Protect the Cedar River Watershed By Michael Shank The Seattle Times [WEBSITE VERSION] April 1, 2002
Eminent domain: "A government's right to take private property for public use."
Remember learning about eminent domain in school? In an allegedly free country, it seemed like a handy, albeit heavy-handed, arrangement allowing government agencies to acquire land from owners who were reluctant sellers. For example, it was used not infrequently by federal and state agencies to build freeways across farms and through cities.
That same legal authority may be used by the Bonneville Power Administration to clear-cut a nine-mile "highway" through Seattle's 90,000-acre Cedar River Watershed.
This is not the only time the Cedar River Watershed has been threatened by logging. In 1998, Seattle Public Utilities, the Watershed's manager, proposed extensive logging within its boundaries. The Protect Our Watershed Alliance responded with a major campaign in opposition to the proposal. After a series of well-attended public hearings, Seattle Mayor Paul Schell and the Seattle City Council dropped the logging plan. Instead, an innovative Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) was implemented in 2000, allocating $90 million for comprehensive protection and restoration activities over the next 50 years.
Almost two years have transpired since Seattle Public Utilities implemented the HCP and already this protected watershed is facing a new threat: BPA. Last fall, BPA published a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on a proposed route through the Cedar River Watershed that would permanently clear-cut 150 acres of forested wetlands and riparian zones; construct more than two miles of new roads; construct at least three staging areas for storing machines, poles and lines; and create a 150-foot-wide transmission-line easement.
Bonneville's DEIS, and subsequent Biological Assessment, failed to accurately measure the adverse effects of construction and erosion upon critical chinook salmon habitat, spotted owl habitat and essential marbled murrelet habitat, three species protected under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, concerned about the removal of owl habitat, has required Bonneville to enter into formal consultation with Fish and Wildlife and to conduct owl surveys in the Cedar River Watershed immediately.
This spring, Biodiversity Northwest examined more thoroughly the direct and indirect effects of construction on chinook, spotted owl and marbled murrelet habitat by commissioning two critiques of BPA's inadequate Biological Assessment. These critiques are available online at www.protectandrestore.org.
Construction of the proposed power line in the Cedar River Watershed will also potentially increase the need for a filtration plant in a watershed that presently is so pure that it needs no filtration. There are only five protected watersheds in the U.S. that do not require a filtration system. Only one violation (soil erosion or fuel spill) is needed and the state of Washington will require the city of Seattle to install a filtration system.
In a letter from the state Department of Health to Seattle Public Utilities, Steve Deem, regional engineer for DOH, states: "The proposed BPA power line project is jarring in its potential to degrade water quality and to destroy habitat. The proposed plan to clear-cut a continuous swath of forest 100 to 200 feet wide straight through the heart of the watershed, and to construct major infrastructure directly across the Cedar River, along with attendant road building and use of heavy machinery, is the very antithesis of the Habitat Conservation Plan adopted just last year."
The Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Health drafted a memorandum of agreement in January that prohibits "construction unless needed for the improvement of the watershed" as part of what is known as the Limited Alternatives to Filtration. There are five provisions in the new Limited Alternatives to Filtration that guide the city's practices, prohibiting some actions and allowing for others. Under these five provisions, the unfiltered water supply must remain undeveloped — i.e., no human activity that could introduce pathogenic organisms of concern. This draft provision, which bars Bonneville from constructing a power line in the Cedar River Watershed, will be approved on April 9. Bonneville, meanwhile, is attempting to change the language of this provision.
While BPA hopes to begin logging this summer, Biodiversity Northwest has requested BPA pursue other viable options outside the Cedar River Watershed. Despite Bonneville's claim that other routes were too expensive or too difficult, viable alternatives remain. Bonneville Power, however, has not conducted a DEIS on any of these alternatives and is beginning to hire contractors for the watershed route, an act that does not follow proper National Environmental Policy Act procedure. And since Bonneville conducted only one DEIS for their proposed 500-kV transmission line, that one being the Cedar River Watershed option, one can assume they thought they could cut their way into the watershed without anyone noticing or protesting.
A public hearing hosted by the Seattle City Council last week, however, refuted BPA's assumption that nobody would notice or protest. Over 150 Seattle citizens, and organizations such as Biodiversity Northwest, Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, showed up at the Mountaineers Club to protest the power-line route through the Cedar River Watershed.
Before Bonneville publishes its Final Environmental Impact Statement and begins construction in the Cedar River Watershed shortly after, we must impress upon them that they face a citizenry unanimously opposed to their proposal. It is now up to Seattle residents to protect the purity of their drinking water by opposing BPA's proposal. It is now up to Seattle residents to protect a fragile ecosystem from further logging by supporting any litigation efforts adopted by the City Council. It is now up to Seattle residents to prove to a federal agency that eminent domain will not be easily implemented.
Michael Shank is outreach director for Biodiversity Northwest, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization working to protect and restore Northwest forest ecosystems.