.** Per the recording, the **water** treatment plant is running about 14 hours a day in July and treating an average of 386,000 gallons a day; the director said that a year ago it treated within 6,000 gallons of the same volume while running three more hours a day. None of those figures appear in a written record. The static level is now dropping far enough to trip the wet well floats and cycle the pumps off, so Grayling is being asked to lower them.
- **Long-term water:** Grayling on surface water and, per the recording, a second firm on groundwater whose name appears in no written record, expect rough reports in October and a final report in December, then a presentation to the council.
- **In-water work at Rock Creek** is being permitted with the county and Fish and Wildlife: piling repair, logging debris removal, a large tree under the bridge, and new riprap around the sewer footings. Target is before mid-September, inside the fish window.
- **The pump station epoxy project slipped** to August after the fair, because the specialized bypass pumps were not available.
- **Stellar J Corporation is still not responding on warranty work** at the wastewater plant. The city's attorney is in contact with the company's lawyer, and someone on the dais suggested taking it to executive session next meeting.
- **Equipment:** a used bucket truck from Skamania PUD, about six years old with a new motor, plus a forklift and a roller picked up at auction for $23,337.60 together. Both are machines the city had been borrowing, which the director said delays projects during paving season.
- The new city entry signage was finished by city crews with the high school, and a downtown shop did the powder coating.

### 💵 Money

The voucher run for June 19 through July 16 carries claims of **$364,045.34**. The city's own treasurer's report for June puts adjusted ending balances at $1,893,653.84 in the General Fund, $2,271,168.58 in General Fire, $1,743,423.14 in Water and Sewer, and $1,655,152.37 in Tourism Promotion and Development, with all funds at $8,285,843.95\. June revenue of $504,308.78 ran ahead of expenditures of $363,280.65.

The finance report described the position as strong, with investment earnings beating expectations after a department change at the bank managing them, and one more investment maturing in August expected to beat what the recording renders only as "the 1.7." The packet carries no rate, so we cannot say what that refers to. There were no questions from the council, which drew the line of the night: "16 years in here, that's a first."

Three items in the legal bill are worth flagging. The June invoice itemizes "Appeal of CUP by River Church," $735.00, a line that has appeared on the city's attorney invoices since at least August 2024; an employment dispute at $70.00; and a matter captioned "City of Stevenson vs Swofford Excavating LLC," which we have not found on an earlier invoice. Swofford is the contractor that won the SW Cascade utility bid in 2025\. The register does not say who is suing whom, or over what, and we are characterizing none of them.

The recruiter's bill also tells its own story: the third and final installment of the city administrator search fee, $5,500 plus $1,774.06 in expenses. The search restarted after the selected finalist withdrew, and no hire was announced this month.

### 🗣 The playground dispute comes back to council

Both neighbours from the River Christian Church matter spoke. The dispute goes back to a pre-application meeting in February 2024 and a conditional use permit, CUP2024-01, that the Planning Commission turned down on May 13, 2024.

Greg Stafford, of 291 NW Roosevelt Street, asked the council to help resolve the location of the church's play area. His argument is that it should sit next to the gymnasium, close to bathrooms and on level ground, rather than on a steep slope at the edge of his property. "See, when people go ahead and do things and violate CUPs, sometimes it's not good for the neighborhood," he said.

Debra Taylor, at the same address and recorded on the tape as Debbie, described the site as an old parking lot that gets sprayed for weeds, in full sun, with no toilet nearby and a drop-off into blackberries. She said a railroad tie caught fire one night and she put it out with buckets of water. Her sharper point was procedural: "I was president at all the meetings when the planning committee went on with the votes, and it was a no, and all the neighborhood was a no. And they went along with their project anyway."

### 🚦 Panhandling on Highway 14, raised again

A speaker on the dais returned to a request they said they had made at May's meeting, for an ordinance restricting panhandling along Highway 14, framing it as traffic safety rather than public order: cars stopping, pulling out, turning across traffic. "And the cops can't do anything about it ... because we don't have an ordinance."

The city attorney distinguished restricting where active solicitation for money can happen from criminalizing sleeping in public, cited the Grants Pass case, and said "let me look into it." No motion, no direction, no date. A related thread ran alongside about whether the city has any door-to-door solicitation rule beyond an old peddler's license.

### 📌 Also

- **Consent agenda approved,** including the June 18 minutes and the city's response to a state Liquor and Cannabis Board notice that Walking Man Brewing, LLC, at 240 SW 1st Street, has applied for a "Direct Shipment Receiver, In WA Only" endorsement.
- **Parking reform is still not drafted, and the record now says why.** A councilmember said the substance is settled and only the writing is missing: "We know exactly what we want to happen, I think. I think we have broad alignment on what we want to happen. We just need somebody to put the words in there," and asked whether the newly engaged administrative staffer could take it on. The answer was to raise it with the mayor. Another speaker said issues raised at council meetings "need to be tracked and followed up with," naming parking and ADUs.
- Planning commissioners asked again about the vacation rental ordinance. Councilmember Jeff Breckel and a second speaker the recording does not identify agreed to meet on it.
- **Forest Road 25 came up and went unanswered.** A councilmember asked whether the Forest Service has reopened the route north over the pass, closed since a washout last year, calling the loop economically important. The answer was a belief that it is open, possibly one lane, with an undertaking to verify and report back.
- **A retirement signal.** Presenting the Sheriff's Office report, the presenter said of the job: "My time is short, but I think it's time for somebody younger and ready to take over the reins."
- The Sheriff's Office reported search and rescue calls down, with none at all in one recent month, credited partly to location technology reaching dispatch faster.

