2026 Clark County Stormwater Code and Manual Adoption

Summary

The Clark County Planning Commission formally advanced a sweeping update to the county’s stormwater development regulations, an overhaul mandated by state and federal environmental agencies to govern how new construction projects manage polluted runoff. Concurrently, the commission received a resident-driven proposal to amend the county’s zoning code to allow childcare centers in light industrial zones, exposing a critical regulatory gap between the county and the City of Vancouver. Residents must pay close attention to these dual tracks, as the new stormwater code directly impacts local development costs and drinking water protection, while the zoning discrepancy severely limits the expansion of essential community infrastructure in newly developed neighborhoods.

What happened at the meeting

The May 21, 2026, hybrid public hearing of the Clark County Planning Commission, chaired by Karl Johnson, opened with a general public comment period that quickly brought a pressing local infrastructure issue to the forefront. Christian Volk, a 10-year resident of Vancouver and an experienced preschool operator, utilized the open communication period to urge the commission to address a specific regulatory gap in the county's ongoing Comprehensive Plan update.

Volk testified that the Washington Department of Children, Youth, and Families officially designates Clark County as a "childcare desert," characterized by a documented shortage of licensed care slots relative to the number of children needing care. He argued that this is not merely a social issue, but a critical infrastructure and workforce constraint. Volk directed the commission's attention to Washington State law, specifically referencing RCW 35.21.996 (which took effect on July 27, 2025). This statute establishes a clear state expectation for local jurisdictions to utilize conditional use permits—zoning exceptions that allow specific, non-conforming uses provided they meet strict mitigation criteria—for childcare centers within light industrial and employment zones.

According to Volk, the City of Vancouver is actively updating its local zoning code to comply with this state mandate. However, when he approached county planning staff regarding a potential property located in unincorporated Clark County, he was informed that the current county code explicitly prohibits dedicated childcare centers in those specific zones and that no immediate plans exist to update the statute. Volk emphasized that this creates a "regulatory void" where families and childcare providers face entirely different rules on opposite sides of an invisible jurisdictional line within the same shared Urban Growth Area (UGA). A UGA is a regional boundary designed to concentrate urban development and prevent sprawl. Volk formally requested that the Planning Commission recommend a text amendment to Title 40 of the Clark County Code to allow childcare centers as a conditional use within light industrial and employment zones. In response, Commissioner Mark Bergthold requested that Volk submit his proposal and written testimony via email so that county staff could formally review the request and outline what a potential legislative process would look like.

Following the public comment period, the commission moved to the primary item on the agenda: a public hearing to consider a recommendation to the Clark County Council regarding the adoption of the 2026 Clark County Stormwater Code and Manual. The staff presentation was delivered jointly by Devan Rostorfer, the Clean Water Division Manager for Clark County Public Works, and Trista Kobluskie, a Senior Stormwater Planner and consultant from Otak.

Rostorfer and Kobluskie explained that the county is required to update its stormwater codes and manual to maintain compliance with its Phase I Municipal Stormwater Permit, issued through the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). The NPDES is a federal regulatory program mandated by the Clean Water Act that controls water pollution by regulating point sources that discharge pollutants into waters of the United States. To retain compliance, the county’s locally adopted manual must remain functionally equivalent to the state’s Stormwater Management Manual for Western Washington.

The presenters outlined that the proposed action would require the Clark County Council to adopt an ordinance revising four specific chapters of the Clark County Code. These revisions reflect mandatory state changes, clarify existing local language, correct historical errors, and incorporate practical feedback generated by local manual users and the development community over the past several years. Receiving no further testimony from the public on the stormwater manual, the Planning Commission voted unanimously (6-0) to recommend the adoption of the 2026 Clark County Stormwater Code and Manual to the Clark County Council.

Background & research findings

The testimony and regulatory actions taken at the May 21 hearing represent the convergence of two highly complex areas of municipal governance: state-mandated zoning reform for social infrastructure, and highly technical environmental engineering standards required for new land development.

