EDMONDS — The city of Edmonds has work to do on Perrinville Creek.
On Friday, City Hearing Examiner Phil Olbrechts decided city staff must address safety issues about a corroded pipe that connects the last few hundred feet of stream to Puget Sound, and consequently restore fish passage along the lower portion of the creek.
The decision is the latest update in a saga of controversial stream management stemming back 40 years ago, when homeowners and Edmonds city staff began altering Perrinville’s route.
The ductile iron pipe runs from a flow splitter next to Talbot Road to Puget Sound, underneath a Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad.
The pipe and flow splitter are an impossible obstacle for fish, but also a potential danger to the community and surrounding environment.
Years of high tides and saltwater have eroded the metal, and rock has begun to crack through the pipe. Trains running above the pipe could shift the rock, crushing the pipe and causing a train derailment.
“The potential for a catastrophic railroad accident due to the corroded, undersized [pipe owned by the] City of Edmonds is high. Yet the City has decided to ignore this risk,” Bill Lider, a Lynnwood engineer who testified against Edmonds during the hearing said in an email on Monday.
Olbrechts agreed with Lider’s reasoning.
“Overall, as framed by Mr. Lider, the consequences of being wrong on the defect issue are human lives,” he wrote. “The costs of making an iron-clad safety assessment are relatively modest in comparison.”
Through his decision, Olbrechts revoked the city’s Determination of Non-Significance. The determination, a part of the State Environmental Protection Act, would have allowed the city to continue maintenance of a flow splitter that blocked off the stream’s natural channel for fish, making it impassable for migrating salmon.
“We’re reviewing the decision and evaluating our possible next steps,” Edmonds spokesperson Kelsey Foster said in an email on Tuesday.
Edmonds will work with the railroad, Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, local tribes and neighboring property owners to create a bridge or box culvert under the BNSF railroad tracks, allowing Perrinville Creek and anadromous fish to pass under the tracks, according to the decision document.
Eliza Aronson: 425-339-3434; eliza.aronson@heraldnet.com; X: @ElizaAronson.
Eliza’s stories are supported by the Herald’s Environmental and Climate Reporting Fund.
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