Encouraged by $200,000 of state money, local officials have formalized the Lake Ballinger Forum, an unprecedented and cooperative effort between five neighboring cities.
The cities of Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace, Shoreline and Lake Forest Park, as well as Snohomish County, have signed onto an agreement that ties them together in a quest to deal with decades-old problems in the Lake Ballinger watershed: rampant flooding and poor water quality.
The completed interlocal agreement gives the Forum control over $200,000 that the state has earmarked to help the Ballinger watershed.
“This group is at a watershed moment,” said John Caulfield, Mountlake Terrace’s city manager, and a member of the Forum. “This is a problem (the area) has been wrestling with for decades.”
Strangely, the problems are as much politics as they are engineering, said DJ Wilson, an Edmonds City Councilmember who chairs the Forum.
The 107-acre urban lake largely sits in Mountlake Terrace, is fed mostly by Lynnwood’s Hall Creek and is drained by McAleer Creek, which runs downstream primarily through Mountlake Terrace and the cities of Lake Forest Park and Shoreline.
Somehow, of the 52 homes around the lake, all but three are located in Edmonds.
Before it can solve the Lake Ballinger issue, the Forum must define exactly what the problem is, Wilson said.
That isn’t easy. He compared the group’s situation to the challenge a room full of blind people would face in defining an elephant.
“We each feel different parts of the problem,” Wilson said. “So, the elephant looks different (to each of us).”
Still, common ground has been found.
At a July 15 Forum meeting in Lake Forest Park’s City Hall, the group finalized a Request for Qualifications document that it will use to hire a consultant to study the watershed. The study will need to be completed by June 2009.
The consultant will be asked to study the way the watershed would operate naturally, and how it actually operates, said Doug Wood, with the state’s Department of Ecology.
The Forum’s goal will be to improve its current situation with a combination of short-term and long-term solutions, he said.
The long-term solutions won’t be easy.
“This is a significantly altered watershed,” Wood said. “It is going to take probably at least 20 years (to fix it).”
Reporter Chris Fyall: 425-673-6525 or cfyall@heraldnet.com
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