Bitter end for Smith Island ranch

Published 11:42 pm Sunday, March 8, 2009

SMITH ISLAND — Mark Convey pointed out his favorite horse, Cody Boy, who was chomping on blackberry brambles behind a split-rail fence on a recent sunny evening.

Looking across green pastures, surrounded by snow-covered mountains, he reflected on his mostly peaceful life at the River Delta Ranch.

“It’s gorgeous out here. I think it’s heaven,” said Convey, 48, a gravelly-voiced hand who has lived for seven years in a double-wide near the barn. “I’m right in between Marysville and Everett and I don’t have a neighbor for three miles.”

Now the last ranch and Convey’s way of life on Smith Island are about to fade into the sunset.

The ranch, on the island at the mouth of the Snohomish River, was bought in 2007 as part of Snohomish County’s largest ever chinook salmon habitat restoration project. Convey and the ranch’s two dozen horses must be gone by the end of April.

The county doesn’t have enough money now to complete the $13 million restoration project. It does have a state grant that would pay for the demolition of a barn, Convey’s mobile home, and some fences and other outbuildings. Other phases of the project would come as funds become available.

If the county doesn’t spend the state grant money by June 30, it will lose the money, county officials say.

“We’re trying to be good stewards of the money that the state has given to us,” said Christopher Schwarzen, spokesman for County Executive Aaron Reardon.

Of the $416,000 grant, Schwarzen said about $150,000 was set side for demolition, relocation assistance for displaced tenants and compensation to the ranch owners for lost business.

People who board their horses at River Delta say they are outraged by what they consider a waste of tax dollars and the unnecessary destruction of a viable business.

“What are they going to gain by kicking us out of here?” asked Dana Snider of Everett, who keeps two thoroughbreds at the ranch. “They’re going to bulldoze it all, then it will stay empty.”

The ranch generates about $20,000 in rent for the county every year.

County officials hope to complete the 500-acre restoration project by 2013, but with the state’s budget crisis and the county’s own financial struggles, it is not clear whether the work will be done on time.

With boarding fees of $75 per month for each horse, River Delta is a comparative bargain to other places in the county that charge prices that can easily reach $300 a month per horse.

Snider, a bartender at Ivar’s Mukilteo Landing, said the ranch is practically run as a nonprofit, which allows people of even modest incomes to enjoy being horse owners.

The expense of horse ownership in a slumping economy with rising unemployment rates has resulted in an surge of neglected, unwanted and euthanized horses; crowded rescue facilities; and an uptick in horses shipped to Canadian and Mexican slaughterhouses to be killed for meat.

Part of the problem with the county’s approach, some boarders say, is that they were given little warning, and they were asked to leave during the middle of the winter feeding season. A sudden change in diet at that time can trigger colic, which is often deadly.

Schwarzen said the county is trying to strike a “balance that will allow us to proceed with the project and allow those folks more time to find other locations for their horses.”

If everyone leaves the ranch by the end of April, they will receive a payment for relocation costs, Schwarzen said. The exact amount hasn’t been determined. If some decide to stay, everyone will forgo compensation and the county will permit them to stay until Oct. 31, or possibly as late as April 30, 2010, Schwarzen said.

The push to convert Smith Island farmland back to tidal marsh for chinook salmon began soon after the fish was put on the federal endangered species list in 1999.

The county’s plan is to eventually breach thousands of feet of the old dikes near Everett’s sewer treatment plant to allow the Snohomish River tides to flood about 500 acres of what is now mostly fallow farmland.

Doug Hannam, an Everett architect who has boarded horses on Smith Island for 16 years, said being close to the city is one of its best features.

At River Delta, he can ride his horse on hundreds of acres farmland and often sees wildlife: hawks, ducks, geese, blue herons and bald eagles.

Smith Island is named after Dr. Henry A. Smith, a pioneer physician best known for his disputed translation of a speech given by Chief Seattle to the governor of the Washington Territory. In the mid-1800s, Smith built an extensive system of dikes on Smith Island in an attempt to create farmland protected from river flooding.

“They’re talking about creating new habitat, but they are not talking about the habitat that they’re taking away,” Hannam said. “You’re not really creating new habitat. You’re replacing one type of habitat with another.”

David Chircop: 425-339-3429, dchircop@heraldnet.com.