The Childcare Zoning Discrepancy (RCW 35.21.996) The regulatory gap highlighted by Christian Volk stems directly from the passage of Washington State Senate Bill 5509, which was signed into law and codified primarily as RCW 35.21.996 ^[1,2]. Enacted to ease the burden on childcare providers and expand capacity statewide, this legislation fundamentally altered how local governments govern the siting of early learning facilities ^[2,3]. The statute mandates that cities and towns must allow childcare centers, and the conversion of existing buildings for such use, as an outright permitted use in all zones except industrial, light industrial, and open space zones ^[1,3,4]. An "outright permitted use" means the property owner is legally entitled to operate the business by-right, without requiring a special public hearing or discretionary approval from a planning commission.

Crucially, the law does not entirely abandon industrial zones. RCW 35.21.996 stipulates that a city "must provide for a conditional use approval of an on-site child care center in industrial or light industrial zones, except in or around high hazard facilities" ^[3,4]. This requires local governments to create a legal pathway for childcare centers in employment districts, provided the applicant can prove the facility will be safe and won't disrupt adjacent heavy manufacturing.

The jurisdictional mismatch occurring within Clark County arises from the specific statutory language of the state law. The text of RCW 35.21.996 explicitly directs "Cities and towns" and "Code cities" to implement these changes ^[1,4]. For cities planning under the Growth Management Act (GMA), the law requires these zoning updates to be adopted by their next comprehensive plan update, while all other cities were given a two-year implementation window following the law's effective date ^[1,3,4]. Because the statute specifically targets municipal governments (cities), county governments overseeing unincorporated lands are not explicitly bound by the same immediate compliance deadlines, resulting in regulatory friction at the borders.

This dynamic is actively playing out in the Vancouver region. The City of Vancouver is currently in the process of a major overhaul of its Title 20 Land Use and Development Code ^[5]. As part of this update, city planners are actively aligning their regulations with the new state mandates, explicitly establishing that childcare will be allowed everywhere except in the Heavy Industrial district, ensuring that city regulations are no more restrictive than state law ^[6].

Conversely, unincorporated Clark County governs its property development through the Unified Development Code, known as Title 40 ^[7]. Within Title 40, Section 40.230.085 governs "Employment Districts," which include Light Industrial (IL), Business Park (BP), Railroad Industrial (IR), and Heavy Industrial (IH) zones ^[7,8]. The stated purpose of this section is to provide a wide range of noncommercial economic development and employment opportunities while explicitly limiting residential, institutional, and commercial uses to preserve the land for high-intensity manufacturing and job creation ^[8,9]. Under the current Clark County code, childcare centers remain fundamentally incompatible with these preservation goals, resulting in the outright prohibition that Volk encountered.

Zoning District	Jurisdiction	Childcare Siting Status (2026 Updates)	Legal Mechanism
All non-industrial zones	City of Vancouver	Permitted	Outright Permitted Use (RCW 35.21.996)
Light Industrial / Employment	City of Vancouver	Permitted with conditions	Conditional Use Permit
Heavy Industrial	City of Vancouver	Prohibited	Statutory exception for high-hazard areas
Light Industrial (IL)	Clark County (Unincorporated)	Prohibited	CCC 40.230.085 Use Restrictions
Business Park (BP)	Clark County (Unincorporated)	Prohibited	CCC 40.230.085 Use Restrictions

This suggests that without a proactive, locally initiated text amendment by the Clark County Council to bridge this gap, developers and childcare operators will continue to face a fragmented regulatory landscape. As the city and county share the same Urban Growth Area (UGA)—meaning the unincorporated land is ultimately slated for future annexation and urban densities—this regulatory discrepancy artificially constricts the available real estate for essential social infrastructure precisely where workforce populations are expanding.

