Recently, I blogged about the first meeting of the SR 167 Riparian Restoration Program Technical Advisory Group (or RRPTAG, if you roll with the acronyms; I guess you'd pronounce that "Rip-Tag). What is this group and what does it do? And, how does that relate to our mission to conserve and restore the Hylebos Creek Watershed?
The simple answer is this is one of the most important efforts we're pursuing. The SR 167 RRP is a revolutionary approach to managing stormwater and environmental mitigation for a major highway project. It will preserve and restore somewhere between 120 and 190 acres of degraded Hylebos Creek Watershed. To put that in perspective, the RRP constitutes a quarter of the 745 acre preserve we're trying to establish through the Hylebos Creek Conservation Initiative.
And, given the developed nature of RRP area (the Fife area around Highway 99 and I-5), it's doubtful that without the capital muscle of the WSDOT's highway project, that we could preserve and restore this zone on our own. Without the RRP, I'd predict that this entire area would become an industrial and commercial zone, dominated by large warehouses.
The RRP is currently a concept. The TAG has been convened to transform the concept into a design. The TAG members include WSDOT project staff and environmental and engineering consultants, state and federal resource agencies, and the Friends.
We have been working closely with WSDOT for six years to develop the RRP concept as a part of the SR 167 design. WSDOT deserves a lot of credit for opening up the environmental review and design process to the Friends in ways that they haven't done before with conservation groups. The end result, I believe, will be a better highway project; one that meets its transportation goals but exceeds the environmental goals and contributes to restoring a watershed and making the Puget Sound a little healthier.
There were a lot of details that were not able to be addressed in the environmental impact statement (an EIS for a mega project like this typically won't get the design past 15-20%). The WSDOT and the Friends agreed that we could work out the more specific details in the TAG process.
We have undergone a similar TAG process with WSDOT on the Spring Valley Ranch project. That design process worked beautifully. While the size of the RRP area will be about 10 times larger than Spring Valley Ranch, I have confidence that we'll have similar success.
It's vital for the Friends to play this role in the RRP TAG. By bringing our knowledge of the watershed, and our restoration experience to the table, we can help influence the location and design of critical conservation elements of the RRP.
