Save the Cedar River Newsletter
A newsletter of Save the Cedar River, a campaign to protect the Cedar river in western Washington. Brought to you by Citizens to STOP the SR169 Asphalt Plant Legal Fund, a 501(c)(3) organization. Your contributions are tax deductible!
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Welcome!
Welcome to our first issue of the Save the Cedar River Newsletter. For those of you new to our cause (or need a refresher), here’s how we got here:
In October 2017, a community member received a notice in the mail of a proposed land use within 500 feet of his home: a hot mix asphalt plant. Alarmed, he posted on his neighborhood Facebook group and asked if others had received the same notice. Few had. An industrial activity next to a rural neighborhood? And across from the Cedar River? It seemed impossible to believe. Checking the address (18825 SE Renton Maple Valley Road, Renton WA 98058), neighbors went to the proposed site and observed a “Notice of Proposed Land Use” sign. The sign, located parallel to a 50 MPH highway, went undetected until now. It described how to send it public comments, but the comment period was nearly expired. Immediately, the community began organizing. A protest with 25 attendees took place at the site 48 hours later. Calls and emails began to our King County Council Representative Reagan Dunn as well as the Department of Permitting & Environmental Review (DPER), which makes the acceptance or rejection permitting decision. These efforts resulted in an extension of the public commenting period and hundreds of comments were submitted by concerned community members and organizations.
Community outreach activities expanded to include:
· Monthly protests at the site and community meetings;
· Contacting public officials and testifying at public meetings;
· Maintaining a presence on NextDoor, Twitter, Facebook, and Change.org;
· Handing out flyers and posting on local bulletin boards;
· Booths at local festivals and farmers markets;
· Door knocking in nearby neighborhoods to raise awareness and funds;
· Organizing several garage sale fundraisers; and
· Contacting, educating, and building relationships with all potentially interested parties, including the local media outlets, the local Indian tribe and numerous environmental groups.
In March of 2019, our community’s efforts formalized into 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. Several attorneys were interviewed, and the agreed upon team hired. A Crowdrise.com web site was set up to make it easy for people to donate to the fight. All of our activities promote our mission of preventing an asphalt plant across from the Cedar River, and this means raising money for our legal case through building awareness of what Lakeside Industries is attempting to do. To date, we’ve raised roughly $30,000.
Our Success To Date
Because of the efforts of our organization, we have managed to keep this asphalt plant out of our neighborhood for nearly two years. As mentioned earlier, after a few in the community received a deficient notice of the proposed building of the plant, we protested to the Metropolitan King County Council and were able to get the comment period extended. Then, our continued efforts resulted in the Council placing a six-month moratorium on the review of the permits. Those efforts also resulted in King County Department of Permitting and Environmental Review (DPER, now called Department of Local Services) making detailed requests to the permit applicant, Lakeside Industries, resulting in further delays. There is no question that, without the efforts of our organization, an asphalt plant would have been built next to the Cedar River and in our neighborhood a long time ago.
The Latest
The most common question we get from community members is, “When is something going to happen?” Based upon correspondence from the King County Department of Local Resources, Permitting Division (formerly known as DPER), we expect action on both permit applications sometime in September. We have subscribed to DLS’s distribution list for these permits and should be notified as soon as there is some action. We will notify all of you immediately when we hear something.
How Are Your Donations Being Spent?
Save the Cedar River is a 501(c)(3) non-profit. All board members, officers, and committee members are volunteers who have collectively donated thousands of hours of their time and thousands of dollars to promote our cause. Nearly all of your donations have gone or will go to our law firm, Bricklin & Newman, LLP, a well-respected land use and environmental law firm located in downtown Seattle. The firm expects that our legal action against the permits, once issued, will cost approximately $100,000. Roughly 50% of that amount will go to attorney’s fees, 40% to expert witnesses, and 10% for court fees and litigation fees. The balance of the donations we have received have gone to printing and advertising, our website, and fees to the state of Washington.
Why are we going to win?
The idea of building what is essentially a petroleum processing plant next to the Cedar River and residential neighborhoods is absurd. An ordinance issued in November of 2017 by the Metropolitan King County Council to delay construction of the plant noted that “The upper part of the Cedar river is the source for drinking water for the1.4 million people in the greater Seattle area, and the Cedar river provides aquatic habitat for chinook salmon, coho salmon, sockeye salmon, kokanee, winter steelhead, bull trout and coastal cutthroat,” and went on to state that “Residential properties surrounding these industrial parcels rely on groundwater for potable water sources,” and further cites the “potential impacts of contamination from industrial uses on water quality in close proximity to the Cedar River.” We believe that we will win based on the potential environmental impact on the Cedar River and the surrounding communities. We also believe that building the plant on the proposed site violates the King County Comprehensive Plan, as described by the state’s Growth Management Act.
Who else is in opposition?
Water District 90, the City of Renton, the Sierra Club, the Cedar River Council, and the Greater Maple Valley Unincorporated Area Council have all expressed their opposition to the plant. However, we believe that the sheer number of residents who are opposed to this plant will be what decides whether it goes forward or is stopped, and this is why we need your support.
How You Can Help
There are multiple ways you can help our cause:
1. Contribute to the legal fund. Our lawyer is excellent but good lawyers are expensive and when we go to trial to stop the plant before it gets built the costs will be high, to say the least. Options include:
a. Mail a check payable to:
Save the Cedar River
PO Box 1052
Maple Valley WA 98038
b. CrowdRise (GoFundMe). Go online to https://www.crowdrise.com/o/en/campaign/savecedarriver
2. Put up “No Asphalt on the Cedar River” and “Save The Cedar River” signs. You likely have already seen these signs. Putting them everywhere spreads the word and gets more people into the fight.
3. Sign or share our Change.org petition. Currently, we have nearly 7,000 signatures. Go to www.SaveTheCedarRiver.org for more information.
4. Share our videos with others. We have two professionally produced videos (short and long) that support our cause. Links: https://youtu.be/UiDBOuaoIhI and https://youtu.be/H7j--biLWzg
5. Volunteer. Everyone has something that they can contribute. Contact us at noasphalt169@gmail.com to learn more.
6. Attend Community Meetings. Sat., Sept. 21st, 11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. at Grace Christian Church, 19030 SE 168th St, Renton, WA 98058.
7. Send a letter or email to King County’s permitting department. King County’s permitting department, which will be responsible for determining if an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is required, is called the Department of Local Services, Permitting Division.
Their mailing address is:
35030 SE Douglas Street, Suite 210
Snoqualmie, WA 98065-9266.
The program/project manager for this is Fereshteh Dehkordi; her email is: Fereshteh.Dehkordi@KingCounty.gov.
The permit application numbers are: COMM18-0014 and SHOR18-0032. When you sent a note, request that an EIS be mandated for this project.
Thank you to the Save the Cedar River Team!
Website: https://www.savethecedarriver.org/
Email: noasphalt169@gmail.com