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04/03/2009: "EIS On Dump Selection Appealed"

The FEIS (Final Environmental Impact Statement) has received it’s first appeal. The appeal from Mike Macdonald cites the lack of “adequacy and compliance…with “controlling regulations and codes” of environmental issues for a new transfer station on San Juan Island. In addition to the Macdonald appeal, a second similar appeal has been jointly filed by John Gauthier, Jack Yelvertson, and Juniper Maas.

While the Macdonald appeal is an unusually pellucid statement of complaints, it also contains a bombshell of irony when Macdonald notes the Beaverton Valley site contains an unofficial, and undocumented, existing landfill, the extent of which is unknown.

The site was once used as an airstrip, and was even considered years ago as a possible new location for the Friday Harbor airport. The landfill noted in the appeal resulted from years of filling in the north end of the strip by the dumping whatever was unwanted, including garbage, construction materials, and even junked vehicles.


The dumping, some of which was known, and some unknown, by the previous property owners, came to an end when the County issued an enforcement order years ago that it had to stop; but even today evidence of it is still clearly visible.

The appeal was filed Thursday (4-2-09) by Michael Macdonald, a member of the SWAC (Solid Waste Advisory Committee) and one of two members of SWAC who submitted minority reports (Yelverton letter and Macdonald letter) to the SWAC recommendations to the County Council. ( Related Story)

Macdonald owns property near the Beaverton Valley site that Public Works purchased for $1.8 million as a future location to build a new equipment shop, storage yard and a solid waste transfer station.

After the completion of the sale, public works than began the process of doing a full environment evaluation of the property to determine if it was suitable for the planned use. It is the conclusions reached in that evaluation that has generated the appeal from Macdonald.

In his letter of appeal Macdonald lists what he believes to be “multiple errors and omissions”, including the lack of relevant information necessary to make informed decisions -and meet federal, state, and county regulations- on the environmental impacts of constructing a transfer station on the proposed sites.

The appeals will be heard by the Hearing Examiner

The Letters of Appeal follow:
---------------------------------
April 2, 2009


FEIS Appeal from:
Michael Macdonald
256 Salmonberry Lane
PO Box 1571
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
378-1368

To:
San Juan County Council,
San Juan County Administrator Pete Rose,
Ron Henrickson, Director of the Community Development and Planning Department

Standing to Appeal: Our property borders the Beaverton Valley site on the east side. Our well, and our community well serving eight families, draw from the same aquifer. We are also under the landing pattern of the Friday Harbor Airport and will be directly affected by aircraft safety issues. Insuring that the FEIS adequately address matters of public health, safety, and environmental damage and degradation as required by the applicable regulations will affect us greatly.

The matter being appealed is the adequacy and compliance of the Final EIS of March, 2009 with controlling regulations and codes.

The grounds for the appeal are that the document in question does not meet requirements of the several applicable Washington Amended Code sections and other state and county rules because of multiple errors and omissions. The FEIS does not contain the proper information on the various alternatives for the elected decision makers to determine which will be least harmful to the environment. Entire categories of examination, emphasized by public comment during the SEPA process, are absent or in error. In multiple vital areas concerning the protection of environmental values, the data presented by this EIS is in error or incomplete.

This appeal will be based on an examination of the factual data, as they actually exist on the alternative sites in question. Its method will be to identify and compare the physical features, i.e. wetlands, wells, aquifers, and landfills, to their description or lack of description in the EIS, to identify areas that require addition or correction.

This FEIS is being appealed for demonstrable failures to comply with WAC 197-11-440, EIS Contents, the San Juan County Scope Determination document of November 5, 2007, and multiple federal, state, and county rules, regulations, proscribed procedures, and environmental protections.

WAC 197-11-440 requires that the FEIS “Devote sufficiently detailed analysis to each reasonable alternative to permit a comparative evaluation of the alternatives...” This has not been adequately done in areas of groundwater, stormwater management, aquifers, wetlands, well data and water usage, and topography, among others. Some of the most basic data upon which the entire evaluation and decision-making process depend are either missing or incorrect.

The relief sought will be the correction of errors and omissions not consistent with several codes to provide the San Juan County Council with accurate and complete information upon which to base their pending decision where to locate a trash transfer station. The extent of the relief will be those corrections and additions that will bring this document into compliance before the legislative body makes a decision.

I have read this appeal, believe the contents to be true, and attest to that with my signature.


