There may not be an easy fix for flooding or water quality issues in the Lake Ballinger watershed but residents were encouraged to share their concerns during a meeting on Nov. 12 at the Lake Ballinger Golf Course.
“What are you hoping comes out of this Strategic Action Plan,” Penny Mabie, of EnviroIssues asked a roomful of residents from jurisdictions within the Ballinger and McAleer Creek watershed.
The question provoked a mixture of responses including a desire to find ways to manage the inflow of stormwater to Lake Ballinger and the outflow to Lake Forest Park. Another request highlighted a need for better education about the watershed. One individual hoped for a day when her grandchildren could go swimming in the lake.
Edmonds resident Arline Fahey’s request was one repeatedly shared concern. She doesn’t want the home she and her husband lived in since 1949 to flood for the third time in twelve years.
“I appreciate you’re doing something about (flooding) because it’s very scary every time it rains,” she said. “We don’t want to get flooded again.”
A group of technical staff and officials from Edmonds, Lake Forest Park, Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace and Snohomish County hope to find solutions to the watershed’s problems by acting on an interlocal agreement. However, changes many residents hope for can’t happen until the group agrees on the watershed’s problems, according to DJ Wilson, an Edmonds city councilman who co-chairs the Lake Ballinger Watershed Study Forum.
“The last thing we want to do is put a study together, feel good about ourselves and never do anything about it. But that’s a distinct possibility,” Wilson said. “If we can agree on the problem then we can talk about agreeing on the solution … but we have to get everybody on the same page about what the problem is first.”
Part of figuring out the problems associated with the watershed involves studying how the watershed has changed over the past 60 years, Joe Simmler, project manager for Otak said.
A well was installed near the north end of the lake for the purpose of monitoring the groundwater in relationship to the lake water levels, he said. The data will help the technical team come up with short term and long term solutions for dealing with overflow.
A draft of a Strategic Action Plan should be available in March, Simmler added.
Waiting on the results of another study is frustrating, Edmonds resident Meg Stecker-Thorsen said.
“My hope is you can come up with all the solutions,” she said. “But if we don’t have money for funding then we’re back to square one because we don’t have the money to fix (the watershed problems).”
The Strategic Action Plan is funded by a Department of Ecology appropriation of $200,000 allocated earlier this year by the state legislature to study surface water and groundwater issues that affect Lake Ballinger and McAleer Creek. Additional state funding may be possible because the process includes analysis and resources from multiple jurisdictions, Forum co-chair and Lake Forest Park councilman Don Fiene said.
“By having five jurisdictions working together on this we greatly increase our opportunity for funding from the state legislature,” Fiene said. “It’s definitely our intent to keep the ball rolling passed what the study indicates for what is the best action plan. We’re really just in phase one for many phases to come.”
The next meeting of the Lake Ballinger Watershed Study Forum will begin at 2 p.m. on Dec. 16 at Edmonds City Hall, 121 5th Ave. N. in Edmonds. More information about the Forum is available at www.cityoflfp.com/city/engineering/stormwater/LBal-McACreek.html.
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