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Growth and the Environment
Sunday, October 8, 2000
Wildlife squeezed out as development encroaches
John Dodge, The Olympian "You do your best knowing full well you're doing to have effects on the environment. We have a responsibility to do our best to control the effects of growth."-- Mark Foutch, Olympia councilman
Fish and wildlife and urban environments don't mix.
There's growing acknowledgment that we can't funnel the majority of the projected 125,000 new people into the Thurston County urban area over the next 25 years without further environmental damage.
The press of people has some arguing for a policy of environmental triage -- protecting the best habitat in the rural areas at the expense of the less pristine habitat in the cities.
"We can't save every place," suggests University of Washington research scientist Chris May, who worked with the city of Olympia on a 1999 stream-health study. "We will have to pick and choose."
Those who look to the 1990 state Growth Management Act for guidance are frustrated.
The act encourages people to live in urban areas. It also encourages cities and counties to preserve open space and crucial wildlife habitat. With land a finite resource, the two goals are often at odds in the face of population growth.
"The Growth Management Act is running headlong into efforts to protect salmon in urban areas," notes Doug Baker, Tumwater city administrator. "There's a lot of contradictions out there."
Baker refers to studies that show the health of streams and the fish in them begin to decline despite stormwater controls when pavement and buildings cover more than 10 percent of an urban watershed.
Here in South Sound, most urban watersheds are 20 percent to 40 percent covered with hard surfaces, altering stream flows, water temperatures and in-stream habitat for everything from bugs to fish.
Growth conflicts exist
City of Olympia officials looked at the work of May and others and reached a rather sobering conclusion.
"The goal of both accommodating growth and protecting habitat is not realistic in the long-term," says an October 1999 briefing paper submitted to city elected officials by the city water-resources staff.
City and county officials are using the study to redefine development and stormwater standards in the Green Cove watershed, a 2,636-acre area encompassing parts of west Olympia and Cooper Point with roughly 11 percent impervious surface.
But what about other rapidly developing reaches of the urban growth area?
"You do your best knowing full well you're going to have effects on the environment," says Olympia Councilman Mark Foutch. "We have a responsibility to do our best to control the effects of growth."
South Sound ratepayers and taxpayers have spent millions of dollars in recent years to better control and treat stormwater.
The days are long gone when Woodland Creek in Lacey ran white with paint or green with antifreeze from pipes discharging directly to the stream.
Local governments also have ordinances requiring developers to preserve open space, pay for parks, treat stormwater and save or replace trees.
"We've made a lot of progress on development impacts to the natural environment," says former Olympia Mayor Bob Jacobs. "The fact remains that forests disappear when you do a development."
There's no consensus on how to balance growth and environmental protection in the urban area.
Triage raises questions
The concept of environmental triage is controversial and runs counter to many regulations and laws.
For instance, the federal Endangered Species Act doesn't distinguish between endangered salmon in an urban stream vs. a rural stream.
"We have to work within the laws we have," said Bob Turner, state director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, which oversees recovery of ESA-listed salmon, including Puget Sound chinook. "You can't abandon the urban setting."
Susan Markey, an environmental activist and a South Sound resident since 1977, is opposed to less protection of fish and wildlife habitat in the urban areas.
"If you want urban areas to be attractive for people, then you need to preserve open space, too," she says.
"By writing off the habitat, it's like the beginning of the vegetation zoo," adds Walt Jorgensen, a former Tumwater councilman and member of the Carnegie Group, which is critical of the effects of growth in South Sound. "Not having trees and green spaces as a part of our daily lives is a high price to pay to live in the cities."
Rico Baroga, a five-year Olympia resident, says he could support higher densities in the urban area, and the resulting loss of habitat, if the rural areas were better protected.
"It's unrealistic to have everything pristine," he says.
Tom Holz, a Lacey engineer and an advocate for development that features vertical buildings and less pavement, takes a long-range view of fish and wildlife habitat. Restore it, don't write it off, he says.
"It took 140 years to screw it up. It might take 140 years to bring it back," he says. "That sort of long-term view is a very foreign concept for Americans."
Wildlife won't survive
Steve Shanewise, an Olympia habitat biologist who has done numerous wildlife studies for developers in the urban area, says we should protect the wetlands and streams in urban areas, but that we shouldn't expect to save dry forested land zoned for housing.
"I love wildlife and I love wildlife in the cities," Shanewise continues. "But the focus in the urban area should be on homes for people."
A case in point is "The Villages of Avonlea," a 72-acre, 517-unit planned subdivision on forested land near College Street in Lacey.
Shanewise found a pileated woodpecker nest on the property. But even if the nest tree and surrounding trees are protected, the regal, red-crested bird is doomed in the city, he says.
A pair of pileated woodpeckers would need 200 to 400 acres of surrounding habitat to survive. The forestland just isn't there around College Street, an area that is growing houses faster than trees.
Neighbors of the high-profile housing development oppose it in part because it will be damaging to wildlife.
It is an argument that can slow a project down in the urban area but rarely stop it.
"The wildlife in the urban area is just getting hammered," notes Debbie Carnevali, a state habitat biologist assigned to Thurston County.
Buffers aren't enough
Even the critical-area ordinances the cities and counties were required to develop under the Growth Management Act aren't doing the job, Carnevali says.
"There's too many variances issued and not enough monitoring," she says.
The cities and Thurston County generally follow the guidelines set by the state departments of Fish and Wildlife and Ecology for buffers along wetlands and streams. The buffers range from 50 feet to 300 feet in width.
But the buffers were set without a lot of scientific evidence that they would work, notes Chris Parsons, a Tumwater city councilwoman and employee in the state's growth management program.
Recent changes in the growth management law will require the cities and counties to use best available science in future reviews of their critical area ordinances.
However, the work of May and others points out that buffer widths along streams aren't enough to stop the habitat death by a thousand cuts in the urban growth area, Holz says.
If growth can't occur in the urban watersheds without degrading stream health and salmon, the community, as well as state and federal regulators, faces some tough choices, says Harold Robertson, former director of the Thurston Regional Planning Council.
"We need to do triage," he says. "It seems like a community and political waste of energy and money to do otherwise."
HELPING URBAN WILDLIFE:
Homeowners in urban South Sound can do their part to maintain and enhance wildlife habitat -- even in the face of steady human population growth and land clearing.
-Plant a variety of trees and shrubs, which mimic the edge of a natural forest.
-Hang a variety of birdfeeders and bird houses.
-Add a birdbath, garden pond or other source of water as a safe place for birds and other animals to bathe and drink.
-Work with neighbors to create contiguous wildlife areas.
For a complete packet of information on backyard habitat projects, send a $5 check payable to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) to Backyard Wildlife Sanctuary Program, 16018 Mill Creek Blvd., Mill Creek, WA 98012. The Olympian Copyright 2000 back to main Growth and the Environment index
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