Sauk River Estates, Nielsen Brothers negotiate path forward.
Last year, tenants of Sauk River Estates near Concrete — a community of 83 manufactured homes — banded together to appeal a Department of Natural Resources permit allowing a logging company to clear 54 acres of the neighboring hillside without an environmental impact assessment. The hearing was set for this April.
In the meantime, Nielsen Brothers Inc. — the Bellingham-based logging company in question — hired Icicle Creek Engineers to conduct a field assessment challenging the findings of Sauk River Estate President Alex Gray’s consultants. The field assessment, unlike the desktop slope stability assessment done by Aspect Consulting in an office earlier last year, found that the risk of landslide can be reasonably mitigated.
Despite the reassurance on safety risk, tenant concerns have expanded beyond a landslide.
In the neighborhood, there is no obvious distinction between the plots and the forest at the base of a 1,300-foot hill. Mossy maples entangle the community. Residents string lights and hang decorations on evergreens.
When Icicle Creek Engineers turned over its findings to Gray last November, Gray’s lawyer looked it over and agreed with them, he said.
“The hearing is kaput,” Gray said. “There wasn’t a lawyer on the planet that could have gotten the (Pollution Control Board) and the assistant attorney general to decide on us.”
Gray had his own crew confirm the findings of the report in the field.
“We all literally sang in a chorus, we need to negotiate. We don’t have a case,” he said.
While having no DNR obligation to do so, Nielsen Brothers agreed to negotiate terms with Sauk River Estates to make the logging process easier for Gray and his tenants.
“We’re always just trying to do our best at the end of the day,” said Sam Petska, Nielsen Brothers forester.
Negotiations
Gray agreed to allow loggers to use the Sauk River Estates private road, which is closer to the worksite. Denying this would have hardly delayed the project, Gray said, and in return Nielsen Brothers have agreed to repair and enhance the road at no extra cost.
Further, Nielsen Brothers has agreed to give space to areas of high concern to the tenants.
Kim Skarda purchased her property in the Sauk River Estates 16 years ago. Her pumphouse sits 20 feet from the road used by Nielsen Brothers.
“(Skarda is) torn up about it because her property is right on the edge of it,” Gray said, “but I managed to get them to agree to move their landing site away from her property by (about 20 yards), which should mitigate some of the worries she had about her well.”
According to Skarda, this isn’t a fair deal for the destruction of the forest bordering her property.
“I was supposed to be thankful somehow, according to Alex, that that happened. I don’t know why,” she said. “He seems very happy that it’s all fair and just, and I personally am really surprised it all happened the way it did.”
If he had the money, Gray said he would have bought the hillside before Nielsen Brothers and kept the forest.
“This is an honest deal, and these folks that are going to come up and do the hillside, it’s their job, and they bought it,” he said. “They own it. They negotiated with us. I think it’s the best deal we could come up with.”
The assessment
Nielsen Brothers will clear-cut 54 acres of mature conifer and occasional deciduous trees using cables and yarding trees downhill to a landing at a level area. Icicle found that the risk of rockfall to the estates and to the Sauk River is low and can be mitigated.
While Aspect’s desktop review found topographic landforms that converge with steep slopes 70% grade and over 10 feet in height across the hill, during Icicle’s field review, consultants found that those areas were dry — no streams, springs or seepage that may cause hazardous runoff.
Any groundwater that drains to the Sauk River valley will be small and quickly incorporated into the aquifer, the report states.
Icicle marked areas for limited harvest to mitigate risk and strategies for timber falling and yarding to not displace boulders.
Who is liable?
Icicle notes that its recommendations are not to be taken as a warranty, which Skarda said is a major concern.
“There are always risks related to slope stability issues in mountainous areas,” the report reads. “These areas are naturally active geologically with respect to mass wasting, erosional and sedimentation processes exacerbated by other factors such as earthquakes, extreme precipitation events and climate change. This risk related to slope stability issues can be reduced using currently accepted and prescribed methods, but the risk cannot be eliminated.”
Just 26 miles from the Sauk River Estates, perhaps the deadliest landslide in U.S. history occurred on March 29, 2014; an unstable hill four miles east of Oso fell onto the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River. It swallowed a neighborhood, killed 43 people and destroyed 49 homes.
The Stillaguamish River Valley of Oso had been logged throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, and a 1986 study published in Environmental and Engineering Geoscience found that prior to logging, landslides correlated to long-term precipitation trends, and landslides increased significantly following logging.
However, it is unclear if logging is the true culprit — data shows that similar landslides have occurred near Oso for at least 2,000 years, long before timber harvest, and scientists believe that groundwater and rainfall at the time played a major role in the speed and impact of the slide.
Dan Raas, an associate justice with the Tulalip Tribal Court of Appeals and retired long-time attorney for the Lummi Nation with a practice heavily focused on natural resources, confirmed that in the case of a landslide, Icicle’s assessment would not protect Nielsen Brothers from liability.
One of the bases of a potential lawsuit from the Sauk River Estates in the case of a landslide could be that Nielsen Brothers negligently or intentionally ignored the risks posed by the operation, he said. There would be claims against the DNR’s permit class decision which allowed Nielsen Brothers to not conduct an environmental impact assessment. Skagit County and any subcontractors involved would also be defendants.
Icicle’s report would be introduced as evidence that Nielsen Brothers and DNR did all that they were required to do to discover and mitigate landslides. Sauk River Estates would dispute these findings with its own consultants and point to, among other claims, the omission of any discussion with the neighborhood.
A jury would decide, Raas said, though most of such cases settle.
Beyond a landslide
While the assessment affirms Nielsen Brothers can mitigate the risk of a landslide, the work is a major inconvenience to residents, Skarda said.
While Petska said there is no defined timeline for the work, trucks have been hauling in materials in preparation.
“I was there for a day with it going on, and it is so incredibly loud, and it is so incredibly disruptive that I can’t be there,” Skarda said. “My heart goes out to my neighbors.”
For her, the destruction of the forest is just as important as the potential destruction of her property.
“It’s just really sad, the thought of them stripping that beautiful forest,” she said. “I mean, the trees are one thing, it’s got so much more than the trees. The forest has much biodiversity in it, it’s got native flowers and ferns and mushrooms, and it’s a rainforest that’s still intact. If they keep scraping away, and if they just do their usual and just remove all the understory, it’s not going to come back.”
Skarda has been speaking with a realtor about selling her property.
“They’ve completely taken away the refuge that it was to me,” she said, “and I didn’t realize it when I bought the place that was all a potential. I can’t believe that the HOA put a community of homes in a place that was at risk for that to happen. I really was pretty naive when I bought the place.”
— By Sam Fletcher