Terry Lavender

Narrator: Terry Lavender

Date: May 19, 2020

Interviewed by: Gary Smith         

Place: Terry Lavender’s Home

TRANSCRIPT:

Gary Smith:  Gary Smith here on May 19, 2020 at the home of Terry Lavender. Terry’s the chair of Conservation Futures, a local organization involved in setting aside land, keeping it from being developed in the wrong way, and uh, she’ll explain her background and then we’ll get in to questions and answer. So Terry, who are you?

Terry Lavender: (laughs) I moved here to this piece of property in 1977, and have been involved in various ways with the creek and the community since then.

GS: I get it.

Time Stamp: 0’52” reference to Conservation Futures

TL: So, Conservation Futures is a small portion of property tax authorized by the state, collected by county, and it’s given out for uh, acquisition of natural areas, parks, etc., to jurisdictions and non-profits in the area. In relation to Bear Creek it’s been largely used as a preservation tool, or buying property for restoration.

GS: And as to Bear Creek, when, looking back in to history, when do you think the basic stream bed that now is known as Bear Creek was stabilized into its current waterway?

Time Stamp: 2’12” reference to Paradise Lake as “kettle lake”

TL: I think that depends on where on the creek your talking about. I think the upper creek, where it goes through Paradise Valley, um, that valley was homesteaded in the 1880s, and it, and a couple of the original homestead families still own the properties, and some of it was farmed, and it was definitely logged, but there wasn’t a lot of altering of the stream done, and so we can only assume that it was pretty natural at the time. Paradise Lake is, which the creek flows through, is known as the most in tact kettle lake left in King County. And then when, when we did Waterways, which we can talk about later, the, the upper, the reach that was called reach A, and it was the upper part of the creek, uh, we didn’t go much into Snohomish County because the counties don’t work real well together on stream preservation. But it, that reach ended right down here where tributary 0134 flows in to the creek, right behind, and that was considered the headwaters and also the most in tact sections of the creek. So, that’s all I can really go by. And then as you move further downstream there’s a lot of evidence that it’s been altered.

GS: And then in that ancient period even before settlers, did the Indian tribes have permanent structures near the creek?

TL: I can’t answer that directly. I can say I’ve never seen anything that they did. Up on the Walsh property, Wendy Walsh there, which is just upstream here, there is a King County designated archeological site and it’s (????) and those are present in different places along the creek. And then of course the archeological site down at the mouth of Bear Creek where it goes in to the Sammamish, which, that’s been moved at least two or three times, so ... let’s even find that, actually.

GS: Moved, you mean the confluence?

TL: The creek has been moved.

GS: Oh, okay.

Time Stamp: 4’03” describing the relocation of Bear Creek with reference to the “Willowmoor“ book

TL: Yeah, if you...  there’s a little book, if you could get your hands on it, that used to be in the local library called Willowmoor Farms and it’s the history of that and it talks about a couple of the times the creek’s been moved. And then of course in the 60’s it was significantly altered when the Sammamish Slough was straightened, and, no longer allowed to flood. And that significantly altered the lower portions of the creek.

GS: So aside from the Mitents (???) do you know of any other impact that can be seen on the creek ...

TL: I don’t.

GS: ... from the Indians?

TL: I don’t. Now, I don’t know this, there was a lot of arrowheads collected by the guy who owned the Robert’s properties. I don’t know if the story is he collected them onsite or not. There was buckets of them when he, when his family sold that property to the county, but ...

GS: So now let’s get in to the Pioneer period. When, if you could, as far as you know, when did settlers first get on or near the creek?

Time Stamp: 5’18” referencing early settlements described in “Avondale” book

TL: Most of it was around the 1880s. I, I suspect there may have been settlement prior to that. There’s a book called Avondale which talks about the Probands (?) Proband Wood, which is still, there’s still a sign there that says Proband (?)Wood. And that actually documents and dates some stuff. I don’t remember all of it. I believe Shirley Doolittle’s family homesteaded with a number of other Welsh families in the Upper Bear Creek Area, Paradise Lake, sometime around 1888, but she would know the exact number. Um, so, and then you’ve got the stories of Luke McRedmond and Perrigo, and ...  in Redmond, which may have been earlier than the upper creek. I don’t know.

GS: Okay, so we’re going to get in to that, uh, settler period which could take awhile. I’m going to put a mark here, and then uh, check on something.

(track mark for end of first segment, 6’25”)

GS: So Terry, tell me, in general on the creek, Bear Creek, and looking back as far as you want to look back, but uh, before you got actively involved, what was the major impact of the settlers on the creek?

Time Stamp: 6’44” describing deforestation and other impacts to salmon survival including loss of beavers

TL: Um, forest cover, and we actually documented when we started Waterways that we still had 80% forest cover in the upper portion of the creek, down to about 158th, we still had 80% forest cover. Uh, I think we’re down to about 70% in that, but it’s stabilized now, it’s not going anymore, uh, and of course you’re down to 20% down in Redmond. So that was a huge impact. Um, tributaries, when development occurs little tributaries that were seasonal or whatever, gone. And those were largely, um, coho streams. And then probably one of the biggest impacts is eliminating the beavers, and how much people dislike the beavers coming back, that people don’t live easily with beavers. At the very first meeting I ever went to on Bear Creek, about Bear Creek, back in 1987, and we were working on the beginning of the Basin Plan and the people in the audience just raised their hand and said, “what are you going to do about the damn beavers?” (laughs). And they still say that. But that’s a huge impact on a system like this, to remove the beavers. And the flashiness of the creek when you’ve removed forest cover and you’ve removed the small streams. What may have been a rainstorm that just kind of washed on through in October, well now it scours out eggs. So ... salmon eggs.

GS: Because of the decreased flow?

TL: Yes. And so, um, those are the kinds of impacts. Impervious surface.

GS: So, again, looking at the generalities of, and getting in to the phase when people are trying to rectify, or mitigate some of these problems, how did you find waterway preservation?

Time Stamp: 8’48” beginning of a 3-minute explanation of planning process for “Waterways 2000”

TL: We tried in, in Waterways 2000 which was done in the 90s, that was, that was not the first attempt to protect Bear Creek, that goes back to the late 60s through the community plan and zoning and stuff. But in Waterways 2000 we actually tried to quantify what a healthy system looked like, and the goals of Waterways was to find, out of all the watersheds in King County, to find those that were still healthy and to do something to make sure they stayed at least as good as they were, and, seventeen different streams were identified out of the 72 basins in King County that still met that criteria. And I did pull out the criteria in here somewhere. Um, but basically we looked at things like percent forest cover, percent of riparian buffer greater than 300 feet without a road in it. We had an index of birds and amphibians and plants and species that if they were present they indicated a healthy watershed. And so we had a number of ways, we used both biotic and ? richness, where if you expected to have six ? species and you had five, that’s a richness of 6 over 5. If you have an introduced species it may be six over seven, um, and so we looked at those kind of things and we set a threshold. And I’ve got some of the scoring sheets in here. We set a threshold and if the watershed met that criteria the idea was to preserve it. And that was done in two ways. Acquisition was a really important tool, but so were land owner incentives. And that’s when the public benefit rating system was developed to um, give tax breaks to land owners who would leave larger riparian buffers, larger than regulated. We tried to do it without regulation essentially. Um, when the critical areas ordinance came in it made ... it’s, it’s interesting, you got bigger buffers and you got a whole lot of things that were really important to the creek, but you also made incentives harder, because you had, and incentive has to be greater than regulated, and when you’re dealing with two to five acre lots and you’ve, you’ve regulated large buffers then it’s hard to use the incentive. So a lot of different things have been tried, um, and, and one of the big focuses was not just acquiring the land and doing minimal restoration, like putting large wood in, which is largely missing throughout the system, but to also involve the community and people, and that part of the effort isn’t as robust as it used to be. And I think it’s equally important.

GS: So, you’ve already gotten in to restoration and into some of the problems of maintaining the, the effort, uh, that goes toward that, but, to step back just a little bit, how do you distinguish restoration from preservation?

Time Stamp: 12’03” discussing difference between preservation and restoration with reference to

“new normal”

TL: Well, essentially preservation is saving what exists and restoration is putting back components that are missing.

GS: Putting back. So that gets a bit complicated.

TL: It does. And we all have different ideas about what should be put back, and what exactly that means, and ...

GS: But can you ever really get something back to a prior condition?

TL: No. I mean look at the invasive weeds were dealing with. And I can’t imagine a world in which we pick a place in time and say this is the plant community that is allowed to exist, and then we have enough labor to keep it at that level. I think there has to be at some point, if you want, I mean I’ve read articles calling it a new normal, where we accept some of those, um, human impacts and then there are others that you, you really do try to, need to try to remove in order to do the preservation, but no, it’s very complicated. You can make it better, but I don’t think you can pick a place in time and say let’s put it back to this point and get there.

GS: But let’s uh, get in to the organization behind these efforts. When would you date the start of organized restoration efforts on Bear Creek?

TL: Restoration or preservation?

GS: Okay, start with preservation.

