Wetlands delineation flags and Canada geese on the future site of Portland Timbers practice field.
If all goes according to plan the Portland Timbers will one day practice right here in Beaverton. Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District has struck a ten-year deal with the soccer team that includes the development of a couple athletic fields and a support facility. The City of Beaverton and THPRD are very excited about this deal and I suspect it will be generally supported by most of the folks in the area. But the construction involved will take a heavy toll on Fanno Creek. Too heavy to be acceptable, in fact. Here’s a general outline of the situation.
The location currently designated for the 7.5 acre training facility lies less than a quarter of mile to the north and west of where Fanno Creek passes under Highway 217. The acreage comprises about half of a larger parcel recently purchased by Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District (THPRD). As outlined by the Army Corps of Engineers in a Public Notice dated 3/15/2011, “THPRD is proposing to construct two multi-use athletic fields, a parking and maintenance lot, and a storm-water retaining bio-swale” on the site. The CORPS goes on to explain that the proposed development will involve filling and grading 1.32 acres of wetlands, 1.17 of which lie directly in the path of the two athletic fields. To mitigate for this impact THPRD “is requesting to purchase 1.32 acres of mitigation credits from the proposed Tualatin Valley Wetland Mitigation Bank (TVWMB) located in Hillsboro.”
There are actually two serious problems here. The first is that more than an acre of Fanno Creek’s wetlands are on the line. Never mind that they are highly degraded wetlands and crappy habitat; they remain wetlands and habitat nonetheless. On their worst day still provide more of a resource for the proper functioning of Fanno Creek than the fields and parking lots currently proposed for the site could ever offer, even if a well designed bioswale and/or retention pond becomes part of the plan. The second issue stems from the mitigation plan, which calls for THPRD to purchase credits from the TVWMB out in Hillsboro. That means any work done to reclaim, restore or otherwise enhance wetlands will take place well outside the Fanno Creek watershed. Taken together these two aspects of the planned development insure that Fanno Creek will be taking a significant hit.
Why is this an issue, one worthy of stirring up a fuss? To cut to the chase the creek simply can’t handle the loss of still more wetlands, crappy and degraded or otherwise. For the creek an acre of functionality – even limited functionality – is more critical than ever before. The developmental pressure on the Fanno Creek system of tributaries, floodplains and wetlands is enormous. The pressure comes from public and private interests alike and is strong enough that every year the actual footprint of the creek shrinks an appreciable amount. This is happening because where regulatory guidelines and statutes are concerned the exception to the rule IS the rule. Put another way, the creek is quite literally being negotiated to death. Those of us who live in the Fanno Creek watershed need to do something to halt and then reverse that process before the creek reaches a second tipping point, one that may be even more serious than the one it reached in the 1960’s.
It’s easy to see how this happens. Developers, planners, even regulators tend to look at individual land use issues within a narrow context that is generally defined by the project itself, along with the regulations and processes involved in obtaining its permits. This narrow context extends to and through the jurisdictional realities involved. Accordingly what may be happening to Fanno Creek’s wetlands in Tigard or Portland or even in the rest of Beaverton won’t have much bearing on this particular situation.
Somewhere out there is another tipping point for the creek, another place in time and space when its functional integrity will become so degraded that once again radical steps will have to be taken to prop up the failing system. That’s happened before, back in the 1960’s when the creek became so polluted that locals called referred to it as “Draino Creek.” If and when such a thing happens again it will be driven by the fact that
In the 1960’s Fanno Creek reached and then passed a tipping point. In that decade it’s degraded state became such a liability that drastic action had to be taken. On that occasion the state shut down all development in the watershed. A measure of how drastic and serious that stepwas is the rate at which the public and private sector addressed the issue. somewhere out there is another tipping point for Fanno Creek, another place in space and time where its ability to function
In dozens of places it quite literally has its back against a wall. The developmental pressures on the creek and its system of tributaries, wetlands and flood plains are enormous and every day they seem to become more so. Increasingly these pressures come from public organizations as well as private ones. Each year acres of vital wetlands disappear from the Fanno Creek system and each year the overall integrity of the system’s floodplains is diminished as well.
This fundamental reality is recognized by the CORPS and every other organization involved in regulating our waterways and wetlands. Hence the need for THPRD “…to mitigate for the functions and values lost by permanently filling (these) wetlands…”
The land in question lies in one of the industrial parks that run down the western side of 217 in a nearly unbroken chain from Allen Boulevard to Greenburg Road. These parks sit on bottomlands that were once valued as farm land but over the years became more valuable as locations for transportation corridors and commerce. From an ecological perspective this three mile stretch of land is some of the most highly degraded property in the Fanno Creek watershed. Much of it has been reclaimed from the swampy wetlands and flood plains that dominated this area in pre-settlement days. By “reclaimed” I mean to say they were filled and then paved to serve as the foundation for a large array of roadways and buildings. The 7.5 acres slated for development into soccer fields somehow escaped a similar fate, but the site is highly degraded nonetheless and at first glance might seem hardly worth a fuss.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post more than an acre of wetlands associated with Fanno Creek are on the line.Never mind that they are highly degraded wetlands and crappy habitat. The fact that they are so crappy and degraded should never be used as an argument to justify their demise. And mitigate they so propose, but not on the site and not even in the same watershed. As a result 57,499 square feet of surface area that once contributed to Fanno Creek’s watershed’s water-cycle will be taken off the watershed map.
Somewhere out there, perhaps very much close at hand, is another tipping point for the creek; a day of reckoning similar in some ways to the one that occurred in the 1960, when all commercial and industrial development in the area was forced to grind to a halt because the creek had become more of a liability and a threat to the health and well being of the community than the asset it is today. If and when that happens again water quality will once again be the driving issue; but this time the cause will be more attributable to a fundamental lack of functioning wetlands and floodplains than it will be to gross pollution. Stormwater runoff will come roaring out of the watershed in even greater volumes and with even greater negative impact on the Tualatin and Willamette Rivers than ever before. The millions of dollars and the forty year long effort that have been invested in changing Draino Creek from an open sewer to something slowly approaching a viable ecosystem will have been lost.
It is crucial to recognize that even well intentioned construction projects such as bike paths, nature centers and sports fields can exact a heavy toll on wetlands and floodplain areas by removing functionality even when they do not remove drainage per se. And it is equally critical to recognize that when the opportunity presents itself we should be increasing, rather than decreasing the Fanno Creek System’s footprint. Hence the need to insist that if the project takes place at all, the mitigation it will require must take place within the Fanno Creek watershed.