The 2026 Clark County Stormwater Code and Manual Update The formal hearing item regarding the stormwater manual represents a massive, highly technical shift in how civil engineering will be conducted on all new development sites across Clark County. Since 1999, the county has operated under a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Phase I Municipal Stormwater Permit ^[10]. The Washington State Department of Ecology issues these permits to enforce the federal Clean Water Act, legally requiring the county to manage the quantity and quality of stormwater discharged from the built environment into local creeks, rivers, and groundwater sources ^[10].

The current permit cycle became effective on August 1, 2024, and runs through July 31, 2029 ^[10]. To remain in compliance, the county must adopt development regulations and technical standards that are functionally equivalent to the 2024 Stormwater Management Manual for Western Washington by a strict regulatory deadline of July 1, 2026 ^{[10,11,12,13]}.

While the county has the option to simply adopt the state's manual verbatim, Clark County has historically chosen to develop its own local, "equivalent" manual ^[14]. Similar to other large permittees like Pierce County, Snohomish County, and the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), developing a local manual provides distinct administrative advantages ^[14]. It allows the county to maintain direct control over specific technical requirements, tailoring them to Clark County's unique soil profiles, geology, and preferred infiltration testing methods ^[14]. Furthermore, a localized manual prevents regulatory fragmentation; the state manual omits certain local standards such as setbacks, facility access, fencing requirements, and single-family residential guidance, which the county would still need to publish separately if it relied entirely on the state document ^[14].

The transition to the 2026 manual involves passing an ordinance that amends four distinct chapters of the Clark County Code to ensure legal enforcement of the new engineering standards ^[15,16].

Clark County Code Chapter	Title	Regulatory Function in 2026 Update
CCC 40.386	Stormwater and Erosion Control	Dictates mandatory engineering, flow-control, and erosion mitigation standards for all new property development and redevelopment projects.
CCC 13.26A	Water Quality	Prohibits illicit non-stormwater discharges and governs pollution control for existing, post-construction land uses and businesses.
CCC 40.100	General Provisions	Updates legal definitions and regulatory terminology to match new state environmental thresholds.
CCC 40.500	Procedures	Aligns administrative review and permitting procedures with the new submittal requirements.

Technical Shifts: Aquifer Protection, Tire Toxins, and Climate Resilience Web research into the draft 2026 Stormwater Manual reveals that the seemingly administrative code updates house profound environmental protections designed to safeguard the region's biological ecosystems and drinking water.

To protect local drinking water, the updated manual effectively bans deep stormwater drywells that risk pushing unfiltered runoff into the Troutdale Aquifer. A drywell is an underground structure that disposes of unwanted water, most commonly surface runoff, by dissipating it into the ground, where it merges with the local groundwater. While shallow stormwater drywells (drilled up to 25 feet below the surface) remain common in Clark County, developers have increasingly proposed "deep drywells" that utilize drilled shafts up to 100 feet deep to bypass poorly draining upper soils ^[12,14]. The 2026 manual update explicitly refuses to recognize these deep drywells as an approvable flow control facility ^[14]. County engineers, in coordination with adjacent municipalities like Camas, Battle Ground, Ridgefield, and Vancouver, concluded that the potential risks these deep injections pose to the Troutdale Aquifer System—a massive subterranean water table that serves as a sole-source drinking water supply for hundreds of thousands of residents—have not been adequately studied ^[12,14].

Conversely, the manual promotes specialized bioretention soils to trap toxic vehicle tire chemicals before they reach salmon habitats. In recent years, environmental scientists identified 6PPD-quinone (6PPD-q)—a highly toxic chemical byproduct created when an antioxidant used in vehicle tires reacts with ozone—as the primary culprit behind mass die-offs of Coho salmon in Pacific Northwest urban streams. Traditional stormwater filtration systems were not designed to capture this specific synthetic compound. Under the 2026 manual, the county formally introduces the use of a High-Performance Bioretention Soil Mix (HPBSM) ^[14]. Pioneered by King County in 2025, this specialized soil mixture has been scientifically proven to filter and reduce 6PPD-q far more effectively than default soil mixes, offering a critical new tool for developers constructing bioretention swales near sensitive waterways ^[14]. This chemical mitigation strategy will be further expanded in late 2026, when new source-control best management practices (BMPs) addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—"forever chemicals" that bioaccumulate in humans and wildlife—will become a mandatory component of the permit compliance ^[12,14].