Michael Macdonald. April 2, 2009


AIR

The DEIS and now the FEIS do not examine compliance with FAA rules governing waste handling facilities under AC 150/5200-33B.

Although the FEIS acknowledges that there are federal regulations that must be complied with, it does not identify the specific document, nor identify the required manner of operation necessary to construct a transfer station within 10,000 feet of the Friday Harbor Airport. The Beaverton Valley site is about 6,000 from the runway and is directly under the landing pattern. In the planning stage, there appear to be numerous violations of the FAA regs that require further examination and correction.

The manner in which the county plans to operate the facility, receiving garbage with opens doors, is deemed in section 2.2d , defining enclosed trash transfer stations, as “incompatible with safe airport operations.”

The construction and demolition debris operation planned for the Beaverton Valley site does not comply with section 2.2 h, which says “Therefore, a C&D facility co-located with another waste disposal operation should be located outside of separations”...(10,000 feet.

Without specifically identifying the restrictions imposed by the FAA regulations, it is impossible for the county council to make an informed decision on the differences between sites. Section 4-1 a. states, “The FAA discourages the development of waste disposal and other facilities ....within the 10,000 foot criteria” and may determine that such a facility is “a hazard to aviation.”


WATER

In places, this FEIS’s failures are linked. The FAA regulations require washing of vehicles and storage trailers to prevent attracting birds. This industrial use of water supplied by a well on the BV site was not studied. Comparisons with other sites were not accomplished, as required by scoping document. Nearly all groundwater data supplied in the EIS is incomplete or inaccurate. There are no hydrogeologic studies. The well data used is out of date or missing. The well on the Beaverton Valley site to be used for this industrial activity is not identified or quantified, nor is the neighboring well also used for commercial and industrial purposes. Specific information on surface and ground water conditions and movement are not included. Plans as submitted violate San Juan County health code.

The FEIS describes mitigation measures for surface and groundwater problems, but nowhere describes what impact development will have that requires mitigation. The BV site drains both into the Friday Harbor and False Bay watersheds, the second and third most threatened watersheds on the island. This is not adequately discussed for comparison to other sites. The BV site is surrounded on four sides by a series of interlinked wetlands, well sites, and replenishment ponds that constitute the threatened water supply for residents of San Juan and Beaverton Valley. The SEPA and WAC regulations require that the data to compare the ecological risks to our aquifers be included in the FEIS. Other alternatives served by town water are not threatened by transfer station location.

This FEIS fails to identify, let alone discuss, wetlands and wells immediately adjacent to the Beaverton site that will be affected by development. Major areas of water usage, groundwater replenishment, and protection from pollution are absent from the EIS. Both state and county code, and the scoping document, require more detailed data for an informed decision.

GROUND

The EIS contains major errors and omissions in the most basic descriptions of physical features essential to understanding the ecological protection of the various alternatives.

In the Beaverton Valley site data, a large and contiguous wetlands into which about half the county property’s stormwater drains is omitted. That wetland’s function for aquifer recharge is unexamined. The relationship of that omitted wetlands to other wetlands and drainage features, both onsite and as a portion of a flow system to an adjacent Class I wetlands, are unexamined.

Surface water flows and drains from the BV site in at least five locations, making it the most complicated of all sites under consideration. The FEIS fails to provide the information to compare the stormwater and drainage differences between sites.

At one corner of the BV site there is a large undescribed landfill. County plans in the FEIS portray extensive development on and near the landfill where debris and discarded vehicles can be observed at the base. Neighbors and previous county enforcement actions indicate it was once used as a dump, partially filling a canyon.

A portion of this landfill forms one containment wall of a pond the county plans to use for stormwater control. All of this is perched directly above a Class I wetlands. The adequacy and compliance with pertinent regulations for development atop and near this unregulated and undescribed landfill is not discussed in the FEIS. Issues of public health and safety cannot be properly discussed without supplying the most basic and required accurate data.

Next to the landfill is a section of bedrock that is steeper than any comparable site in the alternatives under consideration. Plans in the FEIS show building construction and roadways here.

Failure to consider this specific area, among several others, has led to fundamental inaccuracies in the Supplemental Alternatives Analysis, upon which the county council will partially base their decision. It is a prime example of the effect of preventable errors and omissions cascading into more serious errors and perhaps eventually, to an incorrect and indefensible decision. There have been continuing attempts by members of the public to correct these errors, so far denied. This appeal is one of the final places to make those corrections.

