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Citizens Fight to Daylight Creek
By Jeff Boone
Janet Way, Richard Tinsley and Bob Vreeland of the Thornton Creek Legal Defense Fund. Llyn Doremus, far right, is a hydrologist advising members of the Fund. |
The Thornton Creek Legal Defense Fund won a substantial victory in late June when city hearing examiner Meredith Getches reversed approval of Simon Properties' General Development Plan for Northgate. The property owner had received approval for the plan from the Department of Design, Construction and Land Use (DCLU), an action that prompted the Fund, the Maple Leaf Community Council and Sue Geving to appeal the DCLU decision. The three parties did not believe the general development plan met requirements of the Northgate Comprehensive Plan, the city's first effort in urban village planning, approved in 1993, and adopted this year as the 38th neighborhood plan. Hearing examiner Getches reversed DCLU's decision, requiring a revised drainage report and a plan more in keeping with the pedestrian-friendly urban village neighbors had envisioned.
But Simon Properties, which has conceded that the creek does exist beneath the south parking lot, won a victory as well. Right now Thornton Creek flows through a culvert beneath the mall's south parking lot. You can hear the rush of the creek if you stand next to a manhole in the south parking lot. But Getches ruled that Thornton Creek does not exist beneath the south parking lot. Getches decided that an intermittent stream may have been associated with a marsh on the site, a wetland that was later drained into a ditch. Getches decided that if a creek ever existed on the site, it did not now because the water that runs beneath the south parking lot is not a creek simply because it does not function as a creek. A creek, wrote Getches, boasts the presence of and supports creek habitat and other riparian values. "A conduit," ruled Getches, "for the flow of water from one place to another does not equate with a creek." Getches decided that the rush of water you hear, water flowing underground and into Thornton Creek, is runoff from the mall parking lot.
Her ruling has not deterred the Thornton Creek Legal Defense Fund. They have appealed her decision in King County Superior Court.
"Forcing a Northgate-friendly redevelopment hinges on proving Thornton Creek exists, getting acknowledgement that the Creek exists," said Bob Vreeland, a member of the Fund and biologist retired from the National Marine Fisheries Service.
"We know you can't restore the creek to its pristine state. But the creek still has chinook salmon spawning in it.
"If you want urban growth to work, you don't do what they're doing up at Northgate. You have to make it a place people want to live.
"Are we advocates or morticians? Are we going to advocate for the health of this creek or are we going to plant flowers on its grave?"
The answer comes loud and clear--advocates. And this band of advocates is determined to budge the Mayor, move him from an erroneous decision that daylighting requires 350 feet from creek edge to creek edge, move him toward the idea that what's good for salmon is good for people and good for profit-driven mall developers from Indiana.
If the Mayor can successfully influence Simon Properties to include 450 units of housing, said Vreeland, he can daylight a creek. Amen.
The Thornton Creek Legal Defense Fund and Citizens for a Liveable Northgate are conducting a walking tour of the Thornton Creek area at Northgate from 2-4 p.m. on October 21. Meet at NE 104th Street and Fifth Avenue NE. Contact the Thornton Creek Legal Defense Fund at 3241 NE 105th Street, Seattle, WA 98125, 206-522-5919, knoll@igc.org.
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