This site promotes forest restoration in Southworth, WA and protests the 2019 forest destruction at 11090 SE Southworth Dr., Port Orchard, WA, in violation of Kitsap County code. Read background information, learn about the related legal case, send Kitsap County your opinion of the deforestation, and donate to support nearby restoration and legal efforts.

Restoration work at the Southworth Forest shifted in 2025 to emphasize the removal of noxious English holly and downed red alder, the latter posing a fire danger given the quantity of 60-year-old trees of that species that thrived since the area's last logging. Massive quantities of fallen trees over the past five years have caused sufficient mass on the forest floor to constitute a fire danger and thus needs removed in all but the trunks. Some were brought down by bomb cyclones while others were likely encouraged by exposure to the neighboring deforestation that continues to affect the area.

Between the heavy, flood-producing rainstorms late in 2025 and the increase in bomb cyclone activity, more trees have fallen in the year than any other since the restoration project started in 2016. Many of these were standing dead trees commonly referred to as snags. It's our intent to leave as many of these snags as possible for wildlife. This forest has a variety of dead alders, partially dead big leaf maples also at the end of their lifespan, and a handful of mature grand fir that have been infested, especially alongside the wetlands. Most of the large snags remaining in the forest came down throughout the year, however, sometimes crushing younger trees previously planted to replace them.

The English holly is a pervasive problem that will likely require another ten years to fully remove from the forest. While herbicides have been applied to some of the most massive holly trees after their removal above ground, some persist from the extended roots, which is common for the species. Closer to the wetlands, mechanical removal includes perpetual shaving of new growth when a holly is cut at the trunk. Gently massaging out the root systems of younger holly clumps is pivotal during the rainy season, when the moist soils make such work possible. Large piles of the cuttings have been hauled from the acreage to adjacent meadows for processing.

Meanwhile, tree planting continues at the project, with the 76 new trees from the prior year joined by 58 so far in the 2025-2026 season. Most of these plantings are concentrated on the southern boundaries, including the area immediately adjacent to the neighboring deforestation. Closer to the wetlands, another 20 coast redwoods have been installed and are thriving, growing throughout the winter season and recovering well if they experience any initial dieback. The greatest loss amongst the new trees continues to happen with western hemlock while the most reliable bare-root or nursery stock remains the Sitka spruce, of which not a single specimen has been lost since their introduction into the forest in 2019.

Read more about 2025 progress at the forest.

The Hearing Examiner for Kitsap County, Phil Olbrechts, reached a decision on December 5, 2025 on the community appeal of the County permit to legalize the harmful 2019 deforestation at 11090 SE Southworth Dr. in Port Orchard. He largely sided with the County, ignoring its neglectful review, praising reviewers despite erroneous and contradictory testimony, and failing to recognize or rule upon all issues and requests for relief raised by the appellants. You can view all filings for the appeal and links to the hearing sessions.

With minor revisions to the environmental (SEPA) determination, the illegal 2019 deforestation can now be legalized with alterations by developers Meghan and Clint Edwards. Because the Examiner did determine that the appellants proved additional adverse impacts of the clear-cut from 2019 to 2025, these impacts must be mitigated. Neighbors are now faced with years of additional complaints to the County and possible litigation to ensure that the County enforces meaningfully effective protections.

The appellants, represented pro se by direct neighbor Christian Clemmensen, spent years of time and significant money assembling community concerns and impact evidence for this appeal in anticipation that County would not properly address the deforestation. These materials were methodically argued in briefs and the hearing by the appellants, exposing a wide variety of negligence and error by Department of Community Development staff. The Examiner found these missteps by the County to be irrelevant, excusing their behavior and thus encouraging it to continue and harm other communities.

While the Examiner's decision is an immense disappointment to the members of the Southworth community advocating for the disappearing forest canopy of the area and for the law to be followed, there is much to be learned by other environmentally-minded community groups fighting similar permit battles with Kitsap County. The articles on this website can serve as a guide, both constructively and cautionary, about how residents can fight violators such as the Edwards, the County's negligence, and a Hearing Examiner with seemingly little interest in holding them accountable.

Read more about the key takeaways from the decision.

The community appeal of the Kitsap County permit to legalize the troubling 2019 deforestation at 11090 SE Southworth Dr. in Port Orchard has passed through the hearing phase. It now awaits a decision from the County's Hearing Examiner, Phil Olbrechts, who has admitted that this forest violation and the County's handling of it are extremely unique.

