Work Stops On Tribe’s Theater After Wetlands Destroyed

Work has been halted on the Muckleshoot Tribe’s $17 million amphitheater after a patch of wetlands was destroyed at the site.

It was not clear how long the discovery could delay the project, or whether a wetlands permit will be required. The tribe may be required to reconstruct the lost habitat elsewhere, or to redesign the open-air theater to accommodate them, tribal attorney Rob Otsea said Monday.

“We’ll work through it in a cooperative method,” Otsea said.

So far, 0.6 acres of wetlands have been cleared at the site - more than the one-third-acre threshold that requires notification of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, corps spokeswoman Patricia Graesser said this morning.

Because the size of the wetland and other particulars had not yet been determined, it was not known how long the discovery could delay the project, Graesser said.

The wetland was “mechanically cleared,” she said - bulldozed or otherwise removed. But if it can be restored so that less than a third of an acre is affected, the work may be allowed to proceed shortly, she said.

“They’re working with us,” Graesser said, noting the tribe halted work at the site voluntarily last week.

The wetlands were overlooked because a project consultant who checked the site last summer thought that a fence was the property line, Otsea said. In fact, the boundary was 30 to 40 feet south of the fence - including the wetlands.

Nobody went back to tell the consultants, “Here’s the new boundary, does it make any difference?” he said.

A corps ecologist reported “some isolated wetlands” on the bluff closest to the nearby White River on Friday, Otsea said.

“After he told me that Friday, I then had the contractor stop work on that part of the property,” he said.

“It was sort of a self-imposed stopwork order,” Otsea said, in anticipation of such an order from the corps.