Time Stamp: 13’35” describing Watertenders origins in 1970s with sewer lagoon protest, led by

 Louise Miller

TL: Okay. What I know, um, some time in, and I only know this peripherally, I could find out more information about it, but, some time in the late, some time prior to 1980, between 1960 and 1980, and I, I can’t get it much tighter than that right now, but there was a large sewer lagoon proposed, and that was a common way of handling sewage. The... across the water from the dog park in Marymoor, that was a big sewer lagoon at one time. And there was a big sewer lagoon proposed here in the Upper Bear Creek area, and a whole bunch of people got together and fought it with the idea of protecting the creek, and that’s where Louise Miller comes from, from that initial five, Wendy Walsh, a bunch of them, and so that sort of formed this nucleus of people who started looking out for the creek. And then I don’t know why Bear Creek was sort of looked at as the starting point for so many things in King County, but the first community plan was done in the early 80’s here in Bear Creek, and lots were ... it was recognized at that point that, um, larger lots protected the creek, less development. And then a very controversial thing was done, and Bear Creek was also the first, um, basin plan in King County. And it always, all those efforts always came with a lot of citizen involvement. Both the community plan and the basin plan had a controversial component in which the density was removed from the creek, so the creek was originally a zoned a one acre. This is a one acre lot we’re on right now. It was originally zoned one acre and everything was down zoned to five acres, and land owners were not compensated, and that density didn’t go away. It was essentially given to Port Blakely and Quadrant. It wasn’t Quadrant at the time.

GS: Where were those located?

Time Stamp: 15’57” Explaining zoning changes in Upper Bear Creek area allowed density to be

 transferred to Redmond Ridge and Trilogy

TL: Redmond Ridge. (laughs). So the density that existed in the creek was transferred up there. And I would argue it saved the creek, but it also created a lot of animosity that, that I think is forgotten now. I think there’s not enough of the old timers left who remember it. But even in the basin plan, that area was called out, and, and, um, set. It was allowed to set its own standards. It’s the first time they tried something called “No Downstream Impact.”

GS: That area is Redmond Ridge?

TL: Redmond Ridge. And Trilogy. And it was No Downstream Impact was the standard they were supposed to meet. And, uh, and there was a lot of money put in to monitoring for a long time, and I’m not sure they met all the requirements but it kind of is a forgotten thing now. I think, the problem it created is that Redmond Ridge is an urban thing and yet it’s not really um, able to incorporate and support urban services, so the county still serves it. The logical place for it to annex to would be the City of Redmond, which provides water and some other services to it. But I do think if you take that area between Redmond Ridge and City of Redmond now, which is essentially the Bear Creek corridor, and you urbanized that, you probably lose a lot of the creek that we have left, and a lot of the function of it. And, so I’ve always watched and that’s one of the reasons that we’re focusing now in Conservation Futures in buying property in there, in that area, to keep that area able, around the creek, to not develop.

GS: So you’d say Conservation Futures in its acquisition is more in the business of preservation?

TL: It’s both. It’s both.

GS: Well, do you want to say anything more about preservation before we get in to restoration?

Time Stamp: 18’06” referring to Waterways Advisory Panel (WAP) to quote, “If you can’t save Cold Creek, you can’t save Bear Creek”

TL: I don’t think so. It was interesting when we were working on, when I was working with the science panel developing waterways. It was professors from the University of Washington, a lot of fairly well known watershed scientists, Jim Carr, um, and others, and they looked at some places in Bear Creek, Cold Creek area and the Basset Pond area, as being, because, because of the water that comes out of Cold Creek and when it gets to the creek, Bear Creek, it’s um, the water temperature drops and that can be measured all the way out in to the Sammamish, and basically they said,  “if you can’t save Cold Creek, you can’t save Bear Creek.” And so they actually designated some of the forested wetland over there as first buy, and if you can’t buy that, and can’t preserve it, then don’t buy anything else. It’s a waste of time, from the standpoint of preservation, and so that’s what we focused on. There’s one forty acre piece over there we still haven’t got. (laughs). And I keep my eye on it and keep reminding them.

GS: Is Heaven Bog one of those?

TL: No. No. We’re talking about Cold Creek.

GS: Okay. I’m going to put a mark on here for later use, uh, unless you have anything more to say about preservation?

TL: No. I don’t know, did I say enough?

GS: Yes, you did.

TL: Did I stay on message?

GS: Why don’t we make sure we got what we want. Go ahead, Terry.

Time Stamp: 19’40” describing her role in King County’s “Bear Creek Basin Plan” and in WaterTenders

TL: So I’m going to describe my role, um, my initial role was with the Bear Creek basin plan, on the citizen advisory committee. And at that point I knew nothing about watersheds or creeks, I just knew, that you know, all of us were kids of the ‘60s and we were going to save the world, and I knew I was failing miserably at that, so I decided to scale back, and I picked the creek because you can’t um, you can’t have a piece of land and do things to it without impacting the creek, and if you can become aware of that, and so the basin plan was a little ad in the Woodinville Weekly. “Looking for Volunteers.” And I, and you had to fill out an application and stuff, and I volunteered, and I got chosen by Ray Heller, who headed the basin plan, and it was like a gift to get that education. And that was the first time that I was involved in looking at how you would uh, look at the creek in ways to protect it, you know, through surface water management run off, but, there were a lot of other things. It started out with a problem list, all the places on the creek that had issues to be addressed, then learning about ways to address it. And um, and then in 1989 - Watertenders started in 1988 - and in ’89 I got involved, and um, worked on the 501T3 and the state non profit corporation, and um, and stayed involved with Watertenders until well into, I don’t know, the year, the 2000’s. And I also was involved in a number of things with King County government. Little bit with Snohomish County when we worked to buy the Lloyd’s Family Homestead, but, um, and then with Watertenders I organized plantings, and raised money for them. And so we planted a lot of trees during that time, and removed a lot of weeds, that was sort of the extent of citizen involvement, but, um, through Chairing Conservation Futures, and being involved in different habitat task forces with King County and WRIA-8, a number of other things like that, I’ve been able to advocate for all the creeks, not just Bear Creek.

GS: Since it’s an acronym, can you give a little background on WRIA-8?

Time Stamp: 22’28” explaining WRIA-8 and its expanded role after the listing of Chinook salmon

TL: Sure. Prior to the WRIA’s, there was a fish... water resource inventory (?) and water resource inventory areas are all over the state. They are um, they, they’re a watershed sized thing, and this one happens to be the greater Lake Washington, Cedar River watershed, and that is the way in many, many different things with the state, watersheds are categorized, looked at, defined, um, given funding, those kinds of things. And when the listing of the chinook occurred, the response to that and the effort to bring the chinook back was um, the watershed unit was the designated um, action area. And then watershed councils or steering committees or whatever were formed. There were some early versions. The current one now is basically all of the jurisdictions, tax paying jurisdictions within the County, including the County, um, and then the cities sit at the table and come up with the plan. And the amazing thing to me is nothing coerces them to stay at the table. When we first started into the endangered species listing, there was always the fear that the hammer would come down, and I don’t think the hammer exists, honestly, and yet the jurisdictions have all stayed at the table, and it’s really been inspiring. While I don’t think we’re doing enough, what we are doing is pretty amazing, and the fact that all of those cities continue to participate and different, uh, government agencies and citizen involvement, I find pretty amazing.

GS: Well since it’s a big umbrella, um, which started around maybe 2005, I don’t know ...

TL: Yes.

GS: It includes more than the, uh, jurisdictions, uh, why don’t you say a little about the tribes and the NGO’s, non-government organizations.

Time Stamp: 24’47” describing the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in WRIA-8 and the role of the tribes

TL: Non-government organizations like Trout Unlimited, or just like my, I used to represent Watertenders, um, (?) sometimes sits at the table. Sometimes the Nature Conservancy and some of the watersheds. So there’s a number of those that participate. Midtown Fisheries Enhancement, uh,

GS: Any tribes?

TL: I haven’t seen in WRIA-8 ... uh ... I haven’t, I can’t say I’ve ever seen the tribes actually physically sit at the table. You always know they’re there, and you always know they’re interested in what’s going on, and maybe they’re consulted, and maybe in the technical aspects. With the kokanee, which is not, which is sort of a, not a listed species unfortunately, but the Lake Sammamish kokanee, but part of WRIA-8 umbrella there are tribes, the tribe is involved in that effort. And I think there may be, I know there’s participation of the tribe in WRIA-7, the Snoqualmie watershed, so um, it’s not like the tribes are absent, but they’re, they’re also not a member of sitting at the table kind of thing.

GS: What other activities in restoration have you seen tribe, tribalist involvement? If none, that’s fine. I mean for instance, uh, the uh, fisheries council that has to meet and also when there’s um, major projects like freeways coming through that have impact, tribes, and artefacts, you can talk about some of that.

TL: Okay. I mean I always feel like the tribe is present in some way, um, when we’re advocating for improvements at the lochs, you know they’re a part of that. They’re ... I think that if, if something’s going to happen on Bear Creek, of significance, um, the Muckleshoots are likely to write a letter supporting if needed. So there’s a lot of involvement in that way. There’s, there’s a lot of, I think they help with data collection, and different things like sort of looking for the missing sockeye in Lake Washington. I see them a little more active around hatcheries, and things like that, and whether or not you think that’s restoration is subject to opinion. But, (laughs), but they are very active in the different hatcheries in the watershed and other watersheds.

