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Posted in Op-Ed by Tony Sermonti on July 7, 2009
Capitol Lake: the environment, economy & taxpayers

By Tony Sermonti
Candidate for Olympia City Council, Position 7

Capitol Lake was created 58 years ago by the State of Washington. A city, port and private marina have grown around or near it. With groundwork laid in 1986, the state began a many-million dollar effort developing Heritage Park that now surrounds the lake.

We’re at a point where a backlog of maintenance issues, primarily a failure to adequately and recurrently dredge the lake, has spurred an intergovernmental and community discussion around its future. Some suggest we simply leave the lake alone and let it eventually fill with sediment; truly institute the original vision of a managed lake and restart a process of dredging and long-term maintenance; or create an estuary.

To me, the answer is clear. Our city is built around a lake created by the state nearly 60 years ago to fulfill a 1911 vision of enhancing the views and aesthetics surrounding the capitol campus. It is the state’s responsibility to maintain it. Olympia taxpayers shouldn’t be responsible for destroying the 5th Avenue Dam and building a new bridge in its place to create an estuary. Private business and taxpayers shouldn’t be handed a surprise bill to dredge Budd Inlet because of the significant amounts of sediment that would outflow with no 5th Avenue Dam in place. Instead, the state should responsibly manage a lake it created and had a city built around it.

This issue has equal connotations for the environment, taxpayers AND local economic development. It doesn’t hinge around any single one of these issues.

Capitol Lake should remain a lake, and Olympia should focus our efforts to work with the state to develop a solid maintenance program to take care of it. The state should preserve and maintain what was created almost 60 years ago to be a beautiful addition to our capitol campus, and a feature that many in our community have grown up with and enjoy every day.

  • susantlarson
    Tony,

    I agree with you.

    Last summer I took my grandsons to fish in the Mill Creek Pond in Cosmopolis. The fishing was nearly impossible. It was a mess because who ever is responsible is either not taking care of it or not taking care of it properly. It was filled with green, slimmy algae and weeds were growing in the pond to the point of taking over. The citizens of this state should not sit by and let Capital Lake turn into a swamp. What would that say about our capital, our state and the citizens. When driving through Olympia, I feel pride that my state takes such excellent care of the Capital and grounds and that includes Capital Lake.
  • Hello all-
    Thanks for your respectful and well-written comments. I wrote this piece to make my stance clear about Capitol Lake. Some of us clearly come from different corners on this, but Im happy to have respectful dialogue now and in the future. Each of us is advocating for what we believe is right. Thanks for reading.
    Tony
  • In terms of the "original vision" for Capitol Lake, it did not include the prevention of sediment from flowing into the bay. The 1911 Wilder and White/Olmsted plan called for a much smaller reflecting pool and a free flowing Deschutes River.
  • Thad Curtz
    Sermonti says:

    "To me, the answer is clear. Our city is built around a lake created by the state nearly 60 years ago to fulfill a 1911 vision of enhancing the views and aesthetics surrounding the capitol campus. It is the state's responsibility to maintain it."

    This sounds as if he thinks "the views and aesthetics surrounding the capitol campus" are really valuable, and a really important part of what matters to people about the city. I agree, but I don't see how this can fit together in his mind with the fact that when he announced he told The Olympian that one of his two reasons for running for Joe Hyer's seat was that he thought that Hyer's eventual vote against granting Triway's request to put 141 tall condos in the middle of that view was "disappointing." (Not surprisingly, at least a third of his current list of supporters have been energetic advocates for Triway's rezone, including Representative Brendan Williams, who opposed Senator Fraser's bill to preserve the Capitol's views; Jackie Barret Sharer, who's been one of Olympia 2012's principal lobbyists for the rezone; and Daniel Furrer, who testified in support of Triway's request as the president of the ODA.)

    This position seems to boil down to "The views are really important ant the State should do whatever Olympia wants to preserve the views, but Olympia should be able to do whatever it wants, even if it harms the views."

    (I also don't see how his position on the isthmus fits with the first bullet point in his kickoff speech, which was:

    "ยท We need a council that reflects our views and fights for them."

    But maybe his sense of