Washington landowners have spent nearly $300,000 trying to build dream home
In 2021, Tyler and Wendy Chambers bought a property in Washington state to return to Tyler’s rural roots. At least that’s what they thought they were doing.
The couple had purchased three existing parcels totaling about 66 acres outside Wenatchee, Washington. According to Farm Journal’s AgWeb, which reported extensively on the situation this past week, the land was zoned residential, had road access with public utility water and power nearby, and was surrounded by multiple homes.
Their plan was straightforward. They wanted to build a home and pole barn, plant a modest orchard, and potentially leave room for their children or grandchildren to build someday. Before buying, Chambers conducted a 30-day feasibility review, engaged a surveyor and an engineer, and made sure county planners were in the loop.
Now, AgWeb’s Chris Bennett reports that five years and nearly $300,000 in studies, engineering, permits, and legal expenses later, they still have not built and still don’t have permits. At the center of the dispute is a 44.2-acre environmental mitigation requirement covering two-thirds of his property that Chambers says the county subsequently tried to hammer into place with a deed restriction.
Government being government, county officials didn’t see anything wrong with the project—until they did. In 2021, Chambers said, then-community development director Jim Brown gave him the go-ahead without requiring a habitat and mitigation plan.
“Everything above board and by the book,” Chambers told AgWeb. “We made certain with the county that we were zoned residential to build a home. I met with PUD (Public Utility District), paid to have a geologist perform a hazard assessment, paid for soil testing compaction, got a surveyor to ensure our property lines were right, brought an engineer in to check things, did a PERC test, and several other things.”
Chambers did proceed with preliminary site grading before submitting a habitat management plan he had been told he didn’t need, netting him a violation notice, according to a report submitted by his own consultant. However, other published accounts say the county investigated after neighbors complained about the land disturbance and decided not to pursue further action unless circumstances changed.
Either way, while circumstances may not have been changing on Chambers’s end, they certainly were within the county. Brown left the department, and, shortly after Deanna Walter became community development director, the county issued a stop-work order in 2022, Bennett reported.
From there, Chambers says the project became an expensive regulatory marathon. He submitted a report by Munson Engineers to address whether the property was a geologically hazardous area. Then he undertook ever more studies that the county demanded, from stormwater and geotechnical conditions to habitat for spotted owls, golden eagles, mule deer and shrub-steppe species, among other issues. Chambers estimates his permitting, engineering, and legal expenses have totaled nearly $300,000.
A Look at the Project
Among all those studies was a March 2024 Habitat Management and Mitigation Plan prepared by Grette Associates/Farallon Consulting. That report, obtained by Liberty Matters, provides a detailed view of both the project’s scope and details and of Chambers’s proposed mitigation plans.
Among other things, the plan identified the subject parcels as zoned rural residential/resource 10, allowing residential development, while surrounding properties also included residences.
“The majority of the subject parcels are currently vacant and are zoned as Rural Residential/Resource 10 (RR10),” the plan states. “The surrounding properties are currently used for single-family residences and vacant land. Historic development at the site includes a graveled driveway, which provides access to the subject parcels and the neighboring parcel to the south.”
Historic aerial photos also indicated that several areas had already been disturbed on the parcels over the years, the study stated, including Chambers’s own significant excavation and grading on all three parcels that resulted in the issuance of a violation notice.
The development itself would have residential building envelopes, access roads, and related improvements on three parcels, the Grette plan continued. It also included substantial environmental protections, including stormwater-retention facilities, erosion-control measures, and native vegetation. Following installation of the underground utilities, the plan stated, the creek bed would be restored to exact elevations with native gravel and cobble.
Finally, the consultants identified several designated habitat features on the property, including mule deer winter range and golden eagle habitat, in addition to shrub-steppe habitat. They also looked at potential impacts on northern spotted owls.
“Additional species evaluated during the site visit included northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina),” the plan stated. “However, no indications of suitable habitat for northern spotted owl were observed within the vicinity of the assessment area on the subject parcels. Further discussion of spotted owl habitat is not included in this document.”