GS: So, again in the sort of, um, political realm, let’s see, your, you, the County’s, both Snohomish and King Counties that you’ve already mentioned, and, as to their relative role on Bear Creek, that’s all we’re talking about.

Time Stamp: 28’58” describing incorporation of Woodinville and then explaining Bear Creek’s

 advantages over North, Swamp and Little Bear Creek plus Snohomish’s uncertain

role on Bear Creek

TL: So it’s interesting. When I first started working on the basin plan, every map we had of Bear Creek had a straight line across the top. (laughs). And it didn’t go any further than that, and it was, that was the County line basically between King and Snohomish County, so the basin plan is the first thing I know of that Snohomish County sat at the table. We had a representative from Snohomish County. Redmond also sat at the table. And Woodinville on occasion, although it didn’t exist when we did the Basin Plan initially.

GS: You mean it wasn’t a city?

TL: It wasn’t a city. I think it incorporated in 1994. And speaking of preservation, the original proposed boundary for Woodinville was Avondale. And we fought that back quite a ways and that probably makes a big difference. That protected Cold Creek. So, I guess, when you look at the different creeks that drain in to the Sammamish River, and you think of Swamp Creek and North Creek and Little Bear, they all have their headwaters in urban parts of Snohomish County, and um, and Bear Creek is the opposite. Their, their mouth is urban and their headwaters are um, rural, which I think is another reason Bear Creek is in better shape then any of those other streams. But Snohomish County has always considered, and I’ve actually heard it verbalized, or they act like, Bear Creek is King County’s responsibility. And when we first started trying to protect the Lloyd Family Farmstead, which was the largest single ownership piece of undeveloped property in Snohomish County at the time, seven hundred acres, uh, we couldn’t get Snohomish County on board. And so the very first money that went in to that project was $150,000 ?? from King County and it’s no longer legal to do that. You can’t let your tax dollars cross county line. But that triggered the Surface Water Management chair, head, Joan Lee, who now works for King County, to put $150,000 of, of swim(???) money into, surface water management money into, so we had $300,000 at that point, and the rest of it was raised with RCO grants, and eventually Snohomish County put some money in. Snohomish County is very proud of that now, and, uh, but, but they didn’t sign the basin plan, they didn’t agree to the five acre zoning that King County had. They wanted to keep two and a half acre zoning, and there were some other issues. Nor did Redmond sign it. Redmond had um, I don’t remember exactly what the issues were, but they, they approved a portion of it, the majority of it, and then on the Redmond Bear Creek ground water protection committee which existed for quite a while, the county and the city worked together really well.

GS: But only King County?

TL: Yes. Yeah, it’s hard to get all the jurisdictions lined up. And you’ve seen that in the WRIA with Snohomish County having a tentative involvement in WRIA-8. I think  ...

GS: They’re coming back.

TL Yeah.

GS: How about the role of City of Redmond and King County as a cooperative arrangement, uh, on joint projects for instance?

Time Stamp: 32’10” about cooperation between King County and City of Redmond

TL: They’re doing that now. I think they’re doing that on a number of restoration projects. The one down by Fairwinds, adult retirement community on Avondale, that is a mix of King County Land and um, Redmond, City of Redmond, and the restoration there was a joint project. They’re doing another one in front of Little Bits, that’s a joint Redmond, and I uh, I think Redmond has done an extraordinary job at buying and preserving property along the creek, and um, and then they have, they have parks like Farrell McWhirter and Jewel Park that are outside of their city limits but protect the creek, and they’ve applied for a couple of Conservation Futures grants to add a little bit of property to those, but the County has purchased property on either side, and um, so there’s more cooperation than, and I, I think they were both involved in the current basin plan.

GS: So, um, those current plans, uh, we could get into in detail if they seem key at some future point here, but what future plans do you see on the horizon? It doesn’t have to be City of Redmond and King County, but where do you see some new initiatives coming along, if any?

TL: Well, King County’s begun the Land Conservation Initiative and that involves all of the cities and Bear Creek is uh, preservation or, or purchase of land for the purposes of preservation and/or future restoration along Bear Creek is a big part of that Land Conservation Initiative.

GS: Maybe you want to give the background of that. This is the second, uh, more of that big pile of money, isn’t it?

TL: Um, could we stop a sec?

[tape stops]

GS: So again, about Conservation Futures funding...

Time Stamp: 34’50” explaining Conservation Futures

TL: It is the primary source of acquisition dollars in King County and in, and in, many of the cities. It has restrictions. It can’t be for active recreation and things like that, but it’s still an incredibly source of money, and it, it’s constant, it’s collected every year, it’s stable, it was authorized by the state back in the late 1970’s, um, to be, you could collect up to 6.25 cents per thousand assessed value of property taxes for the purpose of acquisition, and um, nobody used it until King County used it, which is kind of a complicated story but, for farmland preservation. The initial ... the voters had approved the Farmland Preservation bill in ’78, ’79, I’m not sure the exact year, and it was tied to a certain index for um, interest rates, and they couldn’t sell the bonds if the interest rates were above a certain amount. And if you remember the early 80’s, interest rates were sky high, so they never could implement the program. So they started in 1988 collecting conservation futures to implement the program, and they’ve collected it ever since. They were the first county to collect it. They’re the only county that has collected it consistently.

GS: It’s a property tax?

TL: It is a part of the property tax. And then, oh shoot, an initiative was passed, um, sponsored by Tim Eyman, that limited all tax increases to 1% per year without a vote of the people, and at that point, conservation future collections were essentially frozen, and so, what’s happened is um, we’re down to collecting 3.85 cents now, and, and we’re authorized by the state to collect 6.25, but in order to bump it to that level we have to go to a vote of the people, and that is in the works, um, there’s no vote planned but there are conversations about when would be a good time to do that. In order to get the, the fund to be more robust, because the feeling is that if we don’t protect buy and protect some of these high conservation value properties within the next twenty, twenty-five years they’re not going to be available to protect, and you’re going to be in the situation of taking down structures and trying to put back, which is not very good. And if... with current funding sources it will take us 50-60 years to know, to protect what we know needs to be protected. So that’s why we’re trying to increase. And that is a co... a regional conversation that’s occurring now. There are twelve other counties in the state that are in the same situation. There’s a little bit of conversation going on with the rest of them, but ...

GS: But only King County has the conservation future?

TL: No.

GS: All of them do?

TL: I believe, I know of twelve counties that have authorized it. Most of the counties in the state have never used it, never used that taxing authority.

GS: That’s a good break. I’m going to put a mark on here.

TL: Okay. The reason I....

GS: Continue Terry. Actually, I’ll ask a question.

TL: Okay.

GS: Overall, in your mind, how do you picture Bear Creek, in the context as a, a basin, not just a waterway itself, and we’re talking now uh, to not include the other existing, uh, creeks outside of the, the Bear Creek Basin, uh, and we’re not even including the Sammamish River, uh, but picture just the Bear Creek Basin. What does that mean to you?

TL: Well it’s approximately twenty six square miles and um, headwaters are in rural zoned areas which makes a difference, so large lots, um, forest cover, significant forest cover, um, and then it finishes in an urban area, City of Redmond, and in between there are a lot of different conditions. It’s in relatively good shape, but it, I mean I’ve only been doing this for forty-three years, and it’s different than when I started. Fresh water mussel beds that were present are gone, and nobody really knows what killed them off. Um, the fish are thought of differently. This was considered one of the um, it was touted as one of the best salmonic streams in King County, and not only are there not as many fish, it’s confusing as to what the fish are now, whether they’re natural, wild, uh, whatever. I do think that, well I have my own opinion, but I do think the planting of a lot of fish in the creek changed it significantly, and not for the good. Um, so ...

GS: Why don’t you reflect on that in the way we were talking about, natural systems generally, as to whether you can ever, uh, get them back to the original condition.

TL: I don’t think you can. Um, I don’t think the original condition is possible, and I actually have sort of a different vision of Bear Creek. Um, I know a lot of the work that has been done has been primarily because of salmonic, but I also envision very near an urban area that my granddaughter will be able to walk through what is essentially an old growth forest, with a huge compliment of birds and other kinds of wildlife. I mean I have bear in my backyard here. Deer on a regular basis. Argue whether that’s good or bad, but it’s true. So I do think that even if we don’t leave a full compliment of naturally spawning fish, we we will leave something of significance just by setting aside the land.

GS: Well in that sense, uh, you could maybe also comment on Bear Creek as a wildlife corridor. Obviously it runs out somewhere in Redmond, but would you consider it a wildlife corridor now, and what range would that include?

Time Stamp: 42’02” describing Bear Creek as a wildlife corridor

TL: It’s definitely a wildlife corridor. It’s connected in many ways to the Snoqualmie Valley, through Tuck Creek and a number of other areas in the upper watershed, and then, most of the way through the Novelty Hill area. Even through Redmond Ridge there’s wildlife corridors set aside, and there’s actually a wildlife bridge, to cross the road, so it’s been, it’s been sought out and purposefully done, um, I think it’s significant.

