Deborah Bellam moved to rural King County to raise a family and rear calves and sheep.

“We wanted to live in a log home,” said Bellam, who bought her home 16 years ago next to the Snoqualmie Hills Planning Area.

As the years went by, her family watched as development in Snoqualmie Ridge crept closer. A 50-foot buffer only partially screened the nearby business park. Storms send water coursing down D Creek, damaging Bellam’s private road and eroding her property.

“We’re all downhill here,” said Bellam. She was among neighbors who spoke out against continued development in their direction, this time a proposed extension of Douglas Street in tandem with a 19-acre annexation for a new Puget Sound Energy power station across D Creek from Bellam’s residence.

Power plans

The substation and road extension are in Snoqualmie’s Urban Growth Area, land slated for future development of the city.

Puget Sound Energy says the $17 million substation is needed to meet power needs of a growing Valley.

“The area has been nearing capacity during cold winter months,” said Lindsey Walimaki, a PSE spokeswoman. “There is an alloted amount of power that the system can handle.”

The new station adds 25 megawatts, doubling Snoqualmie’s capacity.

“We see an immediate need to get this project started quickly,” Walimaki said.

The area, she said, is poised for growth when the economy picks up. Walimaki pointed to the planned Snoqualmie Ridge hospital and existing lots on the Ridge ready for home construction.

The switching station will also bring more reliability in the event of outages.

Puget Sound Energy owns some parcels of land to the east.

“At some point, we will sell the additional PSE parcels to a developer,” Walimaki said.

For now, the company is focusing on the substation project and is not extending Douglas Avenue beyond the substation in the near future.

“We don’t what what that area is going to look like,” Walimaki said. “We can’t justify having our ratepayers pay for extension of that road.” Such costs would be borne by a future developer.

Low-density lots on five-to-10-acre lots abut the property to the east, in the direction that Douglas Street is extending.

Parts of the annexation are being set aside as a buffer, preserving natural vegetation to the maximum extent, according to the annexation plan. The electrical substation is to be designed to reduce glare and noise impacts on neighbors.

Boundary review

On Monday, June 28, the Snoqualmie City Council approved four resolutions paving the way for the decision, including authorization for a notice of annexation to be sent to the King County Boundary Review Board.

Prior to the decision, five Snoqualmie-area residents spoke up, either questioning or opposing the annexation. Puget Sound Energy Lead Project Engineer Jim Kearns also spoke, urging approval and conclusion to a three-year wait for the decision.

County resident Ron Rivard raised strong concerns about a potential link-up of Douglas Street to Coal Mine Road. He also questioned how new development would impact the quality of life of his neighbors.

A new connection to the Ridge, Rivard said, violates an existing agreement with landowners.

“I continue to have concerns with the amount of development that’s going on,” Rivard said. “Every time you put roofs and pavement up there, you’re flooding everybody down below. I don’t know that anything is being done to mitigate for that.”

Walimaki said drainage and runoff mitigation in the annex is being held to city standards.

The city will now submit a notice of annexation to the King County Boundary Review Board.

The review process typically takes about 45 days, and may include a public hearing if a local jurisdiction or five percent of citizens in the affected area request one.

According to the Revised Code of Washington, the board weighs factors including population density, likelihood of significant growth, need for municipal services and the effect of the proposal on nearby areas.

The review board may adjust boundaries or, more rarely, impose conditions, but lacks the authority to enforce those conditions.

Road to nowhere?

Bellam said she always knew that change was inevitable. But she questions how the new station and road will change her neighborhood.

“The environmental stuff has got to be the worst,” Bellam said. “This creek is very vulnerable.”

At Bellam’s gate, high-voltage lines already crackle overhead from an existing Bonneville Power Administration easement.

“BPA cuts the hell out of anything that grows too high,” Bellam said.

The road that now connects Bellam to the outside world, 356th Avenue, is private. Neighbors pay to maintain it, but stormwater and heavy creek flows threaten the road.

Bellam said the new stub of Douglas Avenue, meant for future growth, may be favored by some Snoqualmie Hills residents — but not all.

