The Port Gamble S’Klallam Reservation was acquired under the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act and proclaimed on June 16, 1938 to be an Indian reservation “…for the benefit and use of the Port Gamble Band of Clallam Indians…”. The reservation was ultimately purchased with the Tribe’s own funds.
The Tribe waited for more than eighty years for a reservation and more than one hundred twenty years for compensation for the lands that were ceded. Today, our reservation is entirely in tribal trust status with no individual or outside ownership.
The Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribal Council finds that development activities have long-term impacts on our reservation’s ecological, cultural, and spiritual resources. Such activities have a direct effect on and may threaten the political integrity, the economic security, and the health, welfare, and safety of the tribe and its members.
The spirit of S’Klallam people has always been inextricably linked to our land and continues to be the unifying base for our tribal community. The Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribal Council adopts this code to protect the environmental quality of our beautiful land.
(Res. 04-A-053, 6/8/2004)
The words below shall have the meaning set forth in this section when they appear in this title, unless a different meaning is clearly intended.
(a) 
“Buffer”
means an undisturbed area of land adjacent to a critical area (streams, wetlands, marine shorelines, erosion hazard areas) that protects the functions and values of the critical area.
(b) 
“Construction”
means any onsite activity which is directly related to building or modifying a structure. It does not include minor repairs to or painting of existing structures.
(c) 
“Development”
means any man-made change to improved or unimproved real estate, including but not limited to buildings or other structures, mining, dredging, filling, grading, paving, excavation, or drilling operations.
(d) 
“Mitigation” and “Mitigating”
mean to take steps to address environmental impact in the following sequence which are listed in order of priority: a) avoid the impact by not taking certain actions or parts of an action, b) minimize impacts by limiting the degree or magnitude of the action, c) rectify the impact by repairing rehabilitating or restoring the affected area and d) compensating for the impact by replacing enhancing or providing substitute resources in another area.
(e) 
“Person”
means and includes any natural individual, company, partnership, firm, joint venture, association, corporation, estate, trust, political entity, or other identifiable entity.
(f) 
“Planning Director”
means the person appointed or employed by the Tribe to carry out the duties set forth in this title.
(g) 
“Structure”
means a permanent or temporary edifice or building, or any piece of work artificially built or composed of parts joined together in some definite manner, whether installed on, above, or below the surface of the ground or water.
(h) 
“Wetlands” or “Wetland Areas”
means lands transitional between terrestrial and aquatic systems where the water table is usually at or near the surface or the land is covered by shallow water. Wetlands have one or more of the following attributes: (1) At least periodically, the land supports predominantly hydrophytes (water loving plants; those which typically grow in water, whether the water is present year round or seasonally); (2) the substrate is predominantly hydric (damp or undrained) soil; and (3) the substrate is non-soil and is saturated with water or covered by shallow water at some time during the growing season of each year.
(Res. 04-A-053 6/8/2004)