GS: Okay. That’s a great picture, but let’s look at it politically. So we have that distinction between Sammamish County and King County, um, is that an important natural division, or let’s put it this way: if you want to start up in the headwaters in Snohomish County, how do you picture the creek being divided on it’s way downstream?

TL: Divided...

GS: Natural divisions. Although any kind of division.

Time Stamp: 43’15” describing Upper Bear Creek, notably including Paradise Valley Conservation Area

TL: I think other than the very headwater up in Maltby, which are in a bit of an industrial area and stuff, I think most of the headwaters of the creek down through Snohomish County and on in to King County through Paradise Lake and on down to the Woodinville-Duvall Road are very similar, and, and in a very similar kind of condition, um, habitat value, all of those things. It, it’s large lot, it’s ten acres, but there are huge properties set aside, you know, that have been purchased, on the King County side, and, they’re actually dwarfed now by what Snohomish County has done with the Paradise Valley Conservation Area. That’s the only place in King County I know of where if you drive on Paradise Lake Road and the sign says you are now entering the Paradise Valley Conservation Area, and well over a mile later it says you’re leaving it. It’s just amazing.

GS: And that’s fairly recent.

TL: Yeah. I worked on that grant process. And I believe that acquisition was completed in the early 2000s, I could look it up for you if you wanted me to. (laughs)

GS: Okay so we got a division up in the upstream area we call Upper Bear Creek, is that okay?

TL: Yes.

GS: Where does that change?

TL: It’s largely, um, there is still a lot of beaver activity. The creek is smaller, there’s a fair amount of forest cover, there’s a fair amount of uh, pool areas, and stuff like that, so I would call it, well spawners historically have gone through Paradise Lake and spawned even on the other side in the Paradise Valley Conservation Area. I would say that it’s, it’s a lot of rearing habitat, and then, starting about um, about where we’re sitting, it becomes a lot more riffles, which is just, we’re just below the Wood... downstream of the Woodinville-Duvall Road, which you can hear in the background, and it becomes much more spawning habitat, and that continues on down probably to the, below, well, to the confluence with Novelty Hill Road. (laughs). And then a lot of the, the, the biggest tributary um, Cottage Lake Creek, uh, is a huge wetland complex, underground aquifer, Cold Creek area, and then there’s significant spawning habitat below that, um, to where Cottage Creek joins Bear Creek.

GS: Now that’s near Avondale, isn’t it?

TL: Yes.

GS: After that, are there any other major divisions? I know there’s some other large tributaries coming in.

TL: Mackey. Mackey Creek, and, yeah.

GS: And are you characterizing the area, are you, are you giving it different character than Upper Bear Creek? Or is this all Upper Bear Creek?

TL: I think once you get down to close to the Novelty Hill, um, where Novelty Hill Road comes in, you’re seeing a lot more urbanized, urbanizing influence in that the creek is much more channelized. Probably more erosion occurs. And that’s why, what you’ll see with a lot of the restoration is putting in large wood, in order to give it more channel complexity and stabilize the stream bed. And then, below Novelty Hill Road, I mean there’s sections of the creek I don’t know, and that are probably pretty good, but you get to the old Keller Farm, and, um, there’s not much habitat value in there, although we’re going to get it back. I see those logs out there getting ready to be placed. (Laughs).

GS: Actually that’s a, time to think for a minute on the, a different topic. The Keller Farm that we can talk about later that’s a mitigation area, has changed of course, since City of Redmond acquired it. The latest issue is they cleared the field by use of a chemical. Have you seen this? Do you want to talk about that?

TL: I don’t know enough about it to comment.

GS: But the plan is to, uh, by clearing it of brush, you can then start to restore it.

TL: Yeah. You know, for a long time Bear Creek had a TMDL.

GS: Go ahead.

TL: For people choloformed there.

GS: Temperature ...

TL: Temperature Maximum Daily Load. Which is the State Department of Ecology designation of a deficiency in the stream that needs correcting, and once a TMDL is designated there needs to be a plan to fix it. And I think two things. I don’t know that that TMDL would still exist now. The dairy farm has been gone for quite awhile, and that soil is not disturbed a lot. And then there was the dog kennel on Mackey Creek, which we bought and removed. And I think those have both been significant. But um, that’s not answering your question about the chemical. I honestly don’t know enough about it. So for example, we have an English Ivy problem on one of the properties in Upper Bear Creek that we’ve worked on vegetation restoration and the Nature Conservancy actually has a protocol for English Ivy that involves chemicals, and we, and the County used that up there, and what it was, because, otherwise you just, you can’t beat it, and so what it was was, uh, at a certain time in the Spring you mow it, and then as soon as the fresh leaf shows, because the other leaves are too tough to be impacted by any other chemical, as soon as the fresh leaf shows, um, you use this chemical, and I don’t know what it is, it’s an herbicide of some kind, you use it, and you do it when it’s not going to rain for a certain number of days, and it’s a very tight protocol, um, but it worked. And it’s been several years now, and we would have never beat that ivy back by hand pulling it.

GS: Now that’s an area that was in Upper Bear Creek, not so heavily impacted, unless you’re talking about just on the farmland itself.

TL: It was a homestead...

GS: Yeah.

TL: ... and, and this is around the home site. It was pretty impacted. When we started there we had two acres of what I’ll call old growth scotch broom (laughs) and I, and so we had big work parties to get rid of that in the early ‘90s, and myself and a couple other people, Ray Heller, we still go every year and we, we cut any scotch broom we see. And I went this year, um, even though we’re closed, I, the park was closed, I snuck in (laughs) and I did not find a single piece of scotch broom to cut, except along the Woodinville-Duvall Road, and they were too big for me to ... have to go back with a saw.

GS: So there is uh, restoration required even in the ...

TL: Yes.

GS: ... some of the most natural areas.

TL: Yes.

GS: But, as you go downstream, let’s say Keller Farm was the clear example, uh, a restoration is a serious, large scale job.

TL: Right.

GS: So, that’s one area we’ll call Lower Bear Creek. Where else going downstream were there major challenges?

TL: You could go to the original Basin report and there’s a list of problems, all through, I mean, a very systematic list of each place there was scouring. I know that there, when, um, and this is true on Evans Creek as well, when the, um, initial development went in up on English Hill, they, those were developments in the ‘80s, the same thing up on the Valley walls of Evans Creek. Um, those all went in without retention detention ponds of any kind, or any kind of surface water management, and some of the tributaries cut huge canyons and, I mean there was tremendous impact.

GS: Just to clarify, those two tributaries you mention, uh, the English Hill development was on Monticello Creek, what is now Monticello Creek, on the west side of Bear Creek. Evans is the main tributary coming from the east.

TL: Yes.

GS: And they both have similar problems with development.

TL: They do. They did. In fact some of the storm water in Evans Creek is still tight lined down to this day. They’ve never retrofitted with storm water retention detention, and so, the valley walls erode easily, and, and that basically wiped out the salmon runs in Evans Creek because it, um, silted in the valley floor, the stream bed, and it kind of became like concrete and then the stream spread out and the land owners were all upset because they were getting flooding they hadn’t had before. So it was a significant impact.

GS: And that is in the area of Evans Creek that’s down in what many people call the Bear Creek Watershed.

TL: Yeah. Or Happy Valley. So another example, um, sometime, I could, I can’t quite put a date on it, in the earluy‘90s, I got some calls that Bear Creek looked like chocolate mud, and we went up and down the creek and it went all the way into Redmond, this chocolate, and we took water samples and we tried to find the source, and the source was the tributary right over here, and what we found was a school district site, and this was in October, that had been legally cleared of all vegetation, and it sloped to the creek, and it was over twelve acres, and it was just running like mud into the creek, and at that point school districts were exempt from any erosion control because you wanted schools to be able to be built cheaply, etc, etc, and I worked really hard on that and got the first stop workorder on a school site anywhere in King County, and, and it, I got a lot of flack for that, but the reality is that should have never been allowed to happen, and it can’t happen now. That whole world has changed. You don’t let mud run off into creeks now. Um, so there’s been some significant changes in that.

GS: Is that a state law? That required that school districts ...

TL: No it’s a county ...

GS: County.

TL: Yeah.

GS: So continuing downstream again, were in the City of Redmond. There are obviously a multitude of issues. What’s the largest restoration, uh, project south of Keller Farm?

TL: Downstream?

GS: Downstream.

TL: Yeah. Well, the big one between 520 and Redmond Towne Center

GS: And that was done in two phases, is that right?

TL: Correct.

GS: Go ahead.

Time Stamp: 55’03” noting that still does not meet buffer standards

TL: It’s a great restoration project. I think it’s very sad that’s all the creek got, was, I mean those buffers would not be, they wouldn’t meet today’s regulation, those buffers. But a lot of effort went in to that restoration project, and it is well done.

GS: Um, what was the initiative that got it started, because, uh, it wasn’t just, uh,  conservation groups.

TL: 520 wanted to widen. (Laughs). And, and they had to do something, I mean, most of that’s funded by 520 mitigation.

GS: What’s the chronology on it?

TL: I don’t think I can answer that.

GS: Well, there were two phases, at least get that.