As required by law, the community filed appeals of both the County's environmental (SEPA) decision and administrative decision in 2024. The appeals were delayed while neighbors attempted unsuccessfully to negotiate with developers Meghan and Clint Edwards. The hearing finally occurred in August 2025, and the Examiner requested an additional briefing in November. No other Kitsap County appeal hearings have occurred in the second half of 2025.

While the community awaits the Examiner's decision, the appellants are optimistic about the outcome of the appeal, as the County and developers did not attempt any meaningful defense of the decision and failed to refute the countless exhibits of evidence showing erroneous County handling of the permit and six years of significant environmental impacts already evident from the 2019 violation. The developers instead focused their defense as a personal attack on the credibility of the lead appellant, a neighbor most affected by the deforestation.

Several concerned community organizations in Kitsap County have reached out to the Southworth Forest group about this appeal process. The following timeline and filings can provide an overview of how a vigorous appeal of a neglectful County permit review can take shape. Note that the appellants in this case represented themselves during the appeal hearing and wrote their own briefs based upon legal precedent and past successful filings of a similar nature.

Read more about the filings and hearing for this appeal.

The main goal of gardening for wildlife is to create habitat for local species, providing food, water, shelter, and nesting sites. Specifically for pollinators, gardeners try to plant native plants so a succession of blooms are available from early spring to late fall. The blooms then frequently become seeds, berries, or nuts that feed birds and other wildlife. Native plants that host caterpillars not only provide us with beautiful butterflies and pollinator moths, but also food for nesting birds. While a gardener rewilding a patch of suburban lawn might have to invest in seeds and plants, starting virtually from scratch, the forest restorationist gets to work with nature.

There is a corresponding goal in forest restoration to provide habitat. This can sometimes be accomplished simply by removing the noxious weeds and watching what natives return to the understory. Many of the native plants still exist in the natural soil seed bank. Others are carried in by birds or other wildlife (along with invasive seeds, too, unfortunately). As part of the Southworth Forest restoration, we have removed weeds and planted baby trees. We have yet to supplement with undergrowth plants from our local native nurseries and conservation districts, though we plan to add plant diversity that way when the trees are larger. Yet every season, we find and identify more native plants thriving in the Southworth Forest. We continue to remove invasives and discover new-to-us natives.

Late summer in the Pacific Northwest sometimes looks like a dying season in our forests. The grass turns brown, the trees may stop noticeably growing or even shed leaves or needles during dry spells, sword ferns seem to whither and brown as they release their spores. The osoberries, a winter blooming shrub, have already fed their small plum-like fruit to the wildlife and dropped their leaves, as have the bitter cherries. The red elderberry holds onto its leaves but is done producing fruit. Salmonberries and thimbleberries bloomed in spring and their berries too have been eaten.

This July, we discovered a lovely and fairly extensive patch of Douglas Spirea along the wetlands in the Southworth Forest. It's likely been there for years, but it's thriving since the removal of some nearby invasive Himalayan blackberries and only viewable during the dry season. Douglas Spirea flowers are important for native bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds; the seeds are eaten by birds, and it is a host plant for butterflies and moths.

Read more about the late summer discoveries in the forest.

Public records requests to Kitsap County have revealed that Southworth clear-cutters and code violators Meghan and Clint Edwards submitted a complaint to the County in April 2025 claiming that neighbors' protests against their forest habitat destruction are "frivolous," "dishonest," "inaccurate," and have "met the standard for civil prosecution related to slander and defamation." They demanded that the County remove protest signage regarding their nearby development.

Neighbors are contesting Edwards' illegal 2019 deforestation at 11090 SE Southworth Dr. in Port Orchard, which has received preliminary after-the-fact permit approval from Kitsap County despite countless errors in the County's review, erroneous submissions from Edwards, and a failure to address environmental impacts already caused by the violation. That process is now in the Hearing Examiner phase, for which the community has assembled more than 340 exhibits demonstrating Edwards' impacts and factual inconsistencies.