“There’s some convenience to having a short cut and safe road,” she said. “But most of us don’t live out here for the convenience factor. We’re not looking for quick access and pavement.”

Bellam, who lives on the other side of the city’s urban growth boundary, questions how the new connection to Snoqualmie will change her neighborhood.

“It can’t become a public street,” she said. “The people who meander here are not desirable people. We’ve had drug dealers, car thieves, squatters. They dump garbage that we have to clean up.

“Your average, everyday person isn’t going to be coming to hang out,” Bellam added. “I don’t want some weirdo wandering onto my property,”

Neighbors have called for a gate across Douglas to keep their road private.

The gate option had met with resistance for fire safety reasons, according to Bellam. She said PSE should install a power-operated gate, instead.

“They’re an electric company,” she said. “Why can’t they put in an electric gate.”

But a gate, electric or otherwise, is not Bellam’s preferred option.

“We’d rather not see the road,” she said.

Jay Dutczak has lived in the Snoqualmie Hills area for 17 years. Like Bellem, he’s watched as development moved ever closer.

Dutczak recently sold easement rights to his property to the power company, but is holding out for a larger offer before selling outright.

He feels his five acres, and his lovingly crafted 1980s rambler home on it, are worth considerably more than the company’s $450,000 offer, which he considers a lowball bid.

Dutczak has spoken against the annexation at several city meetings. He opposes the measure, describing the new road and station as unnecessary. The project, he said, is all about future real estate development.

“Why are we developing a road? To appeal to developers,” Dutczak said. “It’s for money.”

Dutczak intends to keep pushing against the project. He hand-made a sign showing a pet deer named Kelly, who frequents his property, and the slogan “Kelly says: No Road Ext.”

“Everything I wanted out of here is gone,” Dutczak said. “I’ll be looking at and listening to power lines. It’s just unbearable.”

Alternative option

Some neighbors raised a different route, suggesting PSE go north to connect from the end of 356th to the PSE property already in the Snoqualmie business park.

That option, Bellam said, was never taken seriously in several years of talk and planning that has led up to this summer’s decision.

“From their point of view, it’s going to long way,” she said. “From our point of view, you’re not cutting through the buffer and allowing everyone in.”

Before Douglas Street is extended, “we want to know what the future plans and route are,” Bellam said.

Neighbors to the east, in the path of the road, want to know whether Douglas will claim their backyards.

“They just want to know what the plans are,” Bellam said. “No one will tell us.”

Puget Sound Energy is willing to work with residents regarding a gate on 356th Avenue.

“We have to have a unanimous decision by the property owners,” Walimaki said. “Right now, we are not planning on building one. We can’t gate Douglas without the city’s approval.”

The company needs to be able to quickly access the substation, Walimaki said.

“Since Douglas is close to the substation site, it makes sense for us to be extending that,” she said.

Walimaki said Puget Sound Energy has followed the city process for public outreach, which has included several public meetings this year and one in 2007. The company also put up a Web page on the project.

“We have been in discussions with neighbors near the substation site for the last several years,” Walimaki said. “Once permitting begins, we will conduct additional public outreach to inform and educate the community.”

More involvement

Asked whether she feels she has been listened to, Bellam answers “yes and no.”

City staff have proposed mitigation measures to address some of her concerns. But Bellam never expected to annexation to wrap up this way.

She remembers attending an early meeting on the extension of the road in 2000, when her teenage daughter was an infant.

That year, then-major Randy Fletcher called for a thorough approach prior to a decision.

“I want to take all the time necessary to plan this city correctly, not rush through and make a bunch of mistakes,” Fletcher was quoted in a Snoqualmie Valley Record story from October of that year. “That is exactly the reason we are having these workshops, to get the ideas of the citizens and business owners, to shape Snoqualmie correctly.”

“I don’t think that’s happened,” Bellam said. “They never sent out a mailer. They’ve never really had a community meeting. That’s more what I think Mayor Fletcher had in mind: to get input from people before decisions are made.

“This being the UGA, I can see from their perspective why it makes sense,” she said. “But we’re always the dumping ground.”