Time Stamp: 55’32” describing widening of SR-520 as “a very controversial thing” and the subsequent Lower Bear Creek restoration that “hadn’t been done in any significant way before”

Time Stamp: 55’50” explaining the necessity of moving Lower Bear Creek in 2-phase restoration

TL: Yeah, the first one was upstream, from the confluence, the furthest up, and the creek was moved. And that was a very controversial thing, because where the roadway was going to go was essentially almost in the creek, and the creek um, would have had no buffer on one side, and so the idea was to move the creek into a new channel. Which hadn’t been done in any significant way before, and so they built the new channel, they let water go through it, but they kept the old channel for a period of time until it had stabilized, and if it, it worked, and then, then the creek was officially moved, and the road construction occurred. The same thing happened in the next section. Um, the creek was moved again. And it’s, it’s not the first time historically the creek has  been moved there, and we’ve done it successfully now in many places, in King County. Taylor Creek in the Cedar River watershed is a good example, but um, so that was the two phases. I do have a lot of stuff in a drawer in there on that.

GS: That’s a big project. The, would you say that it’s the largest restoration, involving on Bear Creek, involving a new stream bed?

Time Stamp: 57’16” describing King County’s advocacy for buffers along Lower Bear Creek

TL: Yes. And that was a joint project of Wash DOT King County and City of Redmond. And King County, I think, this is my opinion because I can’t, I think purposefully kept, uh, I think Redmond would have liked to have annexed all of, there’s a little bit of King County there, and I think they wanted to stay involved. King County, they’re not perfect, but they’re pretty strong stewards in terms of jurisdiction, so ...

GS: That maybe a good place to stop. Do you want to say anything preliminarily about uh, any NGOs and, I’m thinking particularly of Watertenders.

TL: Preliminarily?

GS: Well, just to set a scene. Is it the largest non-government organization that’s been involved in the watershed?

Time Stamp: 58’35” telling the story of “Like Hell You Will” protest, an early spark for Watertenders

TL: I wouldn’t say largest, because certainly Proterra is involved in the Notley project, and they’re a big organization. There’s very little involvement of groups like the Nature Conservancy, or others, uh, so, Sno-King Watershed Council has had some involvement. I don’t ... there must be others, but that’s what I know. There was the Like Hell You Will committee.

GS: Oh! Let’s talk about that!

TL:  (laughs)

GS: That goes back.

TL: Do you know about that?

GS: A little bit.

TL: Okay, so, um, this was after, when Watertenders was first forming, and I have some of the initial project Watertenders did in here that we can talk about later, but when Watertenders was first forming, one of the things that they rallied around was uh, King County was going to build a library in the Woodinville area, and the place they chose was the uplands portion of Bassett Pond area, and so if you’re familiar with 165th that floods frequently and is closed due to water, and, you’re familiar with Bassett Pond and the Cold ... at that time we didn’t know about Cold Creek, um, so we didn’t know how critical it was, and it was property, that particular piece, Bassett Pond - and this will show you how much the world has changed - Bassett Pond and that upland were bought with Forest Forward Thrust money back in the late ‘60s for a ballfield. You all know it’s actually a pond and a major bog (laughs).

GS: But Forward Thrust is what?

TL: It was a voter approved bond for a number of different things, but they did some, a lot of recreational things, and so to this day that, that is not part of Conservation Futures, doesn’t have the covenants on it, because it was bought under a different funding source. But that’s where the County wanted to put the library. And some members of Watertenders just thought that was wrong. Totally wrong. But they didn’t want, they were afraid to use their Watertenders soft stick kind of thing, so they formed a separate committee called the Like Hell You Will. And they fought really, really well. And they forced that library, and they took off that site, they took a lot of heat for it. Now you see the library located on a busy street that has access, a perfectly good library. It was a great outcome. But that was an early group that existed for a very short period of time for a single purpose.

GS: Would you call that the most unqualified success of, of a conservation effort?

TL: I don’t know. It was pretty good, yeah. There’s a lot of other big ones. The original founding thing that Watertenders did -and I have newspaper articles and stuff in here somewhere- was a ravine up in Upper Bear Creek called the Wyatt, it was owned by Wyatt Lock, that’s who the county bought it from. It’s now a preserved 88 acre piece, but it had a steep ravine, and I don’t know, because I wasn’t part of it at that point, but I do have a lot of information on it. Somebody up there contacted some of the founders of Watertenders, which was early on in making some noise about different things. There were all these junk cars and appliances thrown down that ravine. So, they worked, Judy Westall, Eloise Pritchard, and stuff, they worked really hard to, Nancy Stafford, to um, contact the land owner, get permission to be on the land. They got a towing truck company to donate the trucks, uh, to donate the ability to pull, winch all those cars out of there and take them away. They did this amazing clean up and it made it in to the paper, and that was about 1988, I would guess.

GS: Well, that’s great. Let’s hope this tape recorder’s still going. Yeah. We’ll put a mark here.

TL: Okay.

GS: So what’s the next plan? I’d like to go back and hit a few of the highlights we’ve already sort of put an asterisk by them. But how much more detail do you think you want to get into, or do you think you can get into before we do some research, and I’m happy to help. Not today.

Time Stamp: 1:02’57” telling the story of the drug parcel/“Water Meadow” 

TL: Oh. Um, well I can tell a lot of stories, uh, I can tell you the story of Water Meadow which is, which, the couple people at King County was the initial idea for Waterways 2000, the idea that the County would own property on the creek. Prior to that they would never own it.

GS: As a policy they wouldn’t own it?

TL: No, they didn’t own it. So that’s a story I can tell. The temporary erosion and sedimentation control is an interesting story I think, and I’ve got more information on that. Uh, I don’t know, there’s just a lot of stuff. One of the stories that, I don’t think we’re working with people like we used to. And that was where Wendy’s gift was. We, when we passed the Basin Plan here there was a party at Wendy’s and uh, it was King County staff, it was elected officials in the communities. It was amazing. We read poetry. That was where the first time that the (???) Lady of Bear Creek came out and blessed people. We went down to the creek in the middle of the night. You know, we had a lot to drink. We had a lot of fun. And we used to do that pretty routinely, these big celebrations. That seems to me to be absent now. There’s been a big shift to government organizing work parties, and you go out, and you do your community service, and you get marked off at your kid’s junior high. So it’s, that’s different, and we could talk about that if you want to talk about it.

GS: Well, that will help me also, because uh, that’ll send me off to other people ...

TL: Right.

GS: ... because the key in these projects is to get people’s memory while they’re still around to.

TL: Well, I think you should get Shirley.

GS: Oh yes, for sure.

TL: And I’ll help you.

SIDE 2

GS: Today is May 13 at the home of Terry Lavender, talking about Bear Creek for the second time. They’ll be follow up questions, mostly doing with Upper Bear Creek, but uh, Terry can answer most any question about any part of the creek, and we’ll start with what ended our last interview last year, which was your story about DEA, um, handing over parcel called Water Meadow. And I’m wondering what effect that had on King County Planning as they received that property.

Time Stamp: 1:05’33” expanding on the drug parcel/“Water Meadow” story, referring Jim Kramer and the county’s Surface Water Management program

TL: Well, I think it affected one person in particular. Jim Kramer, who at the time was Manager of Surface Water Management at the County. And he was a very creative um, forward thinking person. And when, when I had first worked to get the property donated, um, I had gone to King County Parks to try to get them to accept the donation, and they didn’t, because they didn’t own swamp, as you might call it, or whatever, they didn’t own these wet spots in creek corridors. And they were, they were a Parks Department. And so, Jim Kramer was the creative person who agreed to take, not only take the property but turn it in to a story. And we had this big press conference, we had Tim Hill, the County Executive out there standing in the weeds, along with the Federal Marshall, and so, um, and I think that that was a nugget in Jim’s brain, and then from there um, we ended up you know, five years later doing Waterways 2000, which came out of the Surface Water Management Department.

GS: Which was Jim’s department.

TL: Yeah, and it, in those days if you were going to do something like stream corridors, you used SWM money, Surface Water Management money. That’s no longer the case. We’re not allowed to use it, or in rare, rare circumstances. But I do think that it was like a little trigger, um, and so, it, it was good. It was a good thing.

GS: It was a great start.

TL: Yeah.

GS: And speaking of triggers, what triggered, I think going back even earlier, what triggered the focus on Cold Creek in the Bear Creek Watershed? Was it simply a tributary that contributed cold water, or were there other features that made it important for salmon?