Examination by the appeals process will determine that this FEIS is not protective of the environment, that alternatives are not described in an environmentally neutral manner, that the public and the county council has not been informed in a credible, objective, clear, and concise manner about the extent and complexity of both impacts and mitigations. This FEIS fails to meet these and other requirements. While not a direct concern of the EIS, all cost estimates, important to the decision makers, are false and incomplete until the underlying data supplied by the document are corrected.

The alternatives for the transfer station location siting were not properly evaluated. The most vital components for the council to perform accurate and complete cost/benefit and risk/benefit analyses are absent or incorrect.

That is why my neighbors and I are standing to appeal.

Michael Macdonald

------------------

April 2, 2009

Mr. Ron Henrickson
Director of the Community Development and Planning Department
Responsible Official for the SEPA Process
San Juan County
Friday Harbor, Washington

Dear Mr. Henrickson:

The undersigned petitioners are residents of San Juan Island having standing in this matter as occupants of residential properties in the neighborhood of a property under consideration as the site for development into a new Solid Waste Transfer Station.
Our names and contact information are:

John Gauthier
150 Home Place
Friday Harbor, Washington

Juniper Maas
1328 Beaverton Valley Road
Friday Harbor, Washington

Jack Yelverton
1661 Lampard Road
Friday Harbor, Washington

We are owners and/or occupants of residential properties which, like several dozen others, would be seriously affected and devalued and with residents thereof subjected to potential hazards to health and peaceful existence by a decision to locate a new Transfer Station on land at 1609 Beaverton Valley Road (“BVR” herein). We ask the Hearing Examiner to rule that the Final Environmental Impact Statement (“FEIS”)and the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (“DEIS”) are inadequate and do not contain vital facts and analyses essential for decision makers to come to well-informed judgments. We ask the Hearing Examiner to consider the following:

1. The Final Environmental Impact Statement states: “The DEIS and all technical appendices and background data are formally incorporated by reference in this FEIS.” These publications contain many errors of fact and omissions that invalidate their use as required under WAC 197-11-440 requiring that the FEIS must “devote sufficiently detailed analysis to each reasonable alternative to permit a comparative evaluation of the alternatives…”

2. The FEIS contains omissions and factual errors. No ground or surface water data are contained in the FEIS and the DEIS data are incomplete and contain significant omissions, including omissions of data on domestic water wells in the vicinity of the BVR site.

3. Wetlands described in the FEIS are not consistent with the National Wetlands Inventory of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and in some cases wetland boundaries are not consistent with federal and state definitions and guidance.

4. Potential geologic hazards such as slope stability were not discussed or analyzed.

5. Neither FEIS nor DEIS discusses the County’s contractual obligation to construct a ten feet high by 48 feet wide by 600 feet long berm along the southern boundary of the BVR site nor of the source of the material to be used in building this structure. This structure cannot be built without environmental impact; this is not addressed.

6. The FEIS does not meet County Code (Chapter 18.06) requirements for subdivisions that require:
A. Description of geologic setting of the site with geologic and soil maps.
B. Description and occurrence of movement of underground water in the area.
C. Discussion of groundwater availability in the area and historic problems.
D. Scaled map showing all wells and springs within 1000 feet of the site.
While this obligation is directed to subdivisions, no less standard should apply to a complex transfer station with even greater risk of contamination.

7. The County’s Critical Aquifer Recharge Area Ordnance (SJCC 18.30.140) states that all San Juan County is highly susceptible to contamination, that high vulnerability is indicated by activities that contribute to the risk of contamination and it specifically lists solid waste handling facilities as potential problem areas. The FEIS does not address the impact of transfer station location on the sanitary setbacks related to water wells.

8. FAA guidelines require specific design, structural and operational standards must be met for development and operation of a transfer station within 10,000 feet of an airport. The FEIS acknowledges this requirement, but makes the misleading statement that “coordination with FAA may be required”. FAA guidelines, however, are specific and detailed. The FEIS omits discussion of these requirements.

9. In discussion of groundwater discharge from BVR, the FEIS fails to acknowledge the existence of an abandoned landfill on the property.

We, the petitioners, can present documentation and expert testimony to support these claims, and we beg the Hearing Examiner to rule that the FEIS is inadequate and therefore invalid because of numerous errors and omissions. We have read this document and we believe its contents to be true.

Sincerely,

Juniper Maas
John Gauthier
Jack Yelverton

CC: Mr. Pete Rose, County Administrator