Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 2, February 2003

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POLITICALLY SPEAKING:

Down by the old mall stream

By JAMES BUSH

This fall, Seattle voters will be asked to change city law to require "daylighting" bringing piped or culverted streams up into the daylight as part of major creekside developments.

Seattle Initiative 80, proposed by the environmental group Yes for Seattle, mandates that developers of properties containing culverted creeks daylight them and protect them with a 100-foot buffer zone (50 feet on each side of the creek). Proponents call it an incremental approach to reestablish urban streams one section at a time. Critics see I-80 as blocking future infill development, costing city government untold millions (or billions) of dollars, and launching dozens of lawsuits.

The Seattle City Council has a few choices about I-80's future. It can approve the initiative outright or place it on this year's September primary or November final election ballot. It can also pair I-80 on the ballot with a competing alternative measure. If voters approve both, the measure with more votes becomes law.

Most of North Seattle's creek people count themselves as I-80 supporters. "I wish it had existed 10 years ago," says Kit O'Neill, president of the Ravenna Creek Alliance. She's especially interested because I-80 would also change City policy to support creek daylighting on public land.

Four years ago, O'Neill and other Ravenna Creek neighbors were close to gaining approval for a plan to extend the creek (which now flows into a sewer grating within Ravenna Park) several blocks south, where it would connect with a slough running all the way to Union Bay.

Even with the support of King County and some federal money (and a plan to extend the creek on public, not private, land), city officials spiked the proposal, she says. "Any engineering problem was seen as insurmountable."

Also on board is Janet Way, a central figure in the battle to daylight the portion of Thornton Creek currently piped under the south parking lot of Northgate Shopping Center. That project "was a catalyst for the initiative," she says.

Nancy Malmgren, the maven of Piper's Creek restoration efforts for more than two decades, acknowledges that daylighting is very expensive, but says she admires the spirit of backers.

"They've got a vision and a dream and they've put in long hours gathering signatures," Malmgren says. "My strong feeling is, if the City has an alternate proposal, that they put both out to be voted on and let the people make their decisions."

Mayor Greg Nickels has proposed a possible ballot alternative: a stream and shoreline restoration program minus the daylighting requirements. Funding would be provided through a new utility tax, which would collect about $2.4 million annually. In comparison, I-80 calls for a new taxing authority with collections capped at $5 annually per household, which would raise $1.3 million per year. That money would be stored in a fund to help developers pay the bills for daylighting.

Not to gripe too much about low taxes, but both the Nickels proposal and I-80 don't really raise that much money. Depending on the engineering challenges, daylighting costs can vary widely, and the courts may well require the city to compensate property owners for their lost development rights on the 100-foot stream buffer.

Citizens need better cost estimates before they vote on I-80. In one of those bizarre analyses that Seattle city government has made famous, planners estimated that full implementation of I-80 would cost between $569 million and $26 billion. That's quite a range. Couldn't the City examine the financial effects (cost of daylighting, land lost to development) on actual parcels of private property?

It's a touchy political issue for Seattle office-holders, who are expected to be self-professed environmentalists (if cautious ones). The mainstream environmental community, including the local chapters of the Sierra Club and Audubon Society, is already behind the measure, putting pressure on City officials to at least remain neutral.

If critics are serious about whipping I-80 at the polls, they'll need money to run a serious campaign. But, if their funding comes from real estate and development interests, proponents will have a field day portraying the race as a big business vs. neighborhoods battle.

Hysteria won't help. The Port of Seattle's recent claims that passage of the initiative would require the closure of cargo terminals and chase away some 5,000 jobs sound suspiciously overstated. A far more convincing argument against I-80 is that daylighting slivers of creek far upstream won't help much in reestablishing salmon populations, the initiative's stated aim.

O'Neill argues that the effects of the initiative aren't limited to restoring salmon runs. "Urban creeks are important because they're a way of grounding people," she says. "They're a way of connecting people with the natural world."