Zoning for 2,000 acres in the Underwood area was delayed while the Whistling Ridge Wind Energy Project was under consideration. That project was officially canceled last year, and Skamania County is moving forward with the rezone. The proposal accepted by the Planning Commission in October 2025 was to zone some of this land into 10-acre residential.

This rezone proposal will go before the County Commissioners on December 9th. MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD IN OPPOSITION TO THE RESIDENTIAL ZONING AND SPRAWL.

The appropriate zoning for all 2000 acres is CRL-40 (Commercial Resource Land with a 40-acre minimum parcel size). A CRL-40 zoning designation will help keep this forest land protected for forest uses.

The land in question is all forest land, in a remote area far from existing infrastructure and urban areas. The land is suitable for commercial forestry, used for commercial forestry, and taxed (assessed) as forest land. It has been used as commercial timber land for decades.

Ten-acre residential zoning designations would allow forest land to be permanently converted to non-forest uses, thus causing further local losses of commercial timberland. It would open land to residential development in high fire-risk areas without adequate infrastructure to respond to fire emergencies. Over time, with lot size averaging and cluster development, a build-out of up to 120 residential lots on Chemawa Hill in Underwood.