The Snoqualmie Tribe has filed a lawsuit against the city of Snoqualmie to stop development of homes and a hotel on Tokul Road, commonly referred to as the Salish Expansion.
The lawsuit, filed May 27, claims that the development agreement between the city and the Muckleshoot Tribe for the expansion project is based on an outdated environmental determination that violates the State Environmental Policy Act and tribe members’ religious freedom.
The development agreement, first approved in 2004, and updated by the Snoqualmie City Council on May 9, is based on an environmental review done in 2002 by the city.
The review and checklist were used to determine if the project would have any significant impact on the surrounding area. That checklist was used as part of the city’s mitigated determination of non-significance for the project in 2003.
The lawsuit stated that the city did not reference the use of the land by the Snoqualmie Tribe in the checklist.
In the lawsuit, the tribe took issue with checklist question 13, to which the city responded that the proposed project site had no places or objects listed on state or local preservation registers and no evidence of historic, archaeological, scientific or cultural importance on the site.
In January, the city submitted an addendum to the 2003 MDNS, citing no substantial change in significant impacts. The tribe states in the lawsuit that the city failed to respond to a new version of the checklist question 13 that had been updated in 2014.
The revised question was broken up into four parts, according to the lawsuit. Part A asked if there are any buildings, structures, or sites located on or near the site that are more than 45 years old, listed in or eligible for listing in national, state or local preservation registers located on or near the site.
The Snoqualmie Falls was officially recognized as a Traditional Cultural Property by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Register of Historic Places in 2009. The register is the official list of the country’s historic places worthy of preservation as described on its website www.nps.gov/nr. A description can be found here.
The lawsuit did not reference how the city answered this part of the question, but stated that the city failed to respond to parts B, C and D. Part B asked if there any landmarks, features, or other evidence of Indian or historic use or occupation, including burial grounds or material artifacts.
The lawsuit described the area as being of historic cultural and spiritual importance for the tribal members and cites the tribe’s oral history and recent discovery of a projectile point.
It states “Snoqualmie oral tradition supports the existence of burials on the Morgan Parcel. An artifact was discovered on the Tokul Parcel and numerous archaeological sites have been documented on the vicinity of the project.”
The tribe also took issue with parts C and D, stating that an assessment of potential impacts was never done on the Falls and Morgan Parcel (the project site) specifically and the tribe was never consulted.
The lawsuit stated that due to the response to question 13, “the city could not have considered certain required factors in making its threshold determination, including, but not limited to ‘absolute quantitative effects of’ adjacent residential development and increased tourism… the city’s MDNS is clearly erroneous because is not based on information ‘reasonably sufficient’ to determine the environmental impact of the project.”
The tribe also claimed in the suit that the development project violates their religious freedom by excluding tribal members because the burden on the free exercise of religious traditions will be considerable with the hundreds of people the proposed development would bring into the area.
The tribe called for the court to declare the development agreement between the city and the Muckleshoot Tribe null and void, declare that the amendment to the agreement violates SEPA and the tribe’s freedom of religion and declare the 2003 MDNS and the 2016 SEPA addendum invalid.
The tribe also asked for an order to direct the city to do a cultural and archaeological assessment of the project site in collaboration with the tribe.
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