The Edmonds City Council Tuesday night received an update on the planning process for reconnecting the Edmonds Marsh to Puget Sound and restoring vital estuary habitat.

The Edmonds Marsh Planning Study, underway since 2023, has been gathering crucial data to support a comprehensive restoration plan. The plan will focus on reducing flood risks for the surrounding community, including reducing flooding of Dayton Avenue and Harbor Square now and as sea levels rise in the Puget Sound.

It will also focus on supporting the Puget Sound food web and creating important rearing habitat for salmon, forage fish, birds and other wildlife. Also, the study will explore ways to improve public access to the marsh while maintaining its ecological health.

The effort hit notable milestones recently with the completion of key environmental documents and the several well-attended public meetings. Engineers from Blue Coast Engineering and a representative from the Edmonds Marsh Estuary Advocates briefed the council Tuesday on the hydrology and contamination reports, the Unocal property and the approach to fund the next phase of pre-design work.

Hydrology

The hydrology and hydraulics reports focused on past data, current conditions and future modeling with an emphasis on storm events, storm surges, king tides, projected sea level rise and the best way to manage flooding, with an emphasis g on Harbor Square, Dayton Avenue and SR 104. Kathy Ketteridge of Blue Coast Engineering factored these elements into the long-term marsh restoration plan alternatives.

The long-term plan creates a channel through Marina Beach Park to connect the marsh and Puget Sound, restoring the estuary. There are two alternatives under discussion: The first is an open channel through the railroad bridge and through the dog park. The second is a full excavation of the Unocal site, now undergoing work to clean contaminants from the former fuel facility.

But according to Ketteridge,  Unocal excavation will not help manage flooding because the excavation creates new space for sea water.

“It’s kind of like going out into the nearshore area and digging a big hole in the beach, the water level must go down right? It’s the same type of scenario,” Kittridge told the council. “So it [excavation of Unocal] would add additional habitat benefits, you get more acres of fish habitat, which can help for funding and other reasons, but specifically for flooding, digging out and excavating deeper into the site doesn’t actually increase the [flood mitigation] benefits you get for the project.”

A seawall or berm would be a better alternative around the marsh area and SR 104 to manage sea level rise, king tides and a storm surge.

Contamination 

The engineers were clear that there is now very little contamination at the nearby Unocal site. If the site is developed, the new landowner would be responsible for managing contamination associated with development. Unocal is only responsible for newly identified contamination. Engineers agreed that development associated with past contamination is more expensive because there is a higher standard of care. 

Such contamination can be managed with conventional protections like liners and walls or new innovative ideas. 

“Residual contamination doesn’t preclude restoration,” Ketteridge said. “Most of the site is clean and we can deal with whatever is left there and avoid it.”

Grants and future plans

The team is moving forward on a new grant proposal for marsh restoration work, and signs are positive it will be secured. A decision could come by December. That pre-design work could be completed by 2028, which gets the community to another decision point about construction. 

“We’ll complete an appraisal, we’ll do a cultural resources survey of the site, we’ll develop very refined cost estimates for restoration, and we’ll develop a plan for future funding,” said Bill Derry of the Edmonds Marsh Estuary Advocates. “It will be primarily grants, both state and federal and maybe some private, and the final product will be a 30% preliminary design and what’s necessary to get to a go-no go decision.” 

The council thanked the presenters for their work on the project.

Residential parking

Interim Planning Director Mike Clugston provided a residential parking code update in light of SB 5184, a major parking reform bill passed in Olympia this session. The bill outlines state requirements for multi-family housing parking and senior and affordable housing parking. It allows cities to eliminate requirements for off-street parking for new development. 

It allows, not requires, cities to cap new development minimum parking requirements at one-half of a parking space per unit and allows, not requires, new senior and affordable units to be built with no parking requirement.

The question before council was whether to require any parking for affordable and senior housing. Councilmember Susan Paine made a motion to eliminate parking requirement for affordable and senior housing. 

“We want to make these projects developable,” Paine said, noting that parking adds to construction expense. “Each parking space adds $30,000 to the developer’s cost,” she said. Councilmember Chris Eck, who also supported the measure, said she sees more people gravitating to multimodal transportation options. 

Councilmember Jenna Nand did not support the motion. She said in the Highway 99 area, where there is low-income residential housing, people use commercial properties like the Safeway parking lot as overflow. Nand said that since the parking requirement was not yet a mandate, there was no need to rush. 

Councilmember Michelle Dotsch, who also opposed the measure, used Firdale Village as an example of a neighborhood that has no street parking. “If we develop affordable housing there, they have no parking,” she said. 

“The low-income people I know have to go to work to generate the low income that they have,” said Councilmember Will Chen said, who also opposed the proposal. “We don’t have public transportation that’s [good enough] in our community now.” 

The motion to eliminate parking requirements for new developments for senior and affordable housing passed 4-to-3 with Councilmembers Chen, Nand and Dotsch voting no.