The Edwards complaint, which is riddled with grammar and spelling errors, related to a sign placed at the front of a neighboring parcel that protests ten specific impacts caused by their development, all of which supported extensively by the evidence supplied in the appeal of their corrective permit. That temporary sign, affixed to garden stakes, extends into a portion of an easement that they have explicitly disavowed developing in the future. Its audience is the County reviewing staff and the public, aiming to deter future violations in regards to negligent or intentionally unlawful deforestation.

It's not unusual for developers to fight community concerns in defense of their permits, but Meghan and Clint Edwards have shown extraordinarily selfish entitlement in their dealings with the County and neighbors. They have also demonstrated alarming incompetence in their understanding of how permits and the law function, and the appeal of their permit reveals how they have repeatedly violated Title 21 of Kitsap County Code (KCC 21.04.030) in their refusal to understand their responsibilities by County law.

Read more about the clear-cutting developers' complaints about protesting neighbors.

Neighbors of the illegal 2019 Southworth deforestation at 11090 SE Southworth Dr. in Port Orchard have revised their appeal statement to the Kitsap County Hearing Examiner. The appeal process holds both the clear-cutters and the County accountable in the after-the-fact permit, and the updated appeal responds to the County's further reduction of requirements levied against violators Meghan and Clint Edwards in the most recent permit decision.

The 66-page appeal statement dated April 30, 2025 is an initial letter detailing by rule all the issues of contention that neighbors have with the deforestation permit. Since this permit has been badly bungled by the County, this letter is the third to exist in this appeal, following ones for the environmental (SEPA) decision and previous administrative decision in 2024. The revised letter consolidates both prior responses and focuses on the action's environmental impacts, conflicting plans, and many violations of Kitsap County Code by both the County reviewers and Edwards.

From here, the Hearing Examiner process begins, leading to a hearing scheduled in August to determine the fate of the permit. The letter indicates that the appellants will introduce hundreds of exhibits in support of their argument. That process informally follows the rules of legal proceedings, and if the Hearing Examiner, who is compensated by the County, sides with the violators and County, the neighbors can appeal to Superior Court. The violators do not have the right to appeal the Examiner decision in this case.

The appeal requests corrected plans from Edwards and more clearly defined conditions that should be recorded against the violated parcel to permanently protect the community. It also asks the Hearing Examiner to instruct the County and Edwards to follow proper procedures for permit handling. It offers an intriguing variety of reasonable solutions for the environmental (SEPA) mitigations as well, including graphics of buffer, road, and fence alignment that could help alleviate the impacts of the deforestation.

Read more about the revised appeal of the Southworth deforestation permit.

At the Southworth Forest near the ferry terminal in Port Orchard, the goal for each planting season is to install at least 75 new trees of two to three feet in height in areas where noxious and invasive species had previously taken over. Each tree is then carefully protected from deer damage. From October 2024 to March 2025, a total of 76 trees was planted and even more nearby area was prepared for restoration the next season. Routine trail maintenance is included in this work.

Another grove of 19 coast redwood trees was added just outside of the western wetland basin in the forest, alongside the original 20 coast redwoods introduced to the area the year before. Imported from a supplier in Oregon, these trees have proven to have a very high survival rate when planted at the two to three-foot size with their roots in plugs when shipped. Even when their tops die back in the first summer season while establishing, they vigorously return from either their base or partway up their original stem. They will need manually watered through the first several summers in the ground.

The southeastern side of the forest continues to suffer from the impacts of the neighboring deforestation at 11090 SE Southworth Dr., which remains in the code compliance process for its violation. Fortunately, clear-cutters Meghan and Clint Edwards abandoned their plan to remove up to 70 trees from a disputed easement along that boundary, so an additional 50 trees were planted along and within that area to help combat the long-term effects of the clear-cut. The forest at that edge has suffered from an influx of noxious weeds, deer damage, tree dieback, and windsnap of taller trees due to fierce winds now coming unhindered from the cleared parcel.

After the southeastern section was cleaned of invasive species and potential fire hazards in the understory, the trees planted there included the usual mix of Douglas fir, giant sequoia, and Sitka spruce in the sunnier portions while Western hemlock, Western red cedar, and grand fir were placed in the shadier ones. These were the first sequoia added to the forest in several years. The soil in this area is highly inconsistent, as some of it was pushed into the forest by the clear-cutters as part of their 2019 timber trespass. Some amendments were needed to address the fact that clay was pushed over the prior topsoil layer.

