Bob Baker, who has dedicated years to organizing the “save the Cedar River campaign,” became wistful when I asked him about Renton’s vanishing “amicus brief” that would have protected the Cedar River Valley.  Hearing Bob report on the difference this would have made in the Court of Appeals trial is like listening to a die-hard Seahawks fan discuss the fateful decision to try a pass instead of giving the ball to Marshawn Lynch on the one yard line at the Super Bowl.  Like Marshawn reports about his teammates at the Superbowl, the reaction of everyone close to the “Save the Cedar River effort” was  “What the f….?

Mr. Baker had spent years raising the tens of thousands of dollars required for the Court of Appeals to hear the case, and Bob reports that at the trial two out of the three judges said that if Renton had submitted an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief expressing municipal concerns about the plant, they would have found in favor of “Save the Cedar River.”

The Court record has several references to County work to direct the (partially) treated water into Renton’s sole-source aquifer because they judged the runoff too dangerous to put into the river.  Renton should have availed the court that the requirements for purity in our sole-source aquifer exceed those of the Cedar River, and that there are coal mine tunnels leading into the aquifer on the site.

Why was there no amicus brief, for an asphalt plant that Renton Council and Renton Regional Fire Authority were so clearly against?

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The Council President seemed to be defending the placement of an asphalt plant in this sensitive natural area next to the Cedar River and over Renton’s sole-source aquifer

A reader wrote to me and said their friend wrote to City Council about the asphalt plant. Their friend got a lengthy response from the Council President, and they asked for my thoughts on this letter.  I said it had some similarities to the message that the Public Works Director had put out a few days earlier, but no longer had the sections that I had easily debunked in this blog post.  This letter offered a new set of arguments, probably also promulgated by Renton’s Public Works Director.  These argument are equally wrong.

The note the reader sent from the Council President is shown in sections in red below, and my responses are in green.  My responses are not copyrighted so, please feel free to send them back in response to his letter.

Council President: As part of the internal environmental review, the Public Works Department evaluated the potential contamination risk to the city’s drinking water sources by the proposed site activities and determined the risk should not cause concern for the following reasons:

The city’s Maplewood Wells do not pump from the shallow Cedar Valley Aquifer. The Maplewood Wellfield is drilled into the deep production aquifer (confined aquifer) that is encountered from approximately 135 to 345 feet below ground surface. The Maplewood Wells are located approximately 3.2 miles from the proposed Asphalt Plant .

Randy’s response:  Renton’s wellfield monitoring study makes it clear that the aquifer is an underground river that  flows from Cedar Valley recharge areas (including near the Asphalt plant) to the Maplewood Golf Course wellfield area, and then to the areas near our downtown wells.  Water can easily move underground, and the dissolved contaminants like benzene and heavy metals will not be completely filtered out.

We’re not pumping fossil water out of our aquifer.  We’re pumping water that has accumulated in the aquifer recharge zone during the last decade or so.  The water is not sealed off from the surface, or else the aquifer would be empty.  Renton is pumping billions of gallons per year from the aquifer.  We don’t need to intentionally introduce heavy metals and other contaminants from new and recycled asphalt into it. We should remain assertive about protecting our recharge zones with whatever means we have available.

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