Environmental Stewardship

Over the past 9 years, Semra has worked to improve environmental stewardship throughout Lake Forest Park, improving the city code that protects our tree canopy, supporting projects that restored salmon access, and investing in our parks. But there is more to do.

To begin, we have an opportunity for a win-win-win for trees and development.

Large mature trees with deep and wide roots reduce soil erosion and slow stormwater runoff, the same function as much of the stormwater management infrastructure we require for new houses. By allowing developers and homeowners to reduce the size of required stormwater cisterns and retention ponds in exchange for permanently protecting large trees, we can simultaneously reduce stormwater impacts, retain more of our mature tree canopy, and reduce the cost of construction.

Secondly, while Lyon Creek and McAleer Creek have received a lot of attention, we cannot continue to overlook our most frequently forgotten stream: Bsche’tla Creek.

Passing under 522 at the south end of the city, the current conditions present an impossible route for fish.  The poor state of the creek culvert below the highway is woefully inadequate, too narrow, and presents as a waterfall to the downstream creek.  It is no surprise that fish have not been seen in this stream for many, many decades.  Without significant investment in the highway itself, Bsche'tla Creek will never see fish traverse its waters no matter how we rehabilitate the stream to either side of the highway.

The cost to do this reconstruction correctly is quite high, and Sound Transit has not committed to a properly engineered the creek crossing yet. They instead chose to omit the bus lane in order to avoid this expensive engineering project, which will likely impact bus flow through our city.

Correcting the culvert and rehabilitating the stream will be expensive, but luckily this is a state highway, so this won’t be fully on the city’s bill. Unfortunately, the state has not made this a priority, and presently there is no money for this.

The city needs to make this a priority in discussions with the state, and work towards finding a way to secure outside funding. Both commuters and returning salmon will be happier once we do.

Lastly, Semra will continue to invest in city parks.  Continued maintenance and improvements are necessary across our park system.  We need to lead by example to manage and eliminate invasive plants in our parks, to ensure our park trees and plants are healthy and thriving.  With the help of our arborist and potential grant funding, she would like to see every tree captured digitally to track its location, size, and health.  The would enable us to be proactive in providing care for our trees.