Read more about the 2024-2025 planting season at the forest.

The after-the-fact permit to address the illegal 2019 deforestation of 11090 SE Southworth Dr. in Port Orchard has been paused since Kitsap County's decision about the mitigation requirements of violators Meghan and Clint Edwards in October 2024. Neighbors appealed that County decision, and permit staff has attempted to work with both parties to resolve the environmental impacts upon neighbors and clarify requirements.

During this time, negotiations between Edwards and the appellants were cited as a reason for pausing the appeal process. Hopes for a resolution appear to have suddenly ended on January 8, 2025, when Edwards announced to the County that they had no intent to continue negotiating with the appellants. The appellants responded that they were "blindsided" by this news and had never received any formal counteroffer from Edwards during the negotiation.

Records recently provided by the County also reveal that Clint Edwards, a mortgage lender in Port Orchard who was also cited in recent years for an unpermitted ADU on this same property, has continued attempts to evade responsibility for his code-violating actions. He especially protests that requirements such as restored screening buffers might be documented against his property in a way that limits future uses, reducing its resale value: "We just don't want these buffers in a covenant restricting our property land use for future owners of our property which may decrease our saleability some day in the distant future."

This self-entitlement, which Edwards and his wife have expressed throughout the permit process, may explain the apparent failure of the negotiations. They still insist that their deforestation of acres, including old growth within a wetlands buffer, has no lasting impact on the neighboring area. In fact, they argue that since the violation occurred so long ago, they should not be made responsible for mitigating impacts already addressed by neighbors since:

Read more about the violators' self-serving complaints and dishonest statements.

The last three months of 2024 have brought extensive wind damage to the trees of the Southworth Forest. A series of unusually powerful storms, including "bomb cyclones," struck the Puget Sound region with near hurricane-force winds, causing windsnap and windthrow at high rates even though the deciduous trees are defoliated during this time of the year.

Trees that suffer windthrow will pull up their root system when they fall over whole. Windsnap, on the other hand, occurs when trees break off partway up their trunk. While trees, and particularly Western Red Cedars in the Pacific Northwest, will continue growing upwards into new tops from several branches after falling completely on their side from windthrow, windsnap is often fatal, with the exception of Western Hemlocks.

In the Southworth Forest, the native deciduous trees at maturity are suffering the most. At about 60 to 70 years of age, the area's big leaf maples have reached their maximum height. Although they can live for a few hundred years, the ones growing in clumps will often experience rot down their centers and eventually break in the wind partway up their trunks. The red alders often interspersed with them experience windsnap at about the same age.

Several mature big leaf maples and red alders have been snapped in late 2024, but the damage extends to the conifers as well. The wind coming from the southeast into the forest from the neighboring deforestation at 11090 SE Southworth Dr. has been so fierce that Doug fir trees near the cleared area have been lost to windsnap and grand fir branches on younger trees have been whipped so hard westward by the winds that they have broken mid-branch.

Read more about these worsening wind impacts in the forest.

The understaffed and error-prone Kitsap County Department of Community Development (DCD) has issued its administrative decision on the after-the-fact permit for the illegal 2019 forest destruction at 11090 SE Southworth Dr. in Port Orchard. The decision is based upon an ineffective and incomplete review by a Kitsap DCD staff that has proven itself unable to obtain and consider clarifying project information from the violators.

The community already appealed Kitsap's environmental determination for this project in regards to the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) in April, 2024. Per the requirements of Kitsap's code, the final administrative decision must be appealed as well for the SEPA appeal to survive. The same community members filed the second appeal on October 10, 2024, detailing the DCD's continued mishandling of the permit and refusal to understand the violators' actual intentions with the permit.

The DCD's handling of this permit violates countless sections of Title 21 of Kitsap County Code ("Land Use and Development Procedure"), the law that governs how permits are handled by the department. The SEPA appeal previously revealed violations of Title 21 by environmental reviewers Scott Diener and Steve Heacock. The final administrative decision exposes additional violations of Title 21 by project lead and stormwater supervisor Cecilia Olsen, along with careless review mistakes that defy Title 12 (Stormwater Drainage).