---

## ⚠️ Editor's Notebook: Broader Context

**A rezone is not a building permit, and the commission kept saying so.** Several times the hearing had to be steered away from the applicant's site plan. As one speaker put it, "It's a personal peeve of mine when people come in and say, 'I'm going to build affordable housing, you should approve this because of that.' It has absolutely nothing to do with the actual change of the zoning." The commission's own framing was that it must weigh the most intensive use the new zone would allow, not what this owner says they intend.

That principle cuts in both directions, and the commission applied it that way. It gives the applicant's affordable-housing framing no weight, because nothing in a rezone binds what eventually gets built. It equally means the hearing was not the place to settle Stevenson's larger housing questions, and the commission was careful about which objections it carried forward. It continued for the two that bear on this parcel, the buildable R-3 supply and the effect of the overlay, and left the rest, including whether the city should rezone by district rather than by parcel, to a conversation it has now said it wants to have with the council.

**Washington has a site-specific rezone law, and nobody named it.** The planner presenting the staff report told the commission the state has such a law and that "you have to be careful with that" when carving one parcel out of a surrounding zone, and described it as a tool that lets a city act between comprehensive plan updates. A commissioner asked the city attorney to set out what the law actually requires; he said frankly that the file had reached him an hour earlier and he would need more time. A resident asked for the statute to be named on the record, and it was not. That is a fair request and a gap worth closing before this returns.

**This rezone triggers SEPA.** The staff report says the proposal is subject to State Environmental Policy Act review, which must be complete before the City Council holds its own open-record hearing. The determination is published and open to reconsideration after a 14-day comment period. It looks at the land use change, not the eventual building. Whatever the commission recommends, this parcel is not close to done.

**The capacity question is the real story.** A city that cannot say how much buildable land its existing multi-family zoning already contains cannot easily judge how much more it needs. That number does not exist in any document either meeting produced, and the commission has now formally asked for it. Commissioners tied it directly to the ADU allowance, which the city adopted years ago in place of a broader rezone it could not get community support for.

A second capacity question was raised in the same discussion and left just as open. A commenter said the city's real ceiling is water, that the state allows Stevenson a fixed number of residential connections under its water rights, and asked whether build-out plans assume acquiring more. She was working from figures she remembered from the comprehensive plan process, and no one in the room could check them, so we are not printing them. The question itself stands unanswered.

## 🛠 Jargon Buster

- **SR and R-3:** Suburban Residential allows one home per 15,000 square feet plus an accessory unit. R-3, Multi-Family Residential, allows one unit per 2,000 square feet.
- **Spot zoning:** rezoning a single parcel in a way that is incompatible with the zoning around it, mainly to benefit that owner. Legally risky. As the planner put it, it turns on "whether or not it's a discriminatory private benefit."
- **Overlay:** an extra layer of rules sitting on top of a base zone. The R-3 north of this parcel carries one tied to its proximity to Rock Cove, adding design, landscaping and parking standards.
- **OSS:** on-site septic system.
- **SDC:** system development charge, the one-time fee to connect to city sewer.
- **Ex-officio:** an appointed member who attends and advises. Under the commission's bylaws, as the city attorney described them in May, an ex-officio member may vote only if a vote is needed to make a quorum.

## 📅 How to Join & Learn More

- **Stevenson City Council:** next regular meeting **Thursday, August 20, 6:00 PM**, City Hall and remote. Second readings expected on both the sewer ordinance and the engineering standards.
- **Stevenson Planning Commission:** next meeting **Monday, August 10, 6:00 PM**. The continued ZON-2026-001 hearing returns once staff report back.
- Agendas, packets and video: [ci.stevenson.wa.us/meetings](https://ci.stevenson.wa.us/meetings?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) and vimeo.com/cityofstevenson
- Written comment for a council packet must reach City Hall by noon on the day of the meeting.

*Prior Stevenson coverage:* [*June 2026*](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/parking-reform-comes-to-stevenson-citywide-round-up-june-26/) *·* [*May 2026*](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/demanding-answers-community-responds-to-dv-tragedy-stevenson-may-26/) *·* [*April 2026*](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/a-brewing-sewer-rebellion-stevenson-april-26-round-up/)

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### ⛵ New on the site: a wind cam at the green buoy

We put a camera on the river. It watches the Columbia at the Underwood green buoy and posts a fresh picture about every five minutes, day and night, so you can check the water before you drive down. The same camera catches the trains, and the page keeps a small gallery of the best paint that rolled past this week. There's a serious job under the fun: every train is recorded and kept for a trailing week, and if one is ever suspected to be involved in a fire, we can provide video on request. Have a look: [https://skamaniadispatch.com/gorge-wind-cam-underwood](https://skamaniadispatch.com/gorge-wind-cam-underwood-green-buoy-river-conditions-updated-every-5-minutes/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)