Time Stamp: 1:07’32” describing discovery of Cold Creek in the process of the Bear Creek Basin Plan

Time Stamp: 1:08’20” referring to Cold Creek waterflow as a key to salmon migration

TL: Well, um, I think I’ll talk about first how we even discovered that Cold Creek existed. In the Basin Plan it was know as 0126, which all the tributaries have numbers. And um, in the Basin Planning effort, one of the things that was done was, stream cages were put throughout the basin to determine what the different flows were. And there was one put over um, on the Bassett property, which was um, part of a Native Growth Protection easement set aside for Pheasant Ridge. There was one put over there in 0126, which turns out to be Cold Creek, and we didn’t, I think even at that point, realize that that’s what locals called it. And um, what showed up was a constant flow. And amazing, constant flow year round. Plus a temperature, and so, um, that was the first thing. And then when we went from Basin Planning to Waterways 2000, the scientists at King County had looked at that, um, gaging data, and so, and they had tracked that cold water all the way down to the Sammamish, and so that was brought forward into this Waterways Advisory Panel of scientists from UW and other places. And they really recognized that probably the mystery was, “why are chinook turning up Cottage Lake Creek? It’s not a chinook stream normally.” And they thought of it - it’s too small in general for Chinook - and they thought it was the cold water drawing them up. And so it became a focus that if you’re going to do work in Bear Creek, that particular creek, Cold Creek, that particular trib, um, impacts everything, even down into the Sammamish, with that cold water and that constant flow, and so you better save that in its current condition, meaning save all the wetlands, the forested wetlands, save those, or you’re going to lose the bottom half of Bear Creek anyway. And that, so it became one of our target focuses.

GS: When you talked about that panel of experts, was that WAP?

Time Stamp: 1:09’53” explaining WAP, Waterways Advisory Panel evaluating Bear Creek watershed

TL: WAP. Waterways Advisory Panel. I know. We’re really great at names, aren’t we? And it had Jim Carr, from the University of Washington, Sally Shaman from the UW Landscape Architecture Department, Pete Fiston, um, from, he actually was with Weyerhauser at the time, but he’s a very well know scientist, and then, Bob Furstenberg and others from the County, and there, there were several others, and then I was sort of the citizen, Conservation Futures funding source representative on that group.

GS: Any other university professors?

TL: I would have to go check the list.

GS: There could have been.

TL: There could have been. Well, Sally Shaman was a University ...

GS: Oh, there’s two at least.

TL: Yeah.

GS: Yeah.

TL: Yeah. There could have been. Yes.

GS: And they input advice that included, uh, recommending focus on Cold Creek?

TL: Right. And basically there were a couple of forty acre wetlands. Sorry, forty acre forested wetland. And I mean there’s some major, probably even maybe a few old growth trees. Major spruce and stuff on those. And the, the thing was, was that is your first acquisition target, and if you don’t get those, you probably can’t justify buying much else, because it ... and so we got one of them right away. One of them we still have not purchased.

GS: What’s the name of the one that you did acquire?

Time Stamp: 1:11’17” referring to Bassett and Lisherness properties in Cold Creek Natural Area

TL: It’s part of the Cold Creek Natural Area.

GS: Loochiness or something?

TL: It was bought... no.

GS: No?

TL: No. It’s part of the Cold Creek Natural Area.

GS: Okay.

TL:  Lisherness we bought in, as another piece we bought in there...

GS: Okay.

TL: ...and that was bought in 1997.

GS: But that was not the first acquisition.

TL: No. The, the forty acre piece was owned by Leno Bassett. And he’d owned it for a number of years.

GS: And what, there’s a lot of details that I could get later on on this. But that was the target and you were pretty successful in acquiring property there?

TL: Well, we now own, so, I know you can’t see this on the tape, but this is Lisherness, the forty acres. So, we now own, um, from 165th to the Woodinville-Duvall Road which is almost a mile. We own over two hundred acres in there. We’ve replanted a lot of it. And um,

GS: What’s the designation for that?

TL: It’s a King County Natural Area.

GS: Okay.

TL: The Cold Creek Natural Area. And when I say we now own, I’m referring to King County.

GS: Right. Um, I don’t .... think we need to look at the documents in detail, but do you want to say anything about the reconnaissance report on Bear Creek and the subsequent current and future conditions analysis?

Time Stamp: 1:12’46” elaborating on the importance of the Bear Creek Basin Plan, not primarily for fish benefits but for the overall health of the watershed

TL: Well, I think one of the things that’s interesting about the Basin Plan is it was a remarkable undertaking, uh, but the underlying reason for doing it was storm water, surface water. Fish were, at that point, a secondary thing. And so you will see references to ??? in it, but, but you’re primarily looking at places where erosion is occurring, places where ... and, and they were incredible, you’d asked me earlier about bridges, there are a few bridges called out, but mostly because the inbuttments (??) are in the creek and they’re creating a backwater or something, but they were amazing documents, and, and they do talk about fish, but the, that wasn’t the primary focus. And when you look at what they’re predicting might happen on things like, on tribs like Macky Creek, Strube Creek, um, Sidell, they’re predicting that unless things change those would become severely degraded and eroded and what’s interesting to me is that hasn’t happened. They’re actually better. And I think that’s because the Basin Plan, um, caused a lot of things to change. It caused some zoning to change, it caused regulations and surface water, it caused retention and detention to change, um, forest, forest retention. All of those things came out of the Basin Plan with the overall goal of stopping flooding and stopping surface water, but they benefitted fish significantly.

GS: So those, uh, reports and analyses that were done as part of the lead in to the Basin Plan had an initial emphasis on storm water. Was that because storm water districts were funding these studies?

TL: Yes. They were funded by SWM (???) but the Basin Planning process was a water process.

GS: Right.

TL: ...was, “let’s plan for water.” And fish were part of what’s in the water, but it wasn’t a plan to save fish. It was a plan to stop erosion, stop a lot of the things we were seeing happening because of development. And the future conditions, if you go through the future conditions, where it’s going tributary by tributary predicting what will happen if we allow things to continue the way things were, and, and basically what you’re saying is you’re going to wipe out almost all salmon habitat. And that hasn’t happened and which, which is a great story in and of itself.

GS: Good to be hopeful.

TL: Yeah. And then ... so you go from the Basin Plan which had a purpose and fish was secondary but it was there, then you go to Waterways 2000 which was fish, then you go to Long Live the Kings which was fish, then you go to all these other things that King County was doing prior to the listing, and then you go to the listing, and then you have the waterways, the um, the RYA’s, you know, the Salmon Recovery Councils, so, yes, they all kind of flow together, but um, the focus is slightly different.

GS: Was the Long Live the Kings that you’ve mentioned there, that’s a private ...?

TL: Yeah. I think I’ve got the wrong name. There was a group that Ron Simms ...

GS: Oh, oh.

TL: ...engaged, and he, I think we got ten million dollars and we were to go out and make a big statement about buying particular, and it was titled something King.

GS: Oh, okay.

TL: So, and what’s interesting now, now we’re doing the second round of Basin Planning. And Bear Creek is having an updated Basin Plan, and in those, again, the focus is on surface water, and water, and integrating that into the landscape, into grading it with all these properties. And fish are a real important part of it, but again, it’s a subtle difference in the focus

GS: Well, to get back to the, uh, the big picture that relates to fish, uh, we talked about the situation on Bear Creek being different than some of the other creeks, um, in the water, in the larger watershed. Those waterways coming out of Snohomish County into the Sammamish Basin. There typically degraded upstream, uh, where the problems start. And Bear Creek is different.

Time Stamp: 1:17’43” explaining differences between Bear Creek and other creeks in Snohomish County

TL: Mm hmm.

GS: How does that matter? What challenges does that present, in terms of improving the conditions for salmon?

TL: Well, you’ve got a system that is entirely groundwater dependent.

GS: This is Bear Creek.

TL: Yeah. Well, all of those actually, They’re all entirely groundwater dependent. North Creek, Little Bear, Swamp, but Bear Creek also. They don’t have any headwaters in mountains with snow melt, any of that kind of thing. So you’ve got groundwater dependent systems. We all know what happens when ground waters are paved over, which is what happened in all those other tributaries, where it’s reversed an their headwaters are urban. They’ve lost their forest cover, they’ve been largely paved over, um, it, it’s really difficult to maintain any kind of flow or salmon habitat, um, when that happens. And Bear Creek is the reverse. We’ve been able to um, actually protect in a meaningful way, a big majority of the headwaters of Bear Creek and then from about the Woodinville-Duvall Road, it goes a little higher, but the primary spawning occurs from the Woodinville-Duvall Road down to about 116, or a little lower, and then in that first section of Cottage Lake Creek, um, and again we, those are in, even though there’s a lot of development, it’s still somewhat rural, and so that, and then also the development sort of stopped when growth management happened and the large lots went in. There was, there’s been very little really since. And so it gives you a much better chance of, of saving the system as a whole, and then what happens to the Lower, like we all, all of those systems deal with the Sammamish River as a migratory corridor. They have to go through the lock, they have to go through the Sammamish River, it’s amazing any of them make it. But then Lower Bear Creek becomes a migratory corridor as well because of the development, although I think it’s a little better than that, but ..

GS: A little better than what?

TL: Than just a migratory corridor.

GS: Oh, I see.

TL: And becoming better, so ...

GS: Let me just try a quick question. I was told by Roger Dane that there has been signs of uh, salmon spawning down in that first quarter mile of Bear Creek. Uh, but that he had heard that such a spawn in new areas was sometimes associated with that area being opened up because of, in this case, the meandering and other features that were put in, and that that phenomenon may not persist. In other words ...

