Saving Wetland Takes Foresight Biologist, Developers Hope To Come To Terms Before Building On West Plains

Chris Merker looked over a meadow of camas, blooming blue as the sky over the West Plains of Spokane County.

A month ago, the meadow was inches deep in water and crowded with migrating waterfowl. A month from now, upland grasses and weeds will replace the camas.

“You’ll look at it and think, `Well, that’s not a wetland,”’ said Merker, wetlands biologist for the Washington Department of Ecology.

But in its brief, annual life, it and uncounted other “vernal” wetlands on the West Plains fill a critical role for migrating waterfowl and a host of other creatures. Scientists are just learning the importance of the pools, which fill with water while permanent ponds are still ice-covered.

Merker hopes to prevent widespread loss of ephemeral ponds on the West Plains, where the county has tabbed thousands of acres for future industrial development.

Because they’re small and don’t have cattails or other plants normally associated with wetlands, vernal ponds don’t get much protection, he said. There is no inventory of the ponds. The Boeing plant along U.S. Highway 2 was built on one, Merker said.

Similarly, developers hope to avoid the quagmire of regulations that come with building in a land where water puddles, rather than seeps.

Construction of a B.F. Goodrich plant stalled last year when the contractor hit water while digging its foundation. The county often requires developers to build lined evaporation ponds to handle runoff from parking lots and the like.

This week, the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce invited landowners from one small patch of the West Plains to a meeting with engineers and biologists, including Merker.

The purpose was to discuss ways to develop the land without destroying its unique importance to wildlife. The chamber suggested landowners form a 2,000-acre storm-water district to raise money for buying development rights to natural drainages. Then, there always would be a system to handle runoff without polluting the vernal ponds.

In places, the district might have to build containment ponds where the water could evaporate or percolate into the ground, said engineer Mike Taylor. These, Merker suggested, should be planted with native trees and grasses.

Landowners said they like the ideas. Some talked of building trails or picnic areas in the natural settings.

“This is a good discussion. I think it will move forward,” said Dick Edwards, a commercial Realtor. “We can solve these problems if we all come together.”

Edwards argued that the proposed district should cover the entire area slated for industrial growth. Dick Heckroth, who organized the meeting for the chamber, cautioned that landowners, developers, biologists and engineers should tackle a small area first.

The meeting ended with no commitments, other than to meet again. But Merker, too, said he was encouraged.

“If we deal with these issues upfront instead of trying to deal with them after (a development starts), it’s a lot more effective and less contentious,” he said.

No one doubts that growth is coming to the West Plains, with its easy access to Interstate 90 and Spokane International Airport. Companies like Boeing and B.F. Goodrich prefer to settle there, rather than risk the liability of building over the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, which supplies water to more than 400,000 people.

The massive aquifer lies under Spokane and the Spokane Valley, but not under the West Plains. There are, however, smaller aquifers, providing water to West Plains residents and keeping streams flowing, said Bruce Lang, an Eastern Washington University researcher.

Lang is part of a team that for three years has studied the ponds that dot the landscape for more than 100 miles, from Sunset Hill well into Douglas County. The only comparable system is in California’s Central Valley, where many of the pools have been lost to development, he said.

The ponds last only 100 to 200 days a year, said Lang, and support a thick soup of invertebrates.

“The organisms that survive there have to stand long periods of drying, then they’re frozen in the winter before being re-wetted,” said Lang, an invertebrate zoologist. “That’s the only place you find them. You don’t find them in Badger Lake” or other permanent waters.

One example is the prolific tadpole shrimp, an other-worldly crustacean. The shrimp, which look like inch-long horseshoe crabs, have 20 pairs of legs and eat by filtering micro-organisms from the water.

Lang believes the shrimp are vital to ducks during the spring migration. Birds need protein to produce eggs, and crustaceans are pure protein.

“When the pintails came through, usually about the first of April, they will go from vernal pond to vernal pond, just clearing out the crustaceans,” Lang said.

Tadpole shrimp eggs can lay dormant in the dry ground for up to 35 years, surviving long periods of drought to hatch when the ponds refill.

Lang, who wasn’t invited to the chamber meeting, said he isn’t ready to support any plan for a storm-water district - at least not until scientists know more about the ponds. He worries about pollutants reaching the West Plains aquifers.

“There’s still so much that we don’t know,” he said.