DARRINGTON – For almost two years, the Mountain Loop Highway has been out of the loop, and some residents in Darrington are pressuring federal officials to fix the flood-damaged backcountry road.
Not so fast, an environmental group says.
Pilchuck Audubon Society of Everett opposes reopening the damaged section of road, preferring instead to maintain it as a corridor for wildlife, hikers and bicyclists.
This timber town’s efforts also are being delayed by a familiar obstacle: environmental regulations designed to protect threatened fish. U.S. Forest Service officials hope to clear the hurdles by spring with what they say is a fish-friendly road design.
A record flood on the Sauk River in October 2003 washed out parts of the road along a several-mile stretch of the highway southeast of town. The loop, which connects Darrington to Granite Falls, is still severed and inaccessible to vehicles in that area.
The Pilchuck Audubon Society might resort to appealing the project or taking it to court, said Katherine Johnson, the group’s forest practices chairwoman.
“It depends on what they come up with,” she said, referring to the Forest Service.
For Louis Ashe, a longtime Darrington resident, the idea of not fixing the loop highway is maddening. The town relies heavily on tourists who use the road, she said.
“The people around here are really getting tired of what’s going on,” Ashe told a group that included state Rep. Kirk Pearson, R-Monroe, and Snohomish County Councilman John Koster at the Darrington Community Center this week.
“I may step on toes,” Ashe said. “We’re going to get our forest back.”
The Pilchuck Audubon Society has a different idea, as evidenced by comments turned in to the Forest Service as part of the road project’s environmental assessment.
“The Pilchuck Audubon Society supports a complete road closure, with road decommissioning, removal of all culverts and re-vegetating a minimum of one half of the road” width, Johnson wrote.
The other half, she said, should be left for nonmotorized trail users.
“The road is not sustainable, as it washes out approximately every 10 years,” Johnson wrote.
She added that rebuillding the road would hurt spotted owls, marbled murrelets, bald eagle roosts, salmon and mountain goat winter habitat. The project eventually would lead to more sediment to bury salmon spawning beds and choke fish when the road inevitably washes out again, she said.
At the meeting in Darrington, Wayne Hamilton, a Forest Service engineer, said the project was specifically designed to avoid working in the Sauk River. The road would be rerouted at some washouts to keep equipment on land and protect fish, he added.
The delays have not been a question of engineering but rather working through various agencies to get environmental approval, Hamilton said.
“We were positive we’d be working on some of those roads in the first summer. Now, we’re fairly sure it will be next spring, but that depends on National Marine Fisheries (Service),” Hamilton said.
One of the holdups with the fisheries service is that relocating the road would require excavating a significant amount of large rock, Hamilton said. The fisheries service is concerned that loud excavation so close to the main channel could pose a problem when fish are active, he said.
“Sound bothers the fish,” Hamilton said.
“Oh my God!” Koster said in exasperation.
At the meeting in Darrington, Pearson said he and Koster would contact the fisheries service to emphasize residents’ frustrations.
Not all environmentalists oppose reopening the loop.
Steve Hinton, representing the fisheries interests of the Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle tribes, indicated in written comments that the tribes do not oppose fixing the road.
He did point out a few concerns the tribes would like addressed first, though, including moving the road farther from the river.
“In general, we believe the proposal to reconstruct Mountain Loop Highway is well-designed with respect to fish habitat, given the limited availability of emergency repair funds and the need to reconstruct the road in difficult terrain,” Hinton wrote.
Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@ heraldnet.com.
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