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The Capitol Lake Improvement and Protection Association flies in the face of a state Department of General Administration advisory group’s recommendation last year to remove the Fifth Avenue Dam, which was built in 1951, and reconnect the Deschutes River to Budd Inlet to improve water quality, fish and wildlife habitat and overall Puget Sound health.
The lake preservationists made their case to GA director Joyce Turner in a face-to-face meeting Tuesday afternoon.
They suggested their 50-year action plan to save the lake would be much less expensive than the CLAMP proposal and would keep an iconic piece of the Capitol Campus and downtown Olympia from reverting to a mud flat.
Key features of the lake proposal include:
• Requiring state lawmakers to spend $4.5 million on an emergency dredging of the lake’s north basin in the 2011-13 biennium to keep sediment from spilling into lower Budd Inlet. The 100,000 cubic yards removed would be equal to about three years’ worth of sediment traveling down the river.
“It’s a reasonable approach to dredging, which hasn’t occurred since 1986,” said Bob Wubbena, an Olympia engineer whose family built and owns Fiddlehead Marina in lower Budd Inlet.
• Dredging 70,000 cubic yards out of lower Budd Inlet in the 2013-15 biennium to create a channel to keep sediment from piling up at private marinas, Percival Landing and the Port of Olympia docks. This dredging, estimated to cost $2.4 million, would be a shared financial responsibility of the state, marina owners and City of Olympia.
• Dredging a hole in the middle of the lake’s north basin to serve as a sediment trap for future maintenance dredging.
• Creating a public-private coordinating board to develop a dredge cost-sharing plan and Deschutes watershed management plan.
“Overall, the group has some good ideas worth exploring,” General Administration spokesman Steve Valandra said. He said Turner, who could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon, considers the north basin sediment trap and public-private coordinating board to be innovative ideas.
Turner, recently appointed to the GA top post, also met with members of the pro-estuary Deschutes Estuary Restoration Team on June 24 as she prepares to make a recommendation on the future of the lake to the state Capitol Committee.
“There’s no timetable on a recommendation,” Valandra said. “But she wants to do something sooner, rather than later.”
The CLAMP committee on a split vote recommended the estuary option in September after five years and $1.7 million of studies. Supporting the estuary are Thurston County, the state departments of Ecology, Fish and Wildlife and Natural Resources and the Squaxin Island Tribe. Tumwater and the Port of Olympia want to keep the lake, and Olympia and GA have no stated position. The CLAMP group was dismantled this year by the Legislature.
“We had scientists from all over the world look at this issue, and they concluded that Capitol Lake is a sick body of water,” said former CLAMP chairman and Tumwater City Councilman Neil McClanahan.
McClanahan said the grassroots group of lake supporters, which includes Olympia attorney Allen Miller, former Thurston County Commissioner Les Eldridge and retired Evergreen State College professor Oscar Soule, are well-intentioned but have underestimated disposal costs for dredged sediment and overestimated the ability of a trap in the north basin to capture river sediments.
McClanahan did agree that pollution problems throughout the entire Deschutes River watershed must be addressed, whether the receiving water is a lake or an estuary.
And whether it’s a lake or an estuary, there’s going to be a need for ongoing dredging, Soule noted.
“To me the lake is more attractive and has a historical connection to the state Capitol,” the retired TESC professor said.
John Dodge: 360-754-5444 jdodge@theolympian.com
