by Harry Esteve
The Register-Guard

Looking back on the great wetland war of west Eugene, some heady names crop up on the casualty roster:

The Hults, the Cuddebacks, the Gonyeas, the Murrys, the University of Oregon--people and organizations more used to calling the shots than dodging them.

Such was the power of federal wetland protection laws that handcuffed private and public developers--regardless of their stature--and provoked a nasty fracas over the future of what was supposed to be Eugene's industrial center.

But even though some skirmishes persist, the smoke has begun to clear from the marshy battlegrounds west of Seneca Road, where the gulping call of a green-backed heron mixes with the rattling hum of a lumber mill in full swing.

The rough outline of a lasting peace is starting to take solid form.

Under a compromise that took four years to put together, some properties have been sold, a small number of construction permits have been issued and the machine of commerce is creaking back to life in west Eugene.

At the same time, some of the most wildlife-rich properties in the city are gaining permanent protection.

The city of Eugene, in concert with the U. S. Bureau of Land management, has approved a plan that divides about 16 square miles of mostly commercially zoned land into a network of protected wetlands intermingled with parcels that can be used for low-impact business development.

Land that doesn't have appreciable wetland characteristics may be built upon, while properties with wetlands many be sold to the BLM to become part of an eventual 4,500-acre preserve. Using money from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, the BLM has spent about $3 million so far to secure just over 600 acres.

On Monday, Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., who was instrumental in securing money for the program, will be on hand for a 10 a.m. dedication of some restored wetlands at the corner of West Seventh Avenue and Bailey Hill Road.

Although the wetlands plan still awaits federal approval, it has allowed some projects to move forward that otherwise would have remained stalled, city wetland specialist Deborah Evans said.

"The short-term payoff is that some certainty has returned to west Eugene," Evans said. "We're going to know where we can develop."

Over the long term, "What we get is the incredible natural resources that will be a real legacy for the community," Evans said.

The truce comes at a price--embittered property owners who feel they were forced to sell their land at pennies on the dollar.

Cuddeback Investments Inc., for example, owns about 100 acres in west Eugene. Nearly half of it has been designated as wetlands, company director Randy Cuddeback said.

"It's worthless as it sits," he said. "It would have been worth $1 per square foot--about $40,000 to $50,000 and acre. Now, depending on who you talk to, it might go for $300 to $3,000 and acre.

Steve Wheeler, who owns a small Eugene construction company, bought 10 acres off Green Hill Road for about $70,000 in the 1970s. He said he bought it as an investment to help pay for his children's college education.

He learned later that about half of the property contained wetlands.

"I was going to develop it as a nice 10-acre (commercial) subdivision," Wheeler said. "With the wetlands, that can't and won't ever happen now."

He recently sold the property, taking a $10,000 loss.

But even those who have been hit hard by the change in land classification, agree that the compromise has brought about a sense of optimism that Eugene can have its ecological cake and eat a few slices too.

"I think the city wants to find a solution to the problem we all have," Cuddeback said. "Overall, they've been reasonable."

There is no better illustration of the west Eugene protection-development conflict than Stewart Pond, a muddy, grass-filled depression about five-minutes' drive from downtown. On a recent sunny afternoon, red-winged blackbirds danced on and out of the underbrush while a ring-necked pheasant flapped low across the oozy surface.

Bought in the late 1960s by the Hult family as investment property, it was at one time slated to be filled and developed as a commercial subdivision--the kind of property that might have attracted a major discount store or a medium-sized manufacturer.

Now, it is in the process of being sold to the BLM for about the same price the Hults paid for it 25 years ago--somewhere around $1,000 and acre.

"If I didn't sell to the BLM, if I didn't have that option, to be honest it might be very difficult to do anything with that property," said Gretchen Pierce, daughter of the late Nils Hult and heiress to the family's fortune from timber and other interests.

The BLM, which will maintain the pond as a small wildlife preserve, is the proper custodian for the property, said Steve Gordon, senior policy analyst for the Lane council of Governments and primary architect of the wetland compromise.

"There's a pair of cinnamon teal--and some mallards," said Gordon, who brought binoculars along for an interview beside the pond.

Gordon, an avid birdwatcher, is passionate about protecting places like Stewart Pond. The pond, the nearby Bertelsen Slough and the surrounding meadowlands represent the last remnants of a marshy ecosystem that once covered thousands of acres in and around Eugene, he said.

But Gordon also understands the demands of growth and progress.

"You can hear industry in the background," he said, strolling near the slough. "You can see it. That's part of what makes this a neat place."