Time Stamp: 1: 20’29” describing the improvement of Lower Bear Creek for salmon spawning

TL: I’ve never heard that. So the big problem was the lower part of the system was the gradient. It was really steep. And so it, it benefited, I mean, bigger fish like Chinook, smaller fish like Coho. You know, the gradient was really steep, and so there was really no opportunity to spawn it was really just to get through it, and so this gives it a much more reasonable gradient, and what I’ve seen, like, Taylor Creek, which is a major tributary of the Cedar River, it was when I first started working on acquisitions and things, it was in a, a roadside ditch and had virtually no fish usage, and then, um, we purchased properties all along and moved the creek, and the very first year the creek reopened the salmon started using it. And they have continued to do so ever since.

GS: For spawn, or just migration

TL: For spawning. For spawning.

GS: And they continued in the same spot?

TL: They continued ever since. So I don’t know, I do think that Bear Creek, that lower section has changed significantly to benefit fish. I don’t know that benefit will go away.

GS: Okay. So we’re going to get in to that tricky question about what RYA’s are. Before, uh, in terms of their role after 1999, and maybe you could just speak to that as an area uh, I believe called action areas for protecting the endangered species of salmon that were called out in 1999.

Time Stamp: 1:22’09” describing WRIA-8’s role in salmon recovery, starting with Chinook protection

TL: I think the Salmon Recovery Council based on the RYAs are amazing things because basically we have a listing, but the federal government really doesn’t put a hammer down on it, and, and so, and that was sort of the fear that brought everybody to the table initially, but they stayed, and um, I find them to be really important organizational ways of looking at this. It’s a little tricky because there are single species – chinook -- and if you manage for a single species you always have funny little issues.

GS: Are the steelhead covered as well?

TL: They could be, but I never hear them talking about it. And then they’ve taken kokanee on, which I really admired – the Lake Sammamish kokanee, but, um, yeah, I think that they’re, as a bureaucratic thing, and a way of um, continually channeling money towards a plan, and continually keeping the focus on that plan, and not let it go off in all different directions for distractions and such. I think they’ve been amazing.

GS: Let’s just hypothesize for a minute that uh, these species are delisted. Would the RYAs continue to uh, work for the salmon habitat and other benefits? And continue to receive public funding, as it has up till now?

TL: I have no idea. So, so certainly we do, we do a significant amount in King County of salmon recovery and habitat and things that are not related to the RYAs. And I would think that that would continue. I don’t think that would change. But I don’t know if there was a, if the listing went away, how that would change, all of the twenty six jurisdictions sitting down and talking about things. I have no idea.

GS: Okay we’re going to go into the history book uh, for the Lloyd properties and Paradise Valley. In the transfer of those properties to Snohomish County what was the role of Conservation Futures and the Cascade Land Conservancy?

Time Stamp: 1:24’37” describing the acquisition of Lloyd family property for PVCA (Paradise Valley Conservation Area) and highlighting the “quite unusual” matching grant offer by King County

TL: Well, if I can go back a little bit it was the, one of the largest pieces of properties left in Snohomish County with a single owner, and so the Lloyd’s were constantly being approached by developers and they turned everybody away at the door. I actually was on the property years before with – I think his name was Jim Michaels – he was head of the Snohomish County Land Conservancy, and they were trying, and he had a relationship with the Lloyds and um, he took me on the property. We were at the time trying to get Paul Allen money if we could find some old growth trees. And um, but they were never successful. And then when we started looking at Waterways 2000 and recognizing the significance of that piece of property – I had spent the previous ten years writing to the Nature Conservancy, everybody I could think of, and I wasn’t the only person doing that. Jeff Gould on the Snohomish County side with the land trust up there was doing the same thing, and we were constantly getting a “no” answer. And so when we started doing Waterways, King County did something quite unusual, looking at doing, um, they put one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of King County Conservation Futures forward to Snohomish County as a challenge, and um, and at the time surface water management which was I claimed before seemed to be the entity that did things like that, put up one hundred fifty thousand on the Snohomish County side. So you now have three hundred thousand. Half, part of it King County CFT, which is no longer allowed any more, by the way, can’t cross county lines, and um, and Snohomish County SWM fund. And then we started looking for, you can’t really apply for other grant funds unless you have the agreement of the land owner that they’re willing to consider it, and nobody could get that. And so a long time neighbor up here who was, had known the Lloyds for years, she sat down and talked with them. And Jesse, at the time, Jesse was the oldest, and she was sort of the decider and Davey and Elizabeth were still alive then. And she sat down with them and she ...

GS: She?

Time Stamp: 1:29’27” describing the role of Cascade Land Conservancy in the PVCA land transfer

TL: Wendy Walsh, got a letter of intent from them. And that letter then went to Gene Dubinoy with Cascade Land Conservancy, and he began negotiating with the Lloyds attorney, with the Lloyd’s approval. And I was involved in some of those negotiations, and we started applying for grants. And Jeff Gould and I partnered with Snohomish County surface water management to apply for a Conservation Futures grant in Snohomish County. And they have a different system than King County does, but we wrote the grant, we gave presentations, and we got um, I don’t remember the number now, at least one million dollars through that. And then we were looking, and, conservation futures usually require some kind of match, so we had the three hundred thousand, and we started applying everywhere else, and Cascade Land Conservancy was helping us apply. But we applied for ???, again, I believe Snohomish County probably sponsored that application and got a grant. We applied for the Wilberforce. We applied for some others that – little odd grants that required you to fence it and keep all dogs out, and we didn’t take those. (laughs). But we applied for money and we never could um, raise enough money to buy all of the property. And initially what we bought was the standing timber, because that was most important thing while we continued to raise money to buy the grounds. And, um, the Lloyds wanted to keep the life estate on the either the 17 or 19 acres and stay in their home, which worked out really well. They agreed on a very reasonable price – I think it was three million or something a very reasonable price -- holding out the one hundred twenty most developable acres, and we never raised the money for that, and in the end um, Snohomish County ended up using some of their Conservation Futures dollars to buy and that, for the mountain bike, but it’s still forested, and um, so Cascade Land Conservancy was absolutely, incredibly important in negotiating the deal.

GS: Did they also take title?

TL: No. No. Snohomish County always had title. And Conservation Futures was the primary funding source and the starting funding source.

GS: Good. Going from that big picture, uh, to a very small matter, is there an unaddressed pollution problem on Bear Creek near NE 116th, either before, well, on either side of the bridge, that goes over Bear Creek there?

TL: I can’t answer that question for sure. So, my husband worked for Shell Oil Company, and um, he did um, basically clean up from leaking tanks and things and then he uh, I mean he didn’t physically do the cleanup, he hired people to do it and stuff. He managed the cleanup for a number of states for Shell Oil on service station sites, and that site, um, if you buy gas there you know it’s covered with monitoring wells. It’s constantly monitored. And there were no leaks on that site at that time. So I assume that hasn’t changed with all the monitoring wells there. The next site, the next piece down which is the Auto Parts, Auto Repair, I know Ray Heller, when he was Basin Steward, interacted with them frequently and would get certain changes and stuff. From, from then on, I don’t know the situation.

GS: Changes having to do with creek ...

TL: I couldn’t tell you.

GS: ...issues?

Time Stamp: 1:31’48” describing the creekside properties along NE 116th Street in North Redmond

TL: Yeah. Cleaning up the way it probably, my guess is the way they managed cars parked and different things. I know that there are a whole bunch of cars parked on the other side of the road on 116th, and that’s not that far from the creek, and that’s probably not a good idea, and I don’t know where those cars come from. So, I can’t, beyond that I can’t really answer the question, but ...

GS: How about on the eastside of the creek?

TL: The property on the eastside?

GS: Right.

TL: Yeah. That has a residence on it.

GS: Yes.

TL: I know there have been issues and code enforcement and stuff.  I also know that it’s a current, it’s a current property in, um, the Bear Creek Conservation Futures application and that they’re working with the landowner for a possible purchase, and then it would be restored. But the details, if there’s any pollution or not, I don’t know.

GS: Do you know if all of those properties are in King County or is City of Redmond involved?

TL: I think they’re City of Redmond. Well, actually I don’t know that.

GS: Okay. That’s fine.

TL: I mean across the street, across the, across Avondale, the PCC and all that is ...

GS: Yes

TL: ... is ...

GS: Yes, that’s right.

TL: ... City of Redmond. And Avondale is city limit. Um, they probably are. I guess Jewel Park is City of Redmond.

GS: That’s, that’s a purchase the city made.

TL: Actually think it was a donation.

GS: Oh.

TL: But ...

GS: But is to the city?

TL: It is. Yeah. I know they purchased another piece in there. So you’re right, it probably is King County with the exception of Jewel Park. And then the um, the piece on the corner of 116th and Avondale on the northeast corner is owned by King County and there’s a sign out there that says Waterways, or it says Bear Creek Natural Area or something, or Little Bear Natural Area.

GS: I’m going to pause for a second.

GS: Okay. We’re on track two of this second interview, Terry Lavender. We’re going to go back to a point leading into Waterways 2000 when you selected Bear Creek along with some other watersheds for particular attention.

TL: Mm hmm.

GS: Can you explain a little about that, and why Bear Creek was important, and maybe contrast it with some of the other creeks that were also important?

