The grim and, to my mind, horrible, beginning of a dubious experiment will begin on this day. Amid the sounds of grinding engines, scraping blades, chain saw roars, snapping tree limbs and trunks, roots ripping from the earth, amid the scramble of terrified birds, bats, and amphibians to escape the crushing 'dozers and find themselves homeless and possibly doomed to die, amid confused bees with no place to go or winter over - 'progress' is being made by destroying a functional wetland ecosystem that only needed a little help, in order to build an elaborate "engineered wetland stormwater treatment facility."
After June's 'open house' with 3 days notice for a handful of people, no newspaper notifications, the inevitability of this disastrous error looming, and the refusal of Public Works to entertain a low-impact alternative requiring only simple grading with shovels and some low-key clearing with maybe a backhoe - much, much cheaper - I'll admit I just wanted to curl into a fetal ball and suck my thumb until the carnage was over. Only it doesn't end in September. We will be seeing the visual impact of this and the dearth of diversity for a long time to come. Think on how long it took to grow each and every filtering tree. Think of all the bio-diverse life that each tree and shrub houses, shelters, shades. Think of all the mature and maturing trees - all soon to be lost.
To their misguided credit, Public Works actually thinks they are doing the right thing: No blame. But they're sadly mistaken. Besides the small plant specimens picked to stay within the woefully inadequate plant budget, many of which will need to be caged for a long time against the onslaughts of rabbits and deer, there are other crucial issues as yet unaddressed. This site is a wind tunnel in an extreme wind area. This parcel is the last forested piece in this particular north-south strip of land - on a section of Orcas that is only one mile wide and at sea level; Eastsound Urban Growth Area. This area contains a large category two wetland - Eastsound Swale. The stormwater facility parcel was once part of the Swale, and not that long ago. 20 yrs. max. Another pressing question that has yet to be satisfactorily answered is: will the grant money run out with no money left for maintenance (weeding, watering), monitoring of how well the filtering is working, and operational costs? From the other projects done by PW, I feel pessimistic, and pretty sure there'll be no money for operations. So what's the motive for obtaining large grants to engineer elaborate things with no budget to follow through and monitor and maintain?
Then there's the science. Scientific field evidence (some of which is included in the Best Available Science documents for SJC's Critical Areas Ordinance in the Wetlands and Stormwater sections), seems to point to 4 unavoidable facts about why this project is likely to fail:
1) stormwater should be diverted AWAY from an existing functional wetland, not into it. Why? Because they eventually, within 20 years, dry it up, as do sedimentation ponds.
2) After 20 or so years of observing failed and failing "emergent" engineered stormwater treatment facilities, the conclusion from many wetland field scientists is that mixed-forest is, after all, best. (We already have that now.)
3) When you remove alluvial soil from a wetland (which Public Works plans to do), it can't recover; maybe not ever.
4)Sedimentation ponds such as retention and detention ponds (which will be built on this site) are not advised for dryland summer areas (two or more months of dry weather, which is what the San Juans have.)The pollution issue alone of storms after a dry season is scary, and probably a topic for another blog post.
At the end of this post I put up a few pictures of the "proposed stormwater site" that I took in spring. The trees were blooming, the bees were humming, the place was full of life, horsetail softly waving on the forest floor, and the honey smells of blooming flowers. Birds darted among the trees. Coolness and shade, wind shelter, and so many shades of green graced this land. I will not forget.
Walk this land while you still have time. Get in touch with the pulse of Life there. Appreciate all that is there; life in abundance. Say good bye. And vow to be vigilant to never to let a poorly planned, over-engineered project such as this happen again in our "Urban Growth Area" home. We must do better to protect our critical areas.
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Surround this land with protection and your highest thoughts. Send your love and good energy to the tree-beings and their inhabitants and dependents, that their spirits remain eternal and intact although their bodies will die. Send your healing thoughts to the soils and waters of the wetland, that they be protected. Send your respect to the Native ancestors who might lie here, perhaps in middens. (I hope at least we can have someone on site to observe if there are bones, and stop work if there are.) Send your scientific evidence to Public Works and the Council and ask that it be put into the records. Ask, in whatever fashion you do, that the Universe helps the new plant beings to be nurtured and grow and thrive to heal the land.
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