Letter: Don’t ignore Coles Valley history
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Editor,
As Langley City Council prepares to vote July 6 on the Coles Valley Land Use Agreement, two Langley council members seem eager to treat this fragile glacial valley as simple “squares on a page.” They are falling for a recycled, 20-year-old marketing playbook at the expense of public safety.
The true history of this parcel exposes a multi-decade pattern of environmental evasion by Whatcom County developer Bob Libolt. In 2005, Libolt negotiated the annexation contract, over several years, that explicitly limits development to a maximum of 24 homes. That cap was legally locked in because the city, community and developer recognized that this steep hillside — sitting over a critical aquifer recharge area with a shallow, 6-foot groundwater table — could never safely support urban density. The buffers identified in the agreement protect the WWTP and the >40% slopes on the south end.
Yet, in December 2006, months after signing that pact, Libolt partnered with architect Ross Chapin to pitch “The Grove,” an identical high-density cottage proposal meant to smash through the safety cap. In 2012, Libolt and Hertz proposed a fish hatchery on the parcel, promising the city jobs. Now, 20 years later, the same team is running the exact same play. They are using aesthetic cottage concepts and nonprofits as a Trojan horse to distract the city from the fact that they have continuously refused to perform the deep subsurface boring and localized hydrogeological testing mandated by their own engineers, GeoTest.
The council may choose to vote blindly, but a flat map cannot stabilize the active rotational landslide scarps now failing along the southern path cut. The city must enforce the original 24-home restriction. We are asking the developer to complete the impact studies to determine the number of housing units the parcel will support. Since 2019, the out-of-county developers, paying ten dollars for the parcel, now want to take the contract money and run while they leave Langley and county neighbors to inherit the catastrophic structural liability.
Stefani Christensen
Langley
