r/u_YourLocalWatchdog

Skagit County residents, your land is on the line. The City of Sedro-Woolley wants to destroy county owned wetland habitat to build at least four ballfields. They claim these ballfields will be open to the public, but they also say Sedro-Woolley will have priority use over every other town in Skagit County.

The Northern State Recreation Area, known as NSRA, is owned by Skagit County, not the City of Sedro-Woolley. For years this land has provided nesting habitat for the American Bittern, a species that depends on undisturbed wetland to survive. That habitat is now under direct threat. Appointed Mayor JoEllen Kesti, along with Councilmembers Nick Lavacca, Allan Henderson, Kevin Loy, James Cox, and Karl de Jong, are demanding that the county hand over this sensitive wetland for ballfield development, even though the city already owns land suitable for this exact purpose. There is no reason to destroy irreplaceable habitat the city doesn't even control when a reasonable alternative already exists.

Wetlands do not come back once they are disturbed. There is no mitigation plan, no restoration, and no do-over. If this marsh is destroyed, the bittern's nesting ground is gone for good, along with a piece of county land that belongs to every resident, not one city government.

The Sedro-Woolley community itself is not united behind this plan. This is not a done deal, and your voice matters right now.

You can submit public comments and letters directly to the Skagit County Commissioners at commissioners@co.skagit.wa.us

Skagit County land should serve all of Skagit County, not be handed over for one city's exclusive benefit.

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On June 24th, the Sedro Woolley City Council voted to move forward on an interlocal agreement with Skagit County for new baseball fields at the Northern State Recreation Area (NSRA). They had a better option sitting in front of them. They chose not to take it.

The city already owns a workable site, presented at the meeting by Public Works Director Bill Bullock: the Winnie Houser and Riverfront swap. Parking and infrastructure are already there. It's centrally located, walkable for families, and requires no new construction in sensitive habitat. It's cheaper, faster, and already on the books. The council passed it over anyway, with no explanation on the record, for a slower, more expensive option in sensitive habitat the city doesn't even own.

Here is how that vote actually happened: It was not debated openly. It was buried as late material in the agenda packet. Councilmember Paul Cocke said it on the record: the public "had no way of knowing that we might be taking a vote." He asked the council to wait and properly advertise the item so people could show up and speak. They didn't wait. The vote passed 5 to 1.

This should bother you regardless of how you feel about baseball fields. The mayor and council hid this from the public. You don't hide a good decision. You hide a bad one.

Here's what they avoided debating in public: NSRA is not empty land waiting to be used. Skagit County's NSRA Master Plan defines it as wetlands, forest, meadow habitat, and Hansen Creek, a salmon bearing stream with protected buffers, sitting on a floodplain with high groundwater.

This land is also home to the American Bittern, a wetland dependent bird that cannot simply relocate. Noise, lighting, foot traffic, and altered water flow are enough to destroy its habitat without a single tree being cut. The council doesn't need to clear this land to ruin it. Just building near it is enough.

At the meeting, Councilmember James Cox responded to this with a guess. He said there is "an extra 500 acres for the birds to find a new nest when they're lightly nesting" and that "birds nest in man made objects, so I think they'll be resilient." That is not what the Cornell Lab of Ornithology says. The American Bittern depends on undisturbed freshwater wetlands with dense marsh vegetation and is rarely found in open areas. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists it as a species of management concern for the exact reasons Cox dismissed: habitat loss and human disturbance. A sitting council member waved away a documented ecological risk with a sentence he made up on the spot, and the council used it to justify building on sensitive habitat anyway.

Some councilmembers also defended the decision by pointing to the NSRA master plan, which still lists athletic fields. This isn't 1994. The plan is over 30 years old, and its last update was in 2002, when the County itself found significantly less land was suitable for development than originally believed. We've lost even more wetland and forest habitat since. Using decades-old plans to justify destroying what's left is not planning, it's refusing to adapt.

The mayor and council call this an investment in children. A better site already exists and they chose habitat destruction anyway. You don't invest in kids by destroying the environment.

If this concerns you, email cityclerk@sedro-woolley.gov and ask that your message be forwarded to the mayor and city council. Ask them to rescind the vote, reconsider the Winnie Houser and Riverfront option, and bring this back as a properly noticed agenda item with time for public comment.

You can also submit public comments and letters on this topic to the Skagit County Commissioners at commissioners@co.skagit.wa.us.