Corrupt WA politicians are stealing my private property. I just applied for a building permit to build a home on our cattle ranch here in Grant County, and they hit me with a bureaucratic scam. Because a state computer map labeled my heavily grazed cattle pasture a wildlife corridor, they are freezing my permit. This same map labels nearly half the state as having some version of these rules! To get it back, I have to pay up to $10,000 dollars to a private biologist for a permission slip. Then comes the extortion: they are demanding I either legally surrender double my land acreage I am using to build my house, driveway, ground mounted solar (which they also require me to do) to a permanent conservation easement forever, or write a massive check to buy credits in a corporate mitigation bank. This is an unconstitutional government land grab disguised as environmentalism. This policy, and all the others like “cultural resources surveys”, are designed to strip us of our land and money. If they can extort a family like mine, they can do it to you next. Please share this everywhere and help me expose this absolute nightmare!
I spoke with another Grant County business owner two days ago who is fleeing Washington state due to these corrupt laws. He was a successful land developer with a big company in Moses Lake and now he is auctioning all of his heavy equipment and moving to Idaho. All of the jobs he had created where there were none before will disappear again and the millions of dollars he invested in Washington state will leave.
All of these thieving politicians and bureaucrats are driving the price of housing through the roof. Building anything in Washington state requires tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra fees and compliance costs. We will only have affordable housing when we make it affordable to build again.
From the Grant County Environmental Planner: “Habitat Mitigation Requirement – Native Growth Deed Restriction (NGDR):
A minimum 2:1 mitigation is required to account for the loss of habitat in the developed area.(GCC 24.08.350).
For example, if 3 acres of this property is developed, then 6 acres need to be set aside protected in perpetuity through a Native Growth Deed Restriction (NGDR) that is recorded with the Grant County Auditor’s Office.”