Gordon--and the plan he helped craft--envisions a kind of environmental-industrial complex in west Eugene, where commercial developments merge almost seamlessly with wetland preserves. Visitors might join workers on their lunch breaks to watch nesting Canada geese from observation platforms or to listen to bullfrogs braying from the reeds.

"We're getting national attention for what we're doing here," Gordon said. "The EPA called yesterday and asked for 10 more copies of the wetland plan--so they're sharing it with other communities."

A century ago, Stewart Pond would have been indistinguishable from the surrounding marshes and lowlands that make up the Amazon Creek drainage. Most of west Eugene was either swampland or grassland prairie that remained wet in winter and dried our during the summer.

As Eugene grew, the meadows became farms. Considered worthless obstructions to progress -- too wet to farm, too unstable to build on -- wetlands were filled in to make space for homes and business. Streets and highways divided the marshes into separate ponds.

Environmentalists, however, took a different view. The nation's rapidly disappearing swamps and bogs were home to a rich diversity of wildlife. They played a critical role in flood control, and they served as giant water purifiers that filtered out silt and chemical pollutants.

Under pressure from environmental groups, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency included wetlands protection in federal clean water laws during the late 1970s.

The only problem was, hardly anyone knew what a wetlands was.

No one at the city paid much heed to the wet areas in west Eugene designated the region as the center for future industrial growth. The city then spent $20 million to build roads and sewers in the area to attract new business.

In 1987, a biologist hired to take an inventory of the city's natural resource areas turned in a report that bore the bad news: The site of the city's future industrial park was rife with wetlands.

The discovery ripped giant holes in the city's carefully drafted land use plans. One of the city's biggest employers, Spectra-Physics, was ordered to spend millions of dollars creating new wetlands to replace the ones it had filled when it built its new plant off West 11th Avenue.

Sure-thing investments soured overnight with the discovery of a seasonal swamp or even a drainage ditch with water in it. Prime industrial land valued at $20,000 to $40,000 an acre suddenly became all but worthless.

The wetlands discovery came just as the city was emerging from a lenghty business recession, and landowners were finally seeing some interest in their properties.

"Boom! All of a sudden we're ready to develop, and the world says, 'We don't think so,'" said Pierce, who controls the Hult property holdings.

The sudden downturn in property values hit some fairly powerful interests. But apart from convincing the Lane County assessor to lower property values for tax purposes, there was little they could to about the wetland designation.

"You don't mess with the federal government," said John Brown, a property appraiser who worked with a number of west Eugene landholders.

Public landowners were hit as hard as private ones. Before the discovery of wetlands, the University of Oregon had been given a chunk of west Eugene property as a gift. Even at a conservative value of $10,000 an acre, the land might have fetched $1 million or more.

A few years ago, the foundation sold the 113-acre parcel to Ross Investments Inc., a company started by heavy machinery manufacturer Ross Murry. The selling price was less than $100,000.

Today, however, the choicest wetlands in the former UO land have been sold to the BLM and put in permanent reserve, while the remainder has been filled, compressed and is ready for commercial development, said Jeff Cole, a Realtor who represents the Ross company on land deals.

The filled wetlands probably will sell for more than $50,000 an acre, Cole said.

It's the kind of trade-off that Gordon and others had in mind when they put the west Eugene wetland plan together. The best wetlands gets saved while some land that didn't have great wetlands potential gets developed.

Eventually, the entire west Eugene commercial area could go the same way, Gordon said.

"This isn't going to happen overnight," he said. "It's a big area. It's a big project. But it can happen over the next 20 years if the community is still behind it.

What is a wetland?

• Definition: An area with standing water or with waterlogged soil during the growing season. Some are wet all the time, others only at certain times of the year.
• Characteristics: Lush undergrowth, often reeds and grasses, ash trees, cottonwoods and willows, muddy soil, a wide variety of birds.
• Birds: Dozens of species, including great blue heron, wood duck, osprey, red-tailed hawk, ring-necked pheasant, great homed owl, northern flicker.
• Rare plants: Shaggy horkella, Kincaid's lupine, Cusick's checkermallow, Bradshaw's lomatium, Willamette daisy
• Wildlife: Western pond turtle, Pacific tree frog, bullfrog, red fox, beaver, bleck-tailed deer, striped skunk, black bear
• More Information: Pick up a copy of the "West Eugene Wetland Self- Guided Tour," which gives detailed maps of local wetlands, including best observation points and a complete list of plants and wildlife. Booklets are available at Eugene Permit and Information Center, 244 E. Broadway, and Lane Council of Governments, 125 E. Eighth Ave.

Source: The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, May 28, 1994