Complicating this situation is the news revealed in the appeal that the violators are proposing significant changes to their intended land use only after the permit's approval. The DCD had been attempting since late 2023 to receive revised site plans from the violators, but to no avail. Now that the permit approval and appeal has occurred, the appellants are forced to ask for a delay (legally termed a "stay") in the appeal process so that the violators' scaled back intentions for their parcel can be considered by the DCD instead.

Read more about the appeal of this administrative decision.

Residents of the Pacific Northwest's temperate rainforest areas have felt the effects of hotter summers and particularly the occasional "heat dome" that brings periods of temperatures over 100 degrees. This consequence of climate change has stressed the native mature forest stands, particular conifers like the Western Red Cedar and Western Hemlock, two stalwarts of the region.

Younger trees of ten feet in height can expend 25 gallons of water per day, and mature ones can process over 100 gallons. It's tough to underestimate just how much water can be stored in the mostly sandy loams of this region and extracted by large trees. But even these reserves can be insufficient for mature trees that established themselves decades ago, prior to these hotter conditions.

At the Southworth Forest restoration project in Port Orchard, the summers of 2020 to 2022 exposed significant dieback of needles and whole branches on mature conifers starting as early as July. It's normal for such dieback to occur in the fall, but the cedars, hemlocks, and Grand firs were losing two to four years of needles in the matter of one summer season. This process suggests that the trees are so stressed that photosynthesis has shut down.

The spread of the tree stress has been most concentrated in the Southworth Forest areas exposed to the illegal 2019 forest destruction at the neighboring 11090 SE Southworth Dr. Mature trees in the southeast quadrant of the forest especially feel the impacts of increased heat and wind from the environmental violation. Trees in the path of these warmer winds across multiple acres have been impacted, causing significant summer dieback, particularly on the cedars. During the worst years, nearly an entire mature cedar can turn orange.

Read more about watering mature conifers in summer.

Through a public record request, the Southworth Forest community group learned that former Kitsap County Department of Community Development (DCD) Director Jeff Rimack drafted an email to County Commissioner Charlotte Garrido in early 2024 regarding a controversial 2019 deforestation violation and corrective permit in Southworth. That email from Rimack grossly mischaracterizes the factual issues related to the permit, diminishes his department's own failures in processing it, and badly misstates the community's concerns.

Leadership at the DCD either does not understand the basic issues contested in this permit or is attempting to create an alternate narrative. Missing from that email to the Commissioner is the full extent of the DCD's admitted mishandling of the permit, including "lost" community comments, ignored evidence of ongoing environmental impacts, inconsistent and erroneous statements to the community, a withdrawal of approval due to DCD carelessness, and decision-making without obtaining requested, basic information from applicants Meghan and Clint Edwards for review.

The information presented by Rimack about the Edwards deforestation permit is woefully inaccurate. It makes the community sound uninformed, petty, and unreasonable, painting a picture of what the DCD may want seen by the Commissioner rather than the truth. Rimack seems to suggest that there is no factual basis to these SouthworthForest.org articles, and yet the permit appeal filed to the Hearing Examiner assembles hundreds of exhibits of SEPA-oriented facts and will expose repeated disconnects with Kitsap County Code by DCD staff. Despite Rimack's misrepresentations, the proposed solutions from the community in that appeal are reasonable and supported by fact and law.

For instance, Rimack states up front in the email that the community pushback relates solely to the construction of a home and overburdening of a neighbor's easement. In reality, the community is primarily concerned with the County's poor handling of the illegal deforestation of the parcel and related environmental impacts. Additionally, Rimack falsely indicates that neighbors "do not want the Edwards to have livestock" in new agricultural operations when those concerns instead involve animal waste management, slaughter, and the lack of any indication on animal types and quantities. The community seeks buffering with conifer trees and for animals to be kept inside those buffers, which is supported by law.

Read more about Kitsap County's misrepresentation of community concerns.

As part of the Southworth Forest restoration project near the ferry terminal in Southworth, Washington, the dying canopy of big leaf maples and alders is yielding openings that are being filled by noxious, invasive species like Scotch broom and Himalayan blackberry. In addition to clearing these troublesome species, the restoration has included the reintroduction of a variety of conifers to the forest to establish a healthy blend of trees for tomorrow's canopy.

Survival rates amongst the conifer trees planted in the forest is highly variable despite each tree receiving the same compost and mulch treatments, deer protections, and periodic watering throughout the Pacific Northwest's recent dry and hot summers during their first three years in the ground. Trees in areas with more exposed, thinner top soils are receiving a 4-3-4 powder mix of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium under the surface once or twice per year as well.

