PLF scores win in fight to save Puget Sound homeowner’s property

BELLEVUE, WA; September 23, 2009:  The Washington Court of Appeals this week handed a major victory to a Lummi Island homeowner, represented by Pacific Legal Foundation attorneys, who has been blocked by county officials from protecting her home from shoreline erosion.  The case is Luhrs v. Whatcom County.

Vacating rulings by a trial court and by officials with Whatcom County, the Court of Appeals ordered that Victoria Luhrs be allowed to go back to trial court and demonstrate her contention that she needs a rock revetment to protect her home. If she can show this need, the appellate court held, then the county must permit her to build it immediately.

This is a major victory for Ms. Luhrs because county officials’ ruling against her had been issued on purely legal grounds, so she had not been permitted to introduce factual evidence of the need to install rock armoring to protect her home.

“The appellate court’s ruling is a win for common sense and for fairness to property owners,” said Brian T. Hodges, managing attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation’s Pacific Northwest office in Bellevue, Washington. PLF is the nation’s leading legal watchdog for property rights and limited government. “Vicki Luhrs has had to battle intransigent county bureaucrats for almost a decade in her fight to save her property from erosion. Now, finally, she gets her day in court to make her case – a very strong factual case – that her property urgently needs protection.”

Ms. Luhrs' home sits on a bluff facing Hale Passage. Soon after she bought it in 1992, it became apparent that shoreline erosion threatened the property. Washington law mandates that a coastal property owner must be allowed to build a protective bulkhead in these circumstances, and experts, including from the Army Corps of Engineers, concluded that nothing less than a rock revetment would work. But Whatcom County adopted an outright prohibition on “hard” shoreline defenses, claiming that coastal erosion is a natural process that should not be resisted.

“For a decade, as the county has callously looked on, Victoria Luhrs’ property has been eroding at an alarming rate,” said PLF’s Hodges. “In some areas, up to 25 feet of land has eroded, nearly a third of the land between her house and the bluff. After years of litigating against the county’s obstruction, Ms. Luhrs will finally be allowed to lay out the facts, in court, that support her urgent need for a rock revetment.”

The case is Luhrs v. Whatcom County. The appellate court ruling is available at PLF’s Web site.

About Pacific Legal Foundation
Pacific Legal Foundation (www.pacificlegal.org) is the nation’s leading public interest legal organization that litigates for limited government, property rights, and a balanced approach to environmental regulations, in courts across the country.