NWS01: The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, Sunday, September 11, 1988


(Photo caption: Chuck Missar of Spectra-Physics stands in a thicket of ash trees adjacent to the company's plant. The discovery of wetlands there is threatening expansion)

By ANN PORTAL
The Register-Guard

The future of industrial development in west Eugene has been swamped by the discovery of substantial wetlands that fall under federal and state protection for their wildlife and plant habitats.

The discovery calls into question whether some of Eugene's vacant industrial lands need to be shifted to less environmentally fragile areas, and whether development can proceed on established sites -- and at what cost.

Ken Bierly, an environmental specialist for the Oregon Division of State Lands who has inspected some of the west Eugene industrial sites, said he has seen wetlands -- seasonal or year-round marshes, bogs and swamps -- large enough to "severely disrupt rational industrial development."

A preliminary mapping of the potential wetland sites is so new that the total Impact on the city's inventory of vacant Industrial lands, most of which are located in west Eugene, has not yet been determined.

The map was prepared by Portland biological consultant Esther Lev and is expected to be presented soon to the Natural Resources Advisory Committee, which is studying wetlands as part of an update of the Metropolitan Area General Plan. The study will include written reports on each of the sites included in the inventory.

Steve Gordon, senior program manager for the Lane Council of Governments, estimates the total amount of wetlands In west Eugene, most of them located north of West 11th Avenue and south of Roosevelt Boulevard, at somewhere between 500 acres and 1,500 acres. Most of the affected land, including some entire tax lots, is zoned for industrial use.

"It's significant," he said.

One of the first local companies to run headlong into the wetlands issue is Spectra-Physics Inc., which the city coaxed to its current site to anchor a west Eugene high-tech corridor.

Spectra-Physics officials first heard the term "wetlands" two years ago when they began to think about proceeding with the third and final phase of development on their 35-acre site, said Charles Missar, Spectra- Physics facilities manager.

Company officials were surprised to learn that despite being in the proper zoning district and compliance with all previous codes, they were in danger of not being able to expand onto the back portion of their property --an area where wetland vegetation, particularly a grove of ash trees, was identified.

Since then, company and city officials have spent long hours in meetings, attempting to understand the nature of the wetlands on Spectra-Physics' property and to find a solution that will enable the company to expand. Spectra-Physics has invested about $10 million in its Eugene plant, which employs 500 people, Missar said.

"I think it's fair to say that had we known about the wetlands issue, we would not have purchased the land," he said.

Missar said be agrees with the intent of the 1972 federal Clean Water Act that protects wetlands. But he is frustrated with the "convoluted" permit process, involving overlapping federal and state agencies, that he must follow to obtain permission to fill a portion of the wetlands. The company hopes to preserve the stand of ash trees.

"If we can't develop on it (the back portion of the property), it questions our reasons for being in Eugene," Missar said. "We need to grow, and we're completely surrounded by wetlands."

Bierly, whose division ultimately will decide whether to issue a fill permit to Spectra-Physics, said he can't predict the outcome but said the Division of State Lands "fully understands the circumstances they (Spectra-Physics) find themselves in and will act accordingly."

Part of the problem with wetlands is defining exactly what is -- and what isn't -- a wetland.

The two primary permit-granting agencies -- the Army Corps of Engineers and the Division of State Lands -- use the same definition. They view wetlands as those lands that are under water long enough each year to have produced soil and plants unique to an aquatic environment. All three -- water, soil and plants -- must be found for either agency to consider an area a wetland.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has adopted a broader definition, however, that says any one of those char-acteristics is enough for a wetland label.

The courts have further broadened the definition to extend the regulations to man-made wetlands.



In preparing the map of west Eugene wetlands, Lev used the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service definition to identify the greatest potential impact on industrial sites.

The final determination of wetland boundaries will be up to the Division of State Lands, which so far has been willing to perform site-specific analysis at no cost at the request of property owners, Bierly said.

"The (city) map is just to say (to property owners), 'Hey, you may have something here. You should talk to the Division of State Lands,'" said Lee Beyer, the city's industrial development adviser.

Besides helping improve water quality, wetlands are considered one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. They serve as a breeding ground for small animal life, support other wildlife and assist in soil stabilization.

