Olympia City Council supports allowing Capitol Lake to revert to an estuary

The Olympia City Council has decided to support a plan to allow Capitol Lake to revert to an estuary.

The man-made lake that serves as a reflecting pool for the state Capitol has long been a symbol of Olympia. But for years the lake has been closed due to poor water quality and invasive species that threaten the lake’s ecosystem.

After years of study and debate about the lake’s future, at the end of June, the state Department of Enterprise Services (DES) released a draft environmental report on Capitol Lake and surrounding bodies of water that lists options.

The report has three options for fixing the lake: turn it into a managed lake; restore it to an estuary by removing the Fifth Avenue dam and connecting the lake with Puget Sound; or a hybrid of the two.

Of the three options, the draft report says building and maintaining an estuary would cost the least over the next 30 years: between $179 million and $336 million. Turning the lake into a managed lake would cost between $337 million to $607 million, and turning it into a hybrid would cost between $249 million and $463 million.

DES is gathering public comment now and will publish a final Environmental Impact Statement regarding the lake and how they will manage it on or before June 30, 2022.

The Olympia City Council has decided it prefers the estuary alternative. It voted Tuesday night to send a letter to DES listing multiple reasons for their position, including the benefits it would have on fish and marine life and the lower cost of maintenance.

Council member Dani Madrone, who works for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, said restoring the lake to an estuary would help the beleaguered salmon population in the Puget Sound and bring more people downtown. But she is disappointed at how long the process is taking.

“The state really needs to move forward on this,” she said.

Eric Christensen, Olympia’s director of water resources, said the city has prioritized the environment and economics in their decision-making and concluded the estuary option would be the most beneficial for the area.

Council member Lisa Parshley said removing the dam would greatly improve the water quality in both the lake area and the Puget Sound.

If the estuary is the option the state pursues, both the dam and the Fifth Avenue bridge would be removed. The City Council is asking that Olympia receive a temporary bridge structure for Fifth Avenue to make sure traffic doesn’t become a problem during construction of the estuary.

This story was originally published August 11, 2021 at 9:58 AM.