Of all the species of conifers planted throughout the Southworth Forest, the most reliable has been the Sitka spruce, which thus far has a survival rate greater than that of any other species, including the slower but resilient giant sequoias. The Sitka spruce are a distinguished native of the coastal Cascadia region, especially prevalent in the lower elevations of Western Washington and British Columbia. While they prefer full sun and moist soils, the Sitka spruce in this project have thrived even when placed in partial to fuller shade and in drier soils.

One notable aspect of the Sitka spruce has been its tolerance for bareroot transplanting. When purchasing large quantities of tree stock, it's not unusual to receive bareroot trees. Some species, like the Western Red Cedar, have a relatively poor survival rate when planted from bare root stock into larger pots or directly into the ground. The Sitka spruce, though, while often losing some of its trunk needles and looking relatively unhealthy the first year after bareroot transplanting, stands a much better chance of survival.

Read more about the survival of Sitka spruce in the forest.

As part of its review of the illegal 2019 forest destruction at 11090 SE Southworth Dr. in Port Orchard, Kitsap County permit reviewers are tasked with deciding the impacts and appropriate remedies to be made by the violators. This requirement is partly guided by the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). The County had already erroneously issued one faulty SEPA decision for this deforestation's corrective permit in 2023 before withdrawing it because it failed to follow proper notification processes.

On March 29, 2024, Kitsap County issued another SEPA decision after attempting but not succeeding in learning more information about the violators' intentions. This Determination of Non-Significance (DNS) once again diminishes the importance of the forest destruction, suggesting that no significant environmental impacts have resulted (or will result) from this climate-changing action. We know from studying the surrounding environment, including deterioration within the neighboring Southworth Forest, that this is not the case. An appeal has been filed.

As part of this SEPA decision, Kitsap County is requiring violators Meghan and Clint Edwards to replant only minimal areas near wetlands and their intended agricultural operations while also permitting them to remove 100 additional trees or more from forest buffers that survived the 2019 clear-cut. The proposal is by no means carbon neutral, and the County has neglected to apply its own Land Use Policies or lessons from its Climate Change Resiliency Assessment to protect the area from the significant impacts of the deforestation.

"We have endless photos and videos of the negative effects of Edwards' actions on our forestlands over five years," said Christian Clemmensen, who leads the neighboring Southworth Forest restoration project and is one of the appellants of the permit decision. "We have sent evidence of these negative impacts of the Edwards deforestation to the County since 2022, but they have declined to address it or truly engage with us. By appealing their SEPA determination, we aim for the County to find meaningful solutions to protect neighbors and our habitats."

Read more about the appeal of this Kitsap SEPA decision.

Directors at Kitsap County's Department of Community Development (DCD) exercise wide discretion to waive fees for code violators, re-open decades-old permits for revised purposes, change conditions on permits after their closure, and disregard penalties for those who break the law in building or land use cases. Recent interactions with the DCD leadership and permit staff have revealed how the agency has bent over backwards to accommodate and therefore encourage code violations.

Statements from DCD directors Jeff Rimack and David Kinley in 2024 expose a focus on departmental efficiency over deterrence of violations, reducing the costs for both the County and code violators but also indirectly encouraging violations and potential safety hazards. As Kinley remarked, "Code enforcement is not for punishing or penalizing people, it is to gain code compliance." This policy is why Kitsap residents and businesses are comfortable violating their neighbors, the community, and County code without fear of significant penalty.

Rimack and Kinley were responding to the case of 11090 SE Southworth Dr. in Port Orchard, on which owners Meghan and Clint Edwards had two active code compliance cases: an illegal deforestation impacting the environment and an unpermitted garage and accessory dwelling unit (ADU). The DCD has waived thousands of dollars in fees over four years for the corrective deforestation permit, including all extension fees for Edwards' slow responses. For its own convenience, the County also minimized the fees required for the ADU by re-purposing a disapproved permit closed in 2012 despite Edwards knowing for years that the ADU was illegal but not correcting it.