"They're important. That's why there are federal laws protecting them," Lane Council of Government's Gordon said.

Federal officials are becoming more aggressive in enforcing the regulations, which include fines of up to $25,000 per day for anyone who illegally fills or excavates wetlands without a permit.

Eugene officials say one reason they were late in discovering the west Eugene wetlands is that since dams were built on the Willamette River, west Eugene no longer looks like a wetland.

Once almost entirely wetlands, what remains in west Eugene is remnant prairie grasslands from Eugene's pre-settlement days. Much of the land is saturated by rainwater early in the growing season, but by late summer, it's completely dry in many places, Gordon said.

"I never suspected that those were wetlands," he said, observing that most people would envision wetlands with standing water, bull rushes and willows.

Most of the zoning of industrial lands in west Eugene took place during the 1950s, before wetland regulations were on the books. "The problem in Eugene is that they have gone through a very protracted and detailed planning process and this (wetlands) simply escaped notice," Bierly said.

Besides west Eugene, the recent study has identified wetlands within Eugene's urban growth boundary in the Willow Creek area -- though not within the boundaries of existing industrial sites -- and at Delta Ponds.

Wetlands were identified in Springfield on the Booth-Kelly site and at the fringe of the urban growth boundary up the McKenzie River, Springfield " Planner Bruce Newhouse said.

"Essentially, we are very, very lucky compared with Eugene," he said. "We do not have anything of the scale or severity of what's happened in Eugene."

Fallout from the west Eugene findings is hard to predict. Statewide, more than 1,000 fill perrnit applications are filed each year, 98 percent to 99 percent of which are approved, Bierly said.

The state doesn't want wetlands regulations to deter developers, he said. "That's one of the reasons for the comprehensive land use planning that we have in Oregon. We've done a poor job with wetlands. We're looking for ways to fix that."

In most of the cases in which permits are issued, mitigation of the lost wetland is required. Although the extent of the mitigation is negotiable, the evolving national standard is one-for-one replacement of wetland acreage.

That can include creating a new wetland on the same site, creating a wetland on a new site or intensifying part of the existing wetland, by deepening a pond, for example. The cost of mitigation has been averaging about 10 percent of the total development cost, Bierly said.

"It's not cheap," he said.

It's not only private developers who will he affected. The route of the city's proposed West Eugene Parkway, now in the design phase, runs through wetlands. The state Highway Division is investigating those wetlands as part of the project's environmental impact statement.

"The impression that I get is that they (state officials) feel like it's a manageable situation and it won't add a great deal to the cost of the project overall," said Nathan Duke, a Eugene transportation planner.

Much is happening at the state and local level regarding wetland regulation and identification, an area that Bierly acknowledges the state has failed, until recently, to identify as a priority.

Bierly noted that for many years, the state's policy was to drain wetlands and convert them to agricultural uses. "It's a terrible irony because as you identify the significant value of those resources, you're dealing with the remnants," he said.

A task force is drafting a statewide wetland management program that includes a proposal seeking approval from the Environmental Protection Agency for Oregon to assume responsibility for wetlands regulation.

"It makes no sense to have different levels of government do the same thing," Bierly said.

Missar, at Spectra-Physics, expresses the same frustration. "Effectively, what we have now is federal land use planning, and that is one of the problems that's cropped up," he said.

Armed with its new wetlands map, Eugene officials plan to begin developing a comprehensive wetland management plan for west Eugene that would remove much of the uncertainty from the permit process, Gordon said. He expects the drafting of that plan to be a two- to three-year process.

It's possible that Eugene, like Portland, may end up with a new natural resources zone for the most significant wetlands -- a process that could prompt revisions to the urban growth boundary to replace the lost industrial land, he said.

Other possibilities being batted around by the city include finding public money to create a "wetland bank" where a larger wetland would be created to compensate for the loss of several smaller wetlands as a result of development. One proposal envisions development of a protected "green-belt" along the Amazon Channel.

The Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, with the city's assistance, plans to sponsor a seminar in late October with information for local property owners and developers about wetlands.

Anyone with questions about wetlands regulations or curious about the presence of wetlands on their property should contact the Eugene Permit & Information Center for more information.

Source: The Register-Guard, September 11, 1988