Above: A preliminary plat application that proposes to subdivide 30 acres in West Olympia near Cooper Point Road and 20th Avenue into 65 to 75 single family lots is slowly inching closer to reality. The property is a spectacular, critical piece of the Green Cove Creek basin containing wetlands, wildlife, and steep, forested ravines.
Crime
Against Nature, Watershed Underway
By Janine Gates
A Little Hollywood Land Use Investigation
A preliminary plat application that proposes to
subdivide 30 acres in West Olympia near Cooper Point Road and 20th Avenue into 65
to 75 single family lots is slowly inching closer to reality.
The property is on four tax parcels and owned by The
Holt Group, Inc., of Vancouver, Washington.
The wooded property, a spectacular piece of land
containing wetlands, wildlife, and natural artesian springs, is a critical
piece of the Green Cove Creek Basin, considered by the City of Olympia and
Thurston County to be critical aquatic habitat. The proposal includes removal
of the trees, site grading and utility installations.
The Green Cove Creek Basin has its own comprehensive
plan, adopted by Thurston County in 1998. A Green Cove Basin map produced by
the Thurston County Storm and Surface Water Program in 1998 indicates that the
area proposed to be developed contains aquifer sensitive areas labeled
extreme, high, and moderate.
Some say the Green Cove area, which contains a
mosaic of interrelated, delicate wetlands, is the most sensitive aquifer in all
of Washington State.
Project
History
Little
Hollywood has tracked activity on this property since
December 30, 2014, when the City of Olympia received a land use application
from Will Gruner of The Holt Group for the project known as Parkside on Cooper
Point, located at 2200 Cooper Point Rd NW.
After review, the application was deemed complete in
the eyes of the city and considered “vested” by the city on January 14, 2015.
According to city code, the land use “clock” stops
and starts when the city requests information of the applicant and the
applicant responds. The applicant has six months from the time the clock stops to
respond to the city’s questions. When the applicant responds, the clock starts
again.
The clock was stopped in April 2015, when the city
requested information of the applicant in a 16 page letter. The clock started again
when the applicant responded, but it is currently stopped again.
The applicant submitted a redesigned plat to the
city on March 23 and the city is awaiting requested information regarding a
wetland in the southeast corner of the property, and related engineering
issues.
Currently, the applicant has until July 20 to respond to city comments.
Above: Yes, the street weeps. Natural artesian springs flow freely under 20th Avenue NW. Little Hollywood took
pictures of the active springs bursting forth out of 20th Avenue on Sunday as well as on other dry days in years past. This road, from Cooper Point, leads to Thurgood Marshall Middle School and
Julia Butler Hansen Elementary School, the Goldcrest and Cooper Crest neighborhoods,
as well as the new Evergreen Pointe neighborhood near Kaiser Road.
City planner George Steirer was hired last year by
the city to handle the application and give it special attention. He is a land
use consultant with his own company, Plan To Permit, LLC. Before that, he was a
planner with the City of Mercer Island.
His specialty is analyzing the feasibility and
review of zoning and land use applications, including subdivisions, shoreline
permits, site layouts, rezones, variances, critical area permits, zoning code
changes, and comprehensive plan amendments.
When all city questions have been satisfied, the
application will be submitted by the applicant at a regularly scheduled land
use site review meeting.
Steirer anticipates that the applicant will respond
to city concerns and may schedule a site review meeting in June or July. The site review committee will make a
recommendation, and then it will go to the hearing examiner.
It is at this point the public will have a chance to
formally weigh in, although Steirer says the city welcomes public comment at
all stages of the process. The city is not required to hold another
neighborhood meeting about the application as it did in February 2015.
In a telephone interview with Little Hollywood on Friday, Steirer said this site presents
special onsite challenges due to its size, the number of lots, and environmentally
critical area.
Steirer was asked about discrepancies in the recently
redesigned preliminary site plan submitted to the city on March 23, which details
65 single family homes in drawings, while the text indicates 72, and even 75
lots. Steirer agreed the numbers are inconsistent.
“We’ve called them out on that. They’ve updated the drawings
but not the text. They know that,” said Steirer.
Steirer said that the applicant is required to do
regrading of 20th Avenue and the city is concerned about the impact
to the wetland in the southeast corner of the property.
“The city is telling the applicant, much to their chagrin,
that the road needs to be widened on 20th to add sidewalks and
regraded to meet public safety codes. It will take a significant amount of
engineering and earth movement, adding a huge cost to the applicant,” said
Steirer.
When asked about the springs weeping through the
asphalt on 20th Avenue, Steirer did not seem to know about them.
“Water coming out of the asphalt?” asked Steirer.
Above:
The proposed Parkside development is in the critical area of Green Cove Basin,
which covers 2,626 acres or 4.1 square miles. The headwaters of Green Cove Creek are located just south of the property and drain all the way to Eld Inlet and Puget Sound.
Green
Cove Basin – Death by a Thousand Subdivisions
The headwaters of nearly all the streams in Olympia
are located in wetlands.
The 4.1 square-mile Green Cove basin is bounded roughly
by Cooper Point Road on the east, Mud Bay Road on the south, Overhulse Road on
the west, and Sunset Beach Drive on the north.
The basin, encompassing portions of Olympia’s west
side and urbanized areas of Thurston County, was only 24 percent developed in 1999,
according to a city report. The basin has approximately 299 acres of wetlands,
or 11.8 percent of the total basin area.
Since the 1850s, approximately 250 acres, or 45 percent of
historic wetlands have been lost, according to the same city report published
in 1999.
The Green Cove Basin drains into the nearby 245 acre Grass Lake wetland
refuge, home to chinook, coho, chum, steelhead, sea-run cutthroat trout, western
brook lamprey and Olympic mudminnows.
