State, city question dredging plan

MOSES LAKE — State and Moses Lake officials are asking for more information about the impacts of a plan to dredge the Parker Horn area of the lake.

The Moses Lake Irrigation and Rehabilitation District is applying for a shoreline conditional use permit from the city and the state Department of Ecology to dredge a section of the lake in an attempt to contain sediment.

Vladimir Shepsis, an engineer for Coast and Harbor Engineering, explained the district plans to build a 1,033 foot-deep sediment trap in the area of the lake behind Walmart to stop it before it flows any further down the lake.

The district’s plan calls for holding the sediment in an area near the lake until it dries, and transporting it to Connelly Park.

“Where we started with the district was they were driving equipment onto a bar, excavating it, driving it off, going across wetland, vegetation up on the shoreline,” said Glenn Grette, an engineer with Grette Associates, which is doing planning for the project.

The meeting revolved around a Moses Lake Community Development Department letter requesting more information on 24 different items, ranging from where the wetlands are to how the project will affect fish in the area.

Ryan Walker, a Grette Associates engineer, said most of the questions focused on what research the engineers have done to determine the plan is going to work.

“We have that information and it was in different documents in the information,” he said. “I think we’re very close. It’s just sharing where the information is.”

Mary Ausburn, DOE’s state environmental protection act project manager, said the district’s application was flawed because it didn’t provide enough information.

Grette said much of the information the state and city were looking for were referenced in the applications, adding the documents were available at the district’s office.

Moses Lake Community Development Director Gil Alvarado said his office expected the information to be provided to the city and the state rather than asking them to search for it.

“That’s not the typical process. If I have a subdivision or a Walmart that’s going to be built, I don’t go to the engineer of record and say, ‘You got this traffic study let me go find it.’ They submit it,” he said.

Grette said the engineers developed the sediment management plan with the city and see it as one of the primary documents.

“From our perspective, one question was, ‘Has that information been reviewed by the agency anywhere in this process?’ That hasn’t been clear to us whether that information has already been considered or not considered in the generation of these comments,” he said.

DOE Wetland Specialist Jeremy Sikes said he didn’t know whether it was reviewed or not.

“If it was submitted in some sort of package with a three-ring binder in some kind of thing, I can say without question, ‘Yes, we reviewed everything you have,’” he said. “But you’re asking me, if we’ve come to your office and sifted through your files, the answer is no.”

Michael Maher, a DOE regional permit and compliance coordinator said he wanted to move past the question about whether the district should have provided the information, asking about the lack of a plan to limit damage to the wetlands.

“So if there are wetlands there, which I’m hearing from you guys that there aren’t, and I’m hearing from various other entities that there are, then we’ve got a problem,” he said.

Grette said the firm noted wetlands on the fringe of the lake, identifying there isn’t a wetland in the lake.

“There are other submerged aquatic vegetation, but there’s not a wetland,” he said. “That’s the thrust of our wetland delineation report … The only action in the wetland is a pipe crossing.”

Sikes said there hasn’t seemed to be any report about whether the site where the sediment is drying would constitute a wetland.

“So we have this other issue that’s sort of hanging out there that nobody wants to talk about,” he said.

Walker said the firm is confident state and federal guidelines will show the area is not a wetland.

Sikes said if the firm can show it, it would be great.

“If you don’t tell your story we can’t make an intelligent analysis,” he said. “If the wetland problem goes away, you are absolutely square with the project.”

The city and the state also asked engineers to provide proof the water from the dredged sediment will go back into the lake.