Related stories: in April, 1998 and June 1998
By Ryan Teague Beckwith - Daily World Writer , The Aberdeen Daily World , October 7, 1998
The city of Aberdeen and the state Department of Ecology have settled their differences over a release of mud and debris into the Wishkah River last April.
Under an agreement approved by the City Council, the city will pay a minimum of $10,000 toward an environmental project in the watershed upstream of the Malinowski Dam.
In return, Ecology will drop its charge that the city violated the federal Clean Water Act, and the two will work together on a policy on how to run the dam. A $10,000 fine also will be dropped.
The muddy water was released when city staff decided to lower the level of a lake behind the aging dam to fix a broken sluice gate. As the water drained from the dam, it took with it stirred-up sediment that had built up during last year's storms.
A facility manager at the Long Live the Kings private fish hatchery said the muddy water likely killed thousands of wild steelhead eggs and harmed thousands of coho and chinook salmon.
Sandy Rudnick, a spokesperson for the Department of Ecology, said the agency still needs to get formal approval of the agreement. However, she applauded the agreement, saying it was a creative solution to a difficult problem. "The bottom line is we're just trying to protect water quality," she said.
Mayor Chuck Gurrad said he was happy that the effort to build a new water treatment plant on the Wishkah River can get back on track. The city had put the $13.1 million project on hold in June in the wake of the dispute with Ecology.
That decision threw the engineering timeline off by several months, though the treatment plant is still slated to be on-line before next winter.
City Attorney Eric Nelson said engineers will have less time to finish up paperwork. And he said the city is not yet out of the woods yet. Nelson would like to see formal assurances from Ecology that the state will not require Aberdeen to remove the sediment from behind the lake or put unwieldy constraints on the dam.
"It would just be bizarre to try to remove all the sediments. We aren't even sure it could be done," the city attorney said.
"Theoretically, anything is possible, but it would be an incredibly massive project." Nelson plans to meet with Ecology officials in the next few weeks to smooth out the issues, and he said he has his "fingers crossed" that the water plant planning will be on track by next month.
Not everyone was as optimistic. Council member Jack Micheau, who voted against the agreement, said he thinks it sets a dangerous precedent.
"Supposedly, the Clean Water Act does not apply to the release of natural sediments - at least, that's what the council has been advised," Micheau said. The state's fine was based upon a "tenuous application" of federal law and should have been appealed on principle, he argued.
An attorney with experience in environmental law, Micheau said he was not pleased with the sediment release either, but he felt the city should have fought harder to keep its authority over the dam.
"The only plausible action would have been to plow ahead with the appeal process," he said. The councilman added that he was also concerned that the City Council was not included in meetings between the mayor and Ecology officials about resolving the dispute.
"I strongly suspect we weren't told everything (about the dispute)," Micheau said.
Gurrad said that's not so. "I don't know why he would say that," the mayor said.
He agreed with Micheau that the state's case was shaky but said ultimately keeping the water treatment plant on schedule was more important than arguing on principle. "That's one of the reasons we didn't want to go to court over this," the mayor said. "It would have delayed the whole project for so long."