Tribe drilling hits water surge

Published 12:54 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

SNOQUALMIE – Efforts by the Snoqualmie Tribe to find water on a site outside of the city they want to build a casino on was fruitful.

Perhaps a little too fruitful.

On Friday, Feb. 14, representatives from the Snoqualmie Tribe and a private drilling company were drilling test bores for water at the site of the proposed casino in unincorporated King County just outside of Snoqualmie. The proposed 170,000-square-foot casino would be on a 54-acre swath of land that is bordered by 378th Street Southeast and Southeast 86th Street. The Tribe has an agreement with the landowner to purchase the land but is still awaiting approval to build the casino from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

Washington State Department of Ecology (DOE) spokesman Larry Altose said DOE officials were called out to the site on a tip from a resident who said sediment from the drilling was getting into a tributary that feeds Kimball Creek.

Altose said engineers from the DOE, along with King County employees, responded to the site. Once they got there they saw that the drill operated by Holt Drilling of Milton was not using a proper method for retrieving the sediment that was coming out of the hole, such as putting up a “fence” or a tank that captures sediment. He said that while drilling the hole the company had hit some white rock that caused a turbid or “milky” appearance to the water. The water was clearing up by the time the engineers arrived.

Snoqualmie Tribe Administrator Matt Mattson said that while the company was drilling, a surge of water came up and spilled sediment from the hole.

“Once we saw that, we stopped immediately,” Mattson said.

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