Green Cove Creek runs about 3.6 miles, and
originates at the outlet of Lake Louise and flows through extensive wetlands,
where the channel sometimes disappears.
After crossing under Evergreen Parkway,
the creek enters a forested area. At about 1,200 feet south of 36th Avenue NW, the
creek steepens and enters a steep, forested ravine which confines the creek
until it reaches the mudflats and passes in a flat straight channel into Eld
Inlet at Green Cove. An unnamed tributary joins the creek south of Evergreen
Parkway.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) uses Green
Cove Creek from the mouth to Evergreen Parkway as an index stream for chum
salmon. Coho remain in the creek and seek out wetlands and slow-water areas to
rear for up to one year before migrating to saltwater.
Coho have been observed at least as far upstream as
the second culvert under Kaiser Road by the sewer lift station. The DFW
releases coho fingerlings to the creek at the outlet to Lake Louise.
The area is home to Olympic mudminnows, which have
been scientifically captured, photographed, and released on site by Wild Fish
Conservancy Northwest, less than 500 feet from the proposed development.
Olympic mudminnows are found in limited locales in western Washington and
nowhere else in the world.
“Historically, Cooper Point sustained vast tracks (sic) of
wetlands – prime mudminnow habitat. Grass Lake and Lake Louise are two remnant
examples of what much of the Point looked like in recent history. The loss
of…existing forest areas and associated functions…will alter the existing
hydrology of the site and the adjacent hydrologically connected streams and
wetland. The burden is on the applicant to demonstrate otherwise, and we feel
this burden has not been met,” wrote Jamie Glasgow, director of science and
research for Wild Fish Conservancy Northwest, to the City of Olympia in 2015.
Other entities such as the city parks department, the Olympia School District, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, and individuals have weighed in on the project as it has progressed.
Timothy Byrne, who was then capital planning and construction
supervisor for the school district, said Hansen Elementary School is currently over capacity and
has no room for additional students.
“If the Parkside Plat project is approved, the
Olympia School District will consider modifying its current service boundary
area to ensure elementary students generated from this proposed development
attend L.P. Brown Elementary School,” wrote Byrne in his February 2015 letter
to the city.
Westside’s
Watchful Neighbors
Several neighbors in the area have been watching the
situation closely, but no one knows the area better than Olympia’s westside
land use watchdog, 88 year old Jim Elliott.
Elliott knows the area around Cooper Point Road and
20th Avenue intimately: his mother and father homesteaded the area in the early
1900s, and at one point, the family owned 40 acres from 20th Avenue to Division
Street. His family’s log cabin home still stands near the corner of Cooper
Point and 20th Avenue.
In an interview with Little Hollywood last year, Elliott said that on June 18, 2015, he
witnessed a truck unloading a bulldozer near the southeast corner of the
property, and wondered what was going on.
He contacted his friend and neighbor, Roger
Robinson, who investigated, and discovered that an egregious crime against
nature had just taken place: the bulldozer had been used to enter the property
to bury a natural artesian spring containing a well that Elliott’s father and
uncle had put in over 70 years ago.
The wetland was brutally filled in. It is a federal
crime to bury a wetland.
Robinson contacted City of Olympia planner Catherine
McCoy, who was then in charge of the project, and told her about the
destruction.
Speaking with Little
Hollywood at the time, McCoy said the owner had the required permits and
was just doing work in preparation for information requested by the city and
the state. She confirmed that she had
been out on the property just a week prior to the incident with Alex Callender,
wetland specialist for the Washington State Department of Ecology for the
purpose of surveying the property.
Habitat
Preservation: An Olympia Community Priority
In April 2015, an online Elway Poll was conducted on
behalf of the city Parks, Arts and Recreation Department as part of the department's effort to include citizen opinions and priorities in the planning
for programs and facilities.
This report summarizes the results of a random
sample survey of 759 Olympia citizens. Water quality, wildlife habitat, public
access and scenic value were each rated by more than 90 percent as important reasons
to preserve open space.
Neighborhood parks were ranked as the "most
needed" type of park in Olympia with large natural areas following close
behind.
In a question regarding habitat preservation, the
preservation of wetland habitat was ranked as the most important type of
wildlife habitat to protect. Mature forest land, wildlife species and Budd
Inlet shoreline were not far behind in the ranking.
Trails, natural open spaces and improved maintenance
were ranked at the top priorities for the department as suggested by citizens
at community forums.
The city’s Habitat and Stewardship Strategy
identified the need for active stewardship across the entire Green Cove
landscape to lessen the ongoing indirect effects of urbanization.
Thad Curtz, chair of the city’s Utility
Advisory Committee, wrote a letter in February 2014 in support of the City of
Olympia’s application for the National Estuary Program Watershed Protection and
Restoration Grant.
His letter specifically addresses the Green Cove Basin and the
city’s Habitat and Stewardship Strategy, which uses a watershed-based framework
to identify and prioritize the city’s habitat acquisition and restoration
needs.
“The Strategy prioritizes the Green Cove basin in
northwest Olympia. The basin is unique and has a history of natural resources
study and protection work. It was the focus of extensive work in 1998-2001 to
create one of the first comprehensive environmentally-based zoning districts in
the Puget Sound region….”
Jim Elliott, who still lives near his family homestead,
doesn’t need to be told by any city “strategy” what to protect or how to
protect it.
“It’s a mess. The city speaks with a forked tongue,”
he said on Friday.
For
more information about the proposed Parkside development, contact George Steirer,
City of Olympia planner, Community Planning & Development, 601 4th Avenue
East, Olympia, WA 98507-1967 or gsteirer@ci.olympia.wa.us. He does not have a city phone
number.
Above: The Elliott family’s log cabin home still stands near the corner of Cooper Point and 20th Avenue, in view of a proposed new housing development.
