LANGLEY: City to study water resiliency with $100k grant (SWR)

Kira Erickson reports for the South Whidbey Record from a special meeting of the Langley City Council held on Mon., Oct. 30, 2023.

The city of Langley has been awarded a $100,000 grant to upgrade its comprehensive plan with the creation of a climate element, which will include a water resiliency study.

Earlier this year, Gov. Jay Inslee signed a new house bill that added climate planning as a new goal of the Growth Management Act, which as a result requires municipal comprehensive plans to have a climate element with a resilience sub-element.

During a special city council meeting this week, Meredith Penny, the city’s director of community planning, explained that the state does not allow the money to be used for any physical projects, infrastructure or site-specific planning.

Penny offered a list of potential implementation actions covered by the grant that staff came up with for the council’s consideration, including the creation of a zero waste ordinance, the development of an electric vehicle usage plan, and the undertaking of a city tree inventory and canopy coverage assessment, among many other climate-related options.

However, the council appeared most willing to tackle a water resiliency plan and aquifer study.

They Said It

Councilmember Rhonda Salerno said she saw this option as offering the city the most bang for its buck.

“We really could use money in order to hire professional consultants that are water experts to give us a sense of what’s happening with our water, what kind of recharge rate, what we might plan in the future to actually measure the recharge because we have some big climate change,” she said.

Councilmember Thomas Gill voiced support for the water resiliency plan and aquifer study as well.

On the Ballot in November 2023