Finally, the new manual shifts how civil engineers must calculate the volume of water their systems must handle. The 2026 update incorporates a revised version of the Western Washington Hydrology Model (WWHM), which serves as the standard software for modeling runoff ^[14]. The new model introduces mechanisms to adjust historical precipitation data, forcing designers to evaluate how retention ponds and drainage pipes will perform under projected future climate conditions, rather than relying strictly on past rainfall averages ^[14]. Furthermore, to prevent future financial liabilities for the county and private homeowners, the manual imposes more rigorous geotechnical investigations and groundwater mounding analyses for large-scale infiltration facilities, alongside stricter requirements for homeowner association (HOA) maintenance access and easements ^[14].

Connections to prior meetings

The childcare zoning dispute raised during the May 21 hearing is a direct, localized symptom of the broader macro-economic planning challenges the county has wrestled with throughout the ongoing 2025-2045 Comprehensive Plan update. Over the preceding months, the Clark County Council and the Planning Commission have held extensive work sessions focusing on the Vacant Buildable Lands Model (VBLM) and the allocation of population and employment targets across the region ^[17,18,19].

As the county prepares for a projected influx of 81,000 new residents and the creation of 43,000 jobs by 2045, officials have been locked in intense debates over how to divide this growth among the cities and the unincorporated urban growth areas ^[17,19,20]. A central tension in these planning sessions is the preservation of employment lands. The county is under pressure to retain large tracts of industrial and commercial zoning (like the IL and BP zones mentioned in the hearing) to ensure a future tax base and local job creation ^[8,9]. However, as adjacent residential densities are increased to meet state housing mandates, the legacy industrial zoning codes fail to accommodate the rapid localized demand for support services—such as childcare—resulting in the exact regulatory friction Christian Volk described.

Similarly, the smooth passage of the 2026 Stormwater Code at the May 21 hearing was the result of extensive preparatory work conducted in preceding advisory meetings. Throughout late 2025 and early 2026, the structural changes to the manual were heavily vetted by the Development Engineering Advisory Board (DEAB) and the Clean Water Commission ^[13,16]. These preliminary work sessions resolved major industry friction points—such as the prohibition of deep drywells and the implementation of advanced soil mixes—long before the final ordinance reached the Planning Commission, resulting in the lack of organized opposition during the formal public hearing.

What's next & how to participate

Stormwater Code and Manual Adoption The unanimous recommendation from the Planning Commission advances the 2026 Clark County Stormwater Code and Manual to its final legislative phase.

Final Decision: The Clark County Council is scheduled to hold a public hearing to formally adopt the ordinance and the accompanying manual updates on June 16, 2026 ^[11,13,21].
Effective Date: Upon adoption by the council, the new development regulations, engineering standards, and code amendments will take legal effect on July 1, 2026, meeting the rigid state regulatory deadline ^[11,13].

Childcare Zoning Amendment (Title 40) The request to amend Title 40 of the Clark County Code to allow childcare centers as a conditional use in light industrial and employment zones is currently an informal, citizen-initiated request. Because it must be evaluated by planning staff and integrated into the broader Comprehensive Plan update cycle, there is no immediate date set for a formal vote.

Public Participation: Engaged residents who wish to support or oppose this specific zoning amendment, or any other aspect of the development code, are encouraged to submit written testimony to the Planning Commission.
Submission Details: Written comments can be submitted at any time via email to Jeffrey.delapena@clark.wa.gov ^[22]. Alternatively, physical documents, legal history, or other evidence can be mailed via the US Postal Service to the Clark County Planning Commission, c/o Jeffrey Delapena, PO Box 9810, Vancouver, WA 98666-9810 ^[22]. To ensure comments are officially entered into the public record, residents must include their full name, physical address, city, zip code, and phone number ^[22].

Sources

Sources: