Do you want to fill a Town Hall sometime? Just announce a meeting to discuss a proposed hydroelectric project anywhere on Washington State rivers. The knee jerk reaction is almost always not just “No!” It’s “Hell, No!”
And so it is with the small hydro being proposed on the North Fork of the Snoqualmie River. The late Joyce Littlejohn and her neighbors in Ernie’s Grove said “Hell, No!” to the City of Bellevue when they filed a preliminary permit upon the North Fork in 1982 (FERC P-5926) to include a hydroelectric component with their dam to provide drinking water to the Greater Eastside. She was joined by the folks in the Snoqualmie Valley from North Bend to Duvall. Her point: You just can’t plunk down a 250-foot-high dam, creating a reservoir impounding over 2,300 surface-acres of water upstream from an historically flood-prone valley. Just 10 years before, in the 1970s, the US Corps of Engineers proved that a similar project on the Middle Fork would not be safe from breaching.
Joyce was right. I knew the Littlejohns, and on behalf of Weyerhaeuser, I joined her and many others in the environmental community in objecting to the Bellevue project, which was eventually rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and rejected again on appeal. FERC’s rejection of the Bellevue proposal was not a statement against hydroelectric power. It was a rejection of that particular proposal.
When I was serving on the King County Snoqualmie Valley Citizen’s Advisory Committee in the mid-1980’s discussing appropriate land uses in the forest zone, we considered the future needs of green energy sources, including small hydro (or Micro Hydro as they are called today). We considered the small environmental footprint that they offered and almost “turn-key” aspects of their day-to-day operations. Since the passage of the King County Comprehensive in 1989, hydroelectric generation facilities have been a permitted use in the forest zone. King County Title 21A.08.100, Para. C14 (dated Dec. 2010) limits the height of the diversion weir to eight feet above the stream bed, and 30 feet across with no more than three acres of surface water impounded. King County Code limits the penstock length, the size of the turbine house, and road access.
I support the concept of green energy, particularly when it is done in a smart way. But it doesn’t matter what I support. None of this works without the full support of the property owner: Hancock Forest Resources Group. We all may remember the widely publicized event when Hancock conveyed their development rights (TDR) to King County. It was a magnificent gesture indicating that Hancock did not acquire the Snoqualmie Tree Farm for residential conversion. Unless otherwise stated in the deed, TDRs usually pertain to the total number of residential lots per acre permitted under KCC Title 21A within the array of zones inside the transaction. For example, Hancock most likely would have retained development rights to non-forest uses such as mineral extraction and other permitted mixed uses compatible with forest management. They clearly will have a front seat in these proceedings.
The North Fork project, like many, many others, is usually maligned at the outset by well-meaning people. Once the picture is more clearly understood, these same people wonder why we don’t have more of these small hydroelectric projects. And I fully understand my environmental friends who would get rolled over time and again by proponents of small hydroelectric projects if they didn’t take an initial hard stand. But I see in some news reports there might be room for negotiation by the North Fork proponents when talking about “flexible flow rates during certain times of the year.”
I think Joyce Littlejohn and the community would support the idea of a small hydroelectric facility on the North Fork of the Snoqualmie, so long as the environmental, engineering and financial assessments show the project to be safe and viable. I’d like to see the Black Canyon folks be given the chance to prove whether or not their proposal is feasible.
• Dick Ryon is a former land planner with Weyerhaeuser and a North Bend resident.
