Subject: [Tweeters] New trail at the Fill
Date: Jan 31 07:57:45 2010
From: Connie Sidles - constancesidles at gmail.com


Dear Tweets, a new boardwalk trail is being proposed to be built
through Surber Grove. It is being sponsored by a neighborhood group of
citizens. They have applied for a grant to the City of Seattle which
would pay to hire a landscape firm to design a trail. The proposed
trail (which is incorrectly categorized in the grant application as a
"restoration of the trail") as it is currently conceived would begin
on 41st Street (at the north end of Surber) and run through the center
of the grove. It would curve around to Yesler Cove and end at the
active beaver lodge that sits on the edge of the water there. At that
point, the idea would be to construct a viewing platform.

The grant application is now in the hands of the city, which is
taking comments until Feb. 3.

Comments regarding the Yesler Swamp Trail Small and Simple
Neighborhood Matching Fund application should be addressed to:
Allynn Ruth
684-0301
allynn.ruth at seattle.gov

If you want to read the details of the proposal, send me a private
email, and I will email you the pdf version of the grant.

I have deep concerns about this proposed boardwalk trail. As I
understand it, new trails in the city have to be wheelchair accessible
now, which means the boardwalk would probably have to be at least 4
feet wide. That's a lot of boardwalk for a small site.
Proportionately, a lot of habitat would perforce have to be sacrificed.

I'm also concerned that this little grove cannot sustain the amount of
human presence that the neighborhood committee would like to see enter
it. Right now, most of the grove is inaccessible to humans, except for
one muddy track that goes in about 20 meters to the middle (and is
closed by vegetation from late spring to fall, the height of the
breeding season), and one usually waterlogged track that leads to the
beaver lodge (I'm pretty sure the beavers built their lodge after this
trail was put in; they probably felt safe to do so because the trail
is underwater for a good part of the year.) If the committee is
correct about the numbers of people who will come through here, I
believe that many of the breeding birds that now find refuge in the
swamp will disappear. Among the most sensitive are Wood Ducks,
Gadwalls, and Virginia Rails.

I also worry that access to the beaver lodge would mean a great deal
of harassment of the beavers. Already when the trail is dry enough,
kids from the neighborhood think it's okay to climb on top of the
lodge and hit it with sticks.

Most of all, I think there should be parts of UBNA that remain closed
to humans. We don't have to have access to everything all the time, do
we?

Lastly, as far as I can tell, the grant would not pay for an EIS. I
don't know enough law to know whether this would be a requirement, but
it *should* be.

If you have concerns too, now is the time to voice them. - Connie,
Seattle

constancesidles at gmail.com


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20100131/5327a07e/attachment.htm