Grette said the survey had explicitly followed the state’s recommendations to conduct a site-scale analysis to confirm or refute the presence of threatened species, as well as the quality of any observed habitat: “This HMMP presents the results of the habitat survey and potential impacts to any existing habitat.”
To sum it all up, after years of controversy, the county finally had the detailed environmental analysis it had demanded. That analysis led Chelan County to determine that the proposal, subject to mitigation, would not have a probable significant adverse environmental impact, but it also contained a finding that currently sits at the center of the ongoing dispute.
In May 2024, the Chelan County Department of Community Development issued a Mitigated Determination of Non-Significance under Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act.
“The lead agency for this proposal has determined that it does not have a probable significant adverse impact on the environment,” the county stated. “An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is not required under RCW 43.21C.030(2)(c). The decision was made after review of a completed environmental checklist and other information on file with the lead agency. This information is available to the public upon request. Pursuant to WAC 197-11-800(1)(b), the proposed development is not exempt from environmental review.”
The county then imposed conditions, the most consequential of which was the aforementioned compensatory habitat mitigation.
“To provide compensatory mitigation for the approximately 17.3 acres, the remaining approximately 44.2 acres of intact habitat shall be left undisturbed throughout all three parcels, resulting in the 2.6:1 ratio of undisturbed disturbed habitat,” the determination stated.
That ratio would leave about two-thirds of Chambers’s land as off-limits to disturbance. To be fair, though, the county did not originate the 44.2-acre figure. The Grette habitat-management plan proposed essentially the same arrangement. The Grette plan also calculated approximately 17.3 acres of existing and proposed disturbance and proposed keeping the approximately 44.2 acres of intact habitat to remain undisturbed.
So the proposal to set aside 44 acres isn’t the problem per se. The dispute is over what happened next, and here’s the kicker. According to Chambers, the county subsequently sought something exponentially different from a mitigation plan condition; it demanded a permanent deed restriction covering the 44.2 acres.
In other words, Chambers’s own consultant had proposed leaving that acreage undisturbed as environmental mitigation for the development. Chambers’s contention, as reported by AgWeb, is that the county subsequently sought to convert that mitigation commitment into a permanent deed restriction encumbering the property forever, no matter what circumstances or conditions might change.
“We were completely shocked,” Chambers told AgWeb. “They demanded almost everything we owned, meaning 44 acres of our private property placed in a deed restriction; two-thirds of our land. It was obvious that everything we’d been required to do up to that point was part of a fixed game. I can’t properly describe the emotional damage to my wife, Wendy, and the loss of faith we’ve suffered in our county and state, along with extreme financial and mental stress. We’ve been targeted, and I know we are the only ones in Chelan County’s history ever to do a SEPA for a regular house.”
The May 23 determination was withdrawn on June 25, 2024, and the dispute has continued through additional environmental review and ultimately an administrative appeal. According to AgWeb, Grette later testified before a hearing examiner that the mitigation contemplated by his plan was never intended to become a deed restriction.
Chelan County’s hearing-examiner archive confirms that Chambers’s administrative appeal led to a final decision on Aug. 8, 2025, followed by a decision on limited reconsideration Aug. 27. As of this writing, the battle goes on, and the Chambers are not backing down.
After nearly five years of regulatory proceedings and almost $300,000 in claimed expenses, Chambers still has not built on the property. And, in what might be considered a cruel twist of fate—or, for those who have faced the federal bureaucratic leviathan, a force feeding of normal bureaucratic behavior—the mitigation plan Chambers’s own consultant designed to allow development has instead become the basis for an effort to permanently restrict the use of two-thirds of his property—an action Chambers views as being an uncompensated taking.
For Chambers, the dispute has therefore become larger than 66 acres outside Wenatchee.
“Property rights are crucial for freedom in this country,” he told AgWeb. “I’ve learned that if you stay silent or try to appease, your situation only gets worse.”
His assessment of the fight is considerably less restrained: “Extortion. Theft. Unconstitutional. My family has been through hell. If you think you own land, then check out what the bureaucracy has done on my property.”