"I set policy related to reactivations and extensions of permits and am able to approve exceptions as well," Kinley explained after unilaterally changing the conditions of the ADU structure's 2003 permit for unheated storage space to allow a guest house where one was not originally permitted. "It was far more expeditious to do the review and inspection of the modifications under the initial permit rather than requiring another permit. Requiring an additional permit would have added workload and expense to the department while not changing the outcome."

Read more about Kitsap County's unequal permit handling.

As climate change increasingly threatens Western Washington trees with drought and disease, coast redwoods, the famed icons of magnificence from the Northern Californian coastline, are a promising replacement for species in decline, like Western red cedar and Western hemlock. They have already been migrating north over the last century, and their ability to remove immense amounts of carbon from the atmosphere may prove vital for Washington's forests.

Coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens, which keenly translates to "always living") are incredibly hearty and resist rot, fire, and insects. They are actually challenging to kill, sprouting up from the base for decades even after its parent stump is cut. These trees have been planted in the Pacific Northwest for over a hundred years, including prominent placement in Seattle itself. They have been the subject of industrial tree planting in the region as well.

Evidence so far shows that coast redwoods have been complimentary neighbors to more native species like Douglas fir and the cedars, providing a similar habitat for animal species and resisting the increasingly warm summers caused by climate change. As almost 90% of these redwoods have been eliminated by drought, fire, and cutting further south, their migration north represents a fantastic opportunity to continue allowing these trees to thrive.

The Southworth Forest near the ferry terminal in Port Orchard, Washington has decided to dedicate some of its acreage to the planting of coast redwoods where English holly, dying alders, and invasive blackberries had existed over a sword fern base for the last two decades. The first fifteen redwoods are being planted in the northwest quadrant of the forest, and they were sourced from Scenic Hill Farm Nursery in Albany, Oregon. An additional one-hundred coast redwood trees are planned for installation in the next few years.

Read more about coast redwoods at the Southworth Forest.

A busy year at the Southworth Forest has been capped off by extensive restoration work to remove invasive plant species, tackle increasing deer damage, protect native understory, and plant new native trees. The deforestation case involving the adjacent conversion to agriculture remains on pause with Kitsap County permitting and the courts while additional information is sought from the clear-cutters seeking to legalize their violations.

The primary project at the forest in late 2023 has been the removal of extensive groves of English Holly from a wide swath of the acreage. This evergreen bush, which can grow to the size of small tree clumps and live for hundreds of years, crowds out native trees and understory, creating dead spaces underneath them if allowed to grow large enough. Closer to wetlands, this Holly is solely mechanically removed, which is challenging given its rhizomatous, sometimes deep root systems. Elsewhere, herbicides can be applied to freshly cut stumps with drill holes for added permeation.

Deer damage in the forest has increased exponentially in 2023, with numerous young Giant Sequoia, Western Hemlock, and fir trees damaged significantly during the deer rutting season between October and December. All of these trees had been protected by individual fencing, but the deer tear it away from posts with their antlers and proceed to mangle the trees. Neighbor refusal to allow seven-foot fencing around the perimeter of the forest, including a legal claim by the adjacent clear-cutters to stop such fencing, have limited the effectiveness of the deer management.

About 50 new trees have been planted in the forest this fall, mostly Western Red Cedar and Sitka Spruce, though sunny positions are being prepared for native oak trees as well. The removal of the English Holly is pivotal to opening space for additional tree planting. The extensive windstorms of this season have blown over several massive snags (dead trees) in the forest, and a surprisingly unlucky number of young trees planted in 2020 and 2021 were entirely crushed as a result. The fallen snags are being left in place and replacement trees planted around them. Extreme rain in December has hindered these efforts.

Read more about recent activity at the Southworth Forest.

Kitsap County's comment period for the after-the-fact permit (20-04869) to legalize the code-violating 2019 deforestation in Southworth closed on November 9, 2023. Comments were submitted by a wide variety of concerned neighbors, locals in the Southworth area, and from around the region. Sadly, a public record request fulfilled after the comment period suggests that an alarming quantity of the submitted comments were not recorded in the permit's case file.

Among the comments missing from the record was a comprehensive, 41-page submittal assembled by the SouthworthForest.org group. This community response details both the facts and the law involved in this deforestation action, and it is supported by 187 photos, videos, maps, diagrams, and legal filings. Supplied to the County on November 8th, this comment applies State and County code to show clearly why this proposal is incompatible with and damaging to the rural character of the area. It also addresses the highly problematic permit materials from clear-cutters Meghan and Clint Edwards:

"The preliminary Determination of Non-Significance (DNS) is based upon applicant submittals that are riddled with errors, obfuscation, and misrepresentation, continuing a trend that began with fraudulent Edwards submittals for the 2019 County danger tree permit (18-04575) that led to the massive over-clearing violations that spawned this corrective SDAP. The extensive evidence cited below illuminates the disturbing quantity of these issues on the applicants' engineered site plan, State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) checklist, farm plan, and more."

Other remarks that failed to be included in the permit's case file include those provided by J.B. Fenton during the comment period. "I am highly disturbed by how the DCD has handled this permit, and I believe the director and commissioner should be made aware of how badly the Southworth community has been let down," Fenton stated. He objected to waived fees for the violators, previously lost comments by the County, the permit reviewers' dismissive attitudes, environmental impacts ignored, and the failure to apply Kitsap Land Use Policies to prevent what the reviewers themselves noted as additional "spite use" clearing by Edwards in an easement on a neighboring property.

Read more comments submitted to Kitsap County.

On October 23rd, Kitsap County withdrew its State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) determination for the after-the-fact permit (20-04869) to legalize the code-violating 2019 deforestation in Southworth. The associated final administrative decision is also to be withdrawn. The County admitted mishandling this permit by failing to follow proper procedures in providing a Notice of Application to all neighbors within 800 feet of the forest conversion. That notice has now been issued.

The County also reversed course temporarily because several community members asked its permit reviewers about specific details of the proposal for which the reviewers did not know the answers. Since the permit approval relied heavily upon incomplete and contradictory information submitted by code violators Meghan and Clint Edwards, the reviewers were forced to withdraw approval on the planning/zoning and environmental aspects until Edwards provides additional clarification on clearing limits and road orientations on revised site plans.

Despite parts of the permit undergoing further review, the Southworth community (and beyond) now has until November 9th to provide final comment on the impacts of the deforestation. The County has stated that they do not anticipate revising their Determination of Non-Significance on the environmental impacts based on this community feedback. This rubber stamp comes despite substantial submissions of evidence of existing impacts caused by the 2019 violation to the surrounding area, most of which apparently ignored by reviewers.

Your comments are important, too! The County must address public comments in the final environmental decision, so make sure your voice is heard. The Notice of Application instructs us to contact lead permit reviewer Cecilia Olsen at colsen@kitsap.gov or (360) 337-5777. This is your final chance to comment on this impactful deforestation in Southworth.

The community's goal is for the County to disallow further removal of forest as proposed by Edwards and require them to restore a non-livestock conifer forest buffer around all violated edges of their property. These mitigations may not stop all the impacts, but they are the most practical solutions available.

Read more about how to comment to Kitsap County.

Kitsap County has issued its State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) determination for the after-the-fact permit (20-04869) to legalize the negligent 2019 deforestation in Southworth. As expected, the determination relies heavily upon the incomplete information submitted by code-violators Meghan and Clint Edwards. Community concerns are barely recognized in the Determination of Non-Significance.

Kitsap County SEPA coordinator Steve Heacock has repeatedly failed to answer questions or address concerns expressed by direct neighbors and the community in regards to the environmental impacts of the deforestation. Heacock had also declined to stop the original violation when he discovered it in process, and he has demonstrated difficulty remembering the nature of the corrective permit since. Thus, the community has been preparing to appeal his SEPA determination for nearly a year.

Starting in November 2022, the community began submitting installments of evidence detailing existing environmental impacts and errors in Edwards' submittals to Kitsap County's hearing examiner, who handles appeals. Heacock originally refused to view this evidence because of how it was submitted. SEPA determinations typically attempt to predict future impacts, but this case has had four years of ongoing deforestation impacts to study prior to the installation of agricultural operations. You can view evidence submitted to the hearing examiner.

Heacock's determination has few concrete conditions to address many obvious impacts already experienced by neighbors. Through an appeal to the hearing examiner, neighbors and the community have the opportunity to force the recognition of videos, photos, maps, and other materials that Heacock appears to have mostly disregarded. The hearing examiner has the power to require that this evidence is considered for a new determination with additional conditions to protect neighbors.

Read more about how you can help the SEPA appeal.

Southworth Forest Update Archive ⏩