Time Stamp: 1:33’48” explaining differences between Bear Creek and other streams in the Lake Sammamish/Cedar River watershed

TL: Sure. I mean, we were looking for, for pilot properties, and so we were looking for unique characteristics. Most of them had headwaters in, like Issaquah Creek has their, has its headwaters in, you know, snow in the winter mountains. Bear Creek is unique in the streams that we selected to work on because it’s entirely groundwater dependent and has no headwaters in snow, so it’s, it’s unique. It’s unique in other ways. Tremendous community knowledge, activism, support, which wasn’t true in a lot of the other streams. And Bear Creek has always been attractive because of that, because the people who live here just seem to love it, and want to take care of it. So that’s an interesting piece of Bear Creek. Scale. We’ve got, in that list of ones we worked on, we’ve got big things like the Green River. We’ve got the Cedar River. We’ve got the Snohomish Snoqualmie River. You know, those are kind of obvious. But Bear Creek is a different scale, and so, we were, we were just looking at a lot of different ways. But Bear Creek stands out in many ways, but one of them is community involvement and also the unique topography, geology, whatever, of it.

GS: Well that sets up my final question. Which, uh, would, uh, suggest that Bear Creek is in important, but, perhaps vulnerable. What would you say is the biggest threat to Bear Creek, particularly in County land, or some of the basic source uh, areas for Bear Creek’s health? What’s the biggest threat, and maybe up on Redmond Ridge? I don’t know...

Time Stamp: 1:35’50” highlighting King County’s accomplishment, including pioneering work in mitigating climate change

Time Stamp: 1:37’18” continuing King County highlights, to quote, “So there’s a lot of good things. . . We characterize it as saving fish, but we’re really saving a whole lot more. We’re saving this incredible landscape, what will become old-growth forest, this place for birds and stuff. And the fish may be able to come back -- let’s hope so.”

Time Stamp: 1:37’54” detailing King County’s small failures, especially the recent decline in public involvement in salmon issues on Bear Creek

TL: Okay. Well I think the County has done some amazing things. I think King County is, uh, a leader in so many ways. I used to think that one of the biggest threats was schools, fighting schools, because large -- and churches -- because they were allowed to buy outside of the urban growth area, which the Lake Washington School District and Northshore both did, and um, they would buy big acreage. They would clear it. They had all these exemptions cause they were schools. Some of the worst things I saw happen on Bear Creek, silt and mud and stuff were often school sites. So, that got changed. They didn’t get those clearing exemptions anymore. There was a school siting task force that said they had to locate within the urban growth boundary. So I think the County has done a great job there. And holding the UGA. The Urban Growth Boundary. There’s a lot that they do. The acquisition, restoration and tree planting is amazing. And, and as they go forward with the climate change plan, I don’t know how many people recognize that King County is the only county in the entire nation that went to the Paris Accords and signed it. And also we’re the first county that we know of that has carbon credits for the forested areas. We’re replanting now. That Microsoft or somebody can buy carbon credits right here locally. So there’s a lot of good things going on. I think the fact that the fish are no longer, don’t seem to be here anymore, and that may be somewhat beyond our control. Ocean condition makes it really hard to keep the public interested, and we’ve characterized it as saving fish, but we’re really saving a whole lot more. We’re saving this incredible landscape. What will become old growth forest, a place for birds and stuff, and the fish may be able to come back. Let’s hope so. But also we used to be a lot better at engaging the public through carrot and stick type of approaches, where we gave incentives to help people get in to the public benefit rating system. And we also did enforcement. None of that seems to be happening now. The Basin Stewards were envisioned as um, a liaison with the public. Somebody who would be out educating, helping stream site property owners and whatnot. Now they’re simply acquisition agents. They write grants. So that, which I thought was one of the most amazing, creative things the County did, is gone, and so you’re no longer engaging the streamside property owners and I see egregious things happening. They’re small, but still, that’s where, that’s the scale we’re at for continuing to do the work. King County, I don’t believe their science section is as robust as it used to be. And they used to do a lot of research and monitoring and advocacy. And I don’t think they’re funding that now. It’s hard to find a nexus sometimes for County to spend money in that way. Um, I think, can I talk about, so I don’t see, I guess I don’t see growth management not holding in the, for a long time, but there is a section of Bear Creek that is between the Redmond Watershed and Avondale Road, and it’s in King County, it’s - not the Redmond Watershed, but, sorry ...

GS: Redmond Ridge?

Time Stamp: 1:39’10” worrying about Growth Management below Redmond Ridge, the “urban island dropped on top of the hill out there”

TL: Redmond Ridge and Trilogy, and Avondale Road. And it’s rural. And its, it’s relatively steep and it’s got a lot of streams coming off it. And we’re buying property all along the main stem, which is where the urban growth line is, but we’ve got this weird urban island dropped on top of the hill up there, the fully contained communities, so to speak. And they don’t have, um, a good government structure. They, they’re not incorporated. I don’t know that that would happen. They’re not party of the City of Redmond. They’re still part of King County which is under growth management and with the structure of King County it’s hard for a county to provide urban services like police, and everything else. And so, if you look at how that might be remedied, something gonna, the County’s either going to have to accept the role of providing urban services, or they’re going to have to, um you know, that place is going to have to incorporate, and I see that as the biggest long shot, or it’s going to annex to the City of Redmond. And then how do you hold that rural area in between. And I think that is critical to the whole lower half of Bear Creek.

GS: And I’d extend that area, uh, as a kind of oddity and anomaly and growth patterns, but how does it connect with Brightwater Waste, uh, sewage treatment plant? I understand that, uh, that sewage plant could take capacity, has the capacity to take new hook ups that might come out of the area, that we’re talking about, if there was a need for services to be provided, sewage services.

TL: I’m not sure. I mean, Brightwater is the major urban service that’s located on the line between rural areas and I, I think that we all worried about them triggering the line to move and therefore the area east of there to urbanize. King County swears they put in all the protections, that that wouldn’t happen. I don’t, King County Metro, it’s located in Snohomish County, but it’s a big property on county line, the jurisdiction. I mean, I know it has a lot of capacity. I can’t really make the connection to Redmond Ridge, but, which I believe is on the sewage system already. And City of Redmond provides the water. Water’s an issue too. And City of Redmond already provides water.

GS: And on the list of threats you’d see that as remote, but if, if that area did develop, as you outlined, that could be a, uh, perhaps the biggest threat to Bear Creek’s health?

Time Stamp: 1:42’42” concluding that Bear Creek headwaters have been saved, except in Snohomish County near Maltby

TL: Um, well the biggest threat that we haven’t protected against. I think we’ve saved the headwaters. I think we have actually done that. Although, you know, Snohomish County could develop more in Maltby, and have an effect. That is within the urban growth area. Uh, but we still have a big lot of buffer land tied up, so um, I do think there’s a couple threats within the City of Redmond, also.

GS: Please.

Time Stamp: 1:43’13” crediting Redmond for acquiring the Redmond Watershed and Farrel-McWhirter   

Time Stamp: 1:43’48” worrying about intrusions into buffers on Lower Bear Creek along Avondale Way, also along Bear Creek Parkway

TL: So, um, I think, so Redmond has done amazing things as well. They put a conservation easement on the 800 acre Redmond watershed which didn’t exist. They have bought land all along in places like Jewel Creek and Farrell-McWhirter, and, you know, they’ve done a lot of restoration, and then they’ve bought, the whole urban growth boundary, they seem to be cementing on that side which is great. And they have done a lot of restoration, so I give Redmond a lot of credit. I worry, and again, this is, I may have old information, but, but, what I’ve encountered in the past, and I’m mostly concerned down in the so called Redmond triangle, and that area, is that Redmond not only allowed, but encourages, if they have a trail corridor they want to put through, they put it in the buffer. And maybe their regs have changed, but their regs were that you could put the trail, and this is my Championship Motors, um, issue, because they had, they required the buffer to be set aside, then they required the land owner to put the trail in the buffer, fifty feet from the creek, it’s allowed up to fifty feet from the creek. It’s a twelve foot wide trail, paved, which is no different than the lane of road. And then you have vegetation management on both sides, so you’ve effectively erased the buffer for the purpose the buffer was intended for. So, I don’t know if that’s still the way Redmond manages their, their buffers, in the urban area, but, you know ...

GS: That was the main thing you see needing clarification in Redmond?

TL: Yeah, there’s one other that is maybe more of a longshot. We talk about how nobody wanted 520 to move, but Redmond also has a road on the other side of that. And they’ve only used half the roadway, and the rest of it goes in to what we see as the um, conservation area, and I don’t know that they’ve given up that.

GS: Are you talking about the Sound Transit ...

TL: No.

GS: ... lane?

TL:  Well, I don’t know, because I don’t know where the Sound Transit Lane is.

GS: It’s on the uh, south side of 520.

TL: No. I’m talking about the, what is the road called, the Bear Creek bypass road?

GS: Oh, Bear Creek Parkway.

TL: Bear Creek Parkway. They have not used the full right of way that the city owns, and I would and I would like to say them, have them say, “Well, we’re not going to either, because we need to leave as much as possible for the creek.”

GS: Well, you’ve covered from the headwaters way up in Maltby area down to the area of the confluence

Tape ends abruptly.