Lund’s Gulch

Published 6:51 am Monday, March 3, 2008

The conflict between growth and suburban environmental protection is exemplified in an area north of Lynnwood and Edmonds known as Lund’s Gulch.

Preservation efforts and proposed developments continue simultaneously on the uplands surrounding the gulch, which contains Lund’s Gulch Creek and Meadowdale Beach County Park.

The gulch has occasionally suffered erosion and flooding during the rainy season, much of which residents have blamed on increased development in the watershed.

Last week, the city of Lynnwood bought 21 acres of surplus property near the gulch from the Edmonds School District for $570,000 in Snohomish County grant funds. The sale brings the total amount of land surrounding the park that the city has purchased for preservation in recent years to 98 acres, for a total of more than $3 million.

Since the early 1990s, several residents have worked with the city of Lynnwood to obtain state and county grants to buy the property.

Meanwhile, for six years, a group of residents has been fighting a proposed development at 15004 60th Ave. W. on a plateau above the gulch and near the parking lot for the park. Arbutus Gardens, if it is approved, would feature 55 townhomes on a seven-acre parcel.

Farther west, at 6614 Fisher Road, 13 acres were recently bought for a planned residential development of 70 or more homes, according to resident Carlin McKinley, who turned down the developer’s offer to buy her five-acre parcel near the park.

Residents contend the developments would exacerbate erosion in the gulch and would be out of character with the area’s predominantly single-family neighborhoods.

About 100 people have pitched in to spend more than $5,300 in on consultants and attorneys in fighting Arbutus Gardens, said Michael Knight, a member of Citizens for Meadowdale County Park. About $3,400 has come from the 13 board members of the group, he said.

“We want to protect the integrity of the neighborhood and the stability of the park,” Knight said. “It’s a two-pronged approach.”

In September, the group’s geotechnical consultants convinced deputy Snohomish County Hearing Examiner Ed Good that more testing on soils and groundwater on the site over the winter was needed to guard against runoff. Over the residents’ objections, the rezone allowing the development was approved, but the testing will have to be done before the project gets a final go-ahead.

“That was a major win for us,” Knight said.

John Lakhani, president of the Quilceda Land Group of Everett, the developer for the project, said his geotechnical experts did not believe any further testing was needed.

“Our site is clean and clear and it doesn’t have slope stability issues,” he said. Lakhani said the company’s experts concluded that not only will the project not negatively affect the park, “but that what we do might help” because of a water dispersion system.

Runoff, Lahkani said, “will be controlled. It will be coming out in trickles, as opposed to what might be coming out now.”

Lakhani said his group has done many similar developments around the county and has never encountered this level of opposition. He said they’ve spent two to three times what they normally would spend because of residents’ appeals, he said.

“We are using best practices,” he said of the company’s projects. Arbutus Gardens, he said, “is exceptionally well designed and well thought out.”

The project will benefit the neighborhood, he said, because it will require sewers to be extended to the area, which now is served only by on-site septic tanks.

The city of Lynnwood was among those asking for more environmental studies to be done before the project is approved.

The density of Arbutus Gardens “constitutes a very real threat to the health of Meadowdale Beach Park and Lund’s Gulch Creek,” city parks director Craig Larsen said in a letter to the hearing examiner.

The former school district site purchased by the city, at 160th Street SW and 48th Avenue W., contains a wetland that forms part of the headwaters of Lund’s Creek. Long-term plans are for an educational, interpretive area and a trail on the wetland property, Larsen said. Eventually, the city might increase access to some of the other parcels, though most of them are on steep slopes, he said.

The wetland purchase is critical, Uusitalo said, because it acts as a “sponge,” soaking up excess water that would otherwise rush down the gulch.

Uusitalo, first with his classes at Meadowdale Middle School and on his own since retiring nine years ago, has released up to 10,000 fingerling coho and chum salmon into the creek. The number that return varies between about 40 and 200, he said. This year, it was at the low end.

When there’s flooding in the lower part of the creek, it kicks up the salmon eggs “and they get kind of ground up and then they die,” he said.

Residents say they’re OK with some development, but not at the density of the projects proposed.

“It will affect the park; it will affect the stream,” McKinley said. “The park is like a jewel.”

Bill Sheets is a reporter for The Herald in Everett.