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Can't Keep Them Down on the Farm

Rural King County residents are fighting back against environmental restrictions imposed by Seattleites. And they’ve just won a key battle.

Comments (12) By Laura Onstot Wednesday, Sep 3 2008

In 1942, Dominic Colasurdo's father sold a five-acre chicken farm in White Center and moved out near the Cascade foothills, just east of Renton, to run a dairy. The family's 110 acres were along the May Valley Creek, which the Works Progress Administration had expanded into a large irrigation ditch. Fish swam up the new stream in enough numbers for 19-year-old Colasurdo to pull out strings of trout and salmon.

Peter Mumford

Regulations designed to protect a creek passing through Dominic Colasurdo’s farm have rendered much of the land unusable.

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For two decades, the stream ran clear. But by the 1960s—when the younger Colasurdo had inherited the farm and switched from dairy to boarding horses—enough dirt and sediment from the surrounding hillsides had started to pour in, along with weeds like reed canary grass, that the creek would stop up and flood the surrounding land. Whenever that happened, Colasurdo would drive a backhoe to the creek's edge and clear it out. Then in 1982, King County declared Colasurdo's property to be a wetland and he was forbidden to go down into the creek. Within four years, he says, the valley was flooding for weeks at a time, and for a longer period every year.

Colasurdo's daughter Mary Celigoy, who has taken over the business, says half the grazing territory is now lost for about six months of the year—first when it's covered by water, and later when it's too marshy for the horses to move around in safely. This year the fields weren't really dry until early July. As a result, she and her dad can't board as many animals as the acreage could support, and instead of eating grass in the fields, the horses now require hay, which has more than doubled in price in the past decade. "My fear is that it's going to get worse," Celigoy says. "If we start getting slop all year round, then we'll be in trouble."

Despite all the efforts at preservation, Colasurdo, 83, says he hasn't seen a fish swim up the choked stream in years. And many of the trees the county planted along the banks to maintain the habitat couldn't survive the flooding. "If they'd just let us get in there and do maintenance, it wouldn't have got like that," he says.

Over the past couple of decades, the failed May Valley Creek policies have become a focal point for rural anger in east King County. Farmers and other landowners there feel controlled by a Seattle-centered government beholden to urban environmentalists who don't understand their lives, habits, or the land they work. The frustration reached its peak in 2004, when the King County Council passed a law proposed by County Executive Ron Sims that forbids most people in rural areas from clearing vegetation on more than 35 percent of their land—whether that's cutting down pines trees or digging up brush.

Colasurdo isn't directly touched by the law; his already-cleared property is grandfathered in. But his experience with county regulations made him sympathetic to those neighbors whose plans to expand pasture land or build another barn were thwarted by the new law. He joined dozens of rural landowners who, outnumbered at the polls and unable to vote out the offending politicians, instead raised money and sued. Earlier this year, they beat the regulators in court. The ruling, if it stands, could serve as a new barbed-wire fence keeping the urban politicians, and their green agendas, out of the rural landowners' backyards. But, in the eyes of county politicians like Sims, that would come at a severe environmental cost.

On the second Monday of each month, Colasurdo and his neighbors gather in a stuffy room off the sanctuary in the May Valley Alliance Church. Fans whir as people start trickling in around the 7 p.m. start time. There are no skinny jeans, only boot-cut, and some of the mostly gray-haired men have been in the valley for decades.

With Robert's Rules of Order only loosely in effect, the July meeting of the May Valley Environmental Council begins with 15 minutes of debate about which were the best planes to fly during the Korean War. There follows another discussion about a pair of beavers that had wrought havoc on a couple of local farms. Someone in the back suggests coaxing them onto the road in the hopes they'll get nailed by traffic. But the biggest topic of discussion, as usual, is the group's beefs with the King County Council, whom members deride as "Seattle City Council, II."

King County is unusually broad in its reach—both in terms of geography and culture. While Oregon's Multnomah County barely stretches beyond the Portland suburbs, and San Francisco County and the city are one and the same, King County encompasses both an extremely liberal urban center and roughly 2,000 square miles of land that does not belong to any city.

In the north there's Skykomish, a 200-person town reachable only by driving an hour through Snohomish County on Highway 2. The Sasquatch comedy Harry and the Hendersons was filmed nearby. The town has a small jail, says mayor Charlotte Mackner, which is used for storing office supplies, old files, and unused furniture.

To the east, the county stretches to Snoqualmie Pass. In the unincorporated town of Hobart, tucked behind Tiger Mountain between Maple Valley and Snoqualmie, there's only one store, Hobart Market and Video. It's at the intersection of several area farms, and it feels a lot farther than 25 miles from downtown Seattle. People stop in to chat with owner Warren Iverson about his most recent hay harvest and what he's asking for a bale.

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Comments (12)

Karen H 09/20/2009 7:17:30 PM

This is an excellent article. One more thing: for those of you who think rural dwellers should be able to afford paying for the fixes on their land that they must do because urban dwellers have voted it in, keep in mind that Washington State has one of the highest disparities of wealth between the urban and rural areas. Rural land values are less than those of the urban, and the people earn less, so to make up the amount needed to pay for environmental remediation, they must be taxed at much higher rates than they are now. There are fewer people to spread the taxation amongst in rural areas, so the middle class--and lower middle class, compared to urban areas--must bear the brunt of the taxes. A higher percentage of persistently poor live in the rural areas than in the urban areas. It's worse the further away you get from central government. Should rural dwellers be made to pay for every bit of environmental remediation required of them because of urban mandates on their land, you would see the middle class home owners and land owners there quickly descend into poverty as well. Indeed, it's forced dairy farmers to relocate to eastern Washington. Which is great for the environment, but it means higher dairy prices, because of the amount of fuel it takes to truck the milk over the mountains. Which, when you think about it, isn't very environmentally friendly, is it?
Anthony 09/09/2008 11:43:02 PM

I also find it both entertaining and sad that Clem up above chooses to selectively ignore almost all of the main point in the introduction of the article (except the fact that the land floods), generates an ill-informed all-encompassing theory about the reason land floods, then blames the farmer for a problem the county won't let him fix. How's that for an informed voter? Sad that opinions like these decide the fate of people who don't live in city limits.
Anthony 09/09/2008 11:37:29 PM

I find it ironic that those who tend to want to pass the greenest measures (at the expense of farmers' livelihood) tend to live in the most urban, polluted, and ungreen areas here. Just because you shop local at Whole Foods doesn't mean you live green in your studio. I also find the comment regarding the farmers' homes flooding extremely insensitive - what, it takes someone's house to flood before a county can spend money on saving their livelihood? Urban and suburban economic initiatives to increase people's livelihood are constantly being passed, and rightly so. Let's not let rural dwellers suffer from not receiving the same treatment just because of where they live and because they live a little differently from most of us office-dwellers. And let's not let a movement that's "progressive" in intent become overly closed-minded over unproductive wetlands that the average urban resident has no business casting judgment over.
JeffT 09/06/2008 1:17:29 PM

These comments are directed at a certain class of liberal. You guys preach diversity, but are completely clueless when you have to deal with some one who is actually different. If some one supports the life of the unborn or the sanctitiy of marriage you scream that we're imposing our values on you, yet you seem to see nothing wrong with imposing your values on people who's lives and lively hood you don't understand at all. One person here commented about work being done to benefit some one trying to save on the cost of horse food. Does it occur to you, do you even care, that this is how the man makes his living? How would you feel if he had legislation enacted that took away your ability to do what you do? PS, for those who can't figure it out, a lot of us think that the Seattle elections dept. was instructed to keep counting until it had enough votes. We don't mind that you vote your conscience, we think every vote should count. But only once.
Eco Buccolic 09/05/2008 8:25:22 PM

I find it absolutely astounding that at a time when King County faces a $90 million budget deficit, the county plans to spend $5.5 million on a drainage project that will benefit a handful of landowners--NONE OF WHOSE HOMES ACTUALLY FLOOD!!!--just so they can save on their horse food bills.
Tom Carpenter 09/05/2008 6:48:41 AM

Sonny Putter, Newcastle Councilmember, epitomizes the tone of some urbanites attitude toward rural residents. His mantra is "the urban areas subsidize the rural areas by $53 million each year." Dow Constantine, King County Councilmember, was quoted as saying "if the county had paid for the 65% land restriction created by CAO, it would have cost $8 billion." At a modest 3% return, that $240 million annually in lost potential in the rural area. And, if the $8 billion were spread over the 20-year cycle normally done for GMA, it would cost $160 million annually. Either way, $53 million isn't even a fraction of the cost the rural residents are paying. Environmentalists biggest mistake is they think the protections they seek are free. That government jurisdictions, like King County, have an obligation (and the authority) to accomplish environmental objectives regardless of impact. In other words, the common good outweighs the individual good. People like Sonny are members of a group who have now added the financial problems of some of the jurisdictions in the county (Newcastle, Covington, Maple Valley) to the list of issue caused by those "rurals". Sims' comment about flooding in the article comes from the newly created King County Flood Control Zone District. Here again, some cities see themselves as an isolated entity but with full rights to dictate what happens around them. They are willing to take county money (and often demand it) but when things go beyond their jurisdiction, they are unwilling to pay. This is a tricky balance to create only because we are polarized over the means to the end. Comments like Sonny's and Sims' don't help the situation.
Destiny Williams 09/04/2008 10:50:09 AM

Ironic to see this headline after an encounter I had on my bicycle trip through the Cascades this past weekend. I took a photo of the Dino Rossi for Governor sign by the road 15 miles from Wenatchee. The bottom of the sign says, "Don't let Seattle steal this election." I couldn't believe it. My knee-jerk reaction was, "are you kidding me? You're worried that the citizens of Seattle who share the same State might vote to try to democratically elect someone-- and this is 'stealing'? Anyway, it was a stark reminder of the urban/rural wedge, (and the way the Rossi campaign is trying to drive that wedge deeper to rally rural voters). From my experience & ideals, "us" vs. "them" is at the heart of most local and global problems. Hope we can keep finding common ground that protects the real interests of rural families. I could send a photo of the sign if someone wants it.
Laura Onstot 09/03/2008 5:06:03 PM

Apologies to Warren Iverson and the residents of Hobart for incorrectly saying hay is sold by the bushel, not the bale. I'm an urban Seattleite by way of small towns in Idaho and New Mexico and I should know better.
NETTIE POOH 09/03/2008 3:18:46 PM

HOW CAN OUR GOV'T DO THIS TO US. WE ARE TAXED AT EVERY TURN. THIS JUST MAKES ME NOT WANT TO OWN LAND.
Clem 09/03/2008 2:42:29 PM

Dang those environmentalists and big city politicians who try to run the lives of farmers when they know nothing at all about farming. (Can't Keep Them Down on the Farm, Sept. 3). I'm glad Laura Onstot knows enough about it to write the article. Having grown up on an Iowa livestock farm, I still was able to learn something from her story -- that in Hobart, Washington (and nowhere else in the world, I'd guess) there are farmers asking the price of a bushel of hay. As for the family on May Creek who watched their stream turn into a bog -- you don't suppose that had anything to do with the way the land along the creek was used, do you? Bank erosion from grading and grazing, animals trampling the creek, livestock manure fertilizing reeds and grasses in the stream? Or was it all the fault of those big city environmentalist/politicians? The primary nutrient feeding rural land use protests these days has little to do with farming and much to do with real estate. It's money: where there's a rural protest against environmental land use regulations there's someone nearby who wants to short plat, subdivide, grade, build and sell. Don't think so? I'll bet you a bushel of hay.
Blue Light 09/03/2008 12:43:49 PM

"Larson reported the issue to Sims, and this summer he proposed an ordinance allowing people to sell nails, small tools, and other items out of their homes." Well, wasn't that big of him? I forget who said it, but: A government's level of corruption is directly proportional to the number of laws it has on the books. Revolt, people.
Lynda 09/03/2008 11:07:54 AM

Hay is sold by the bale not the bushel, whoever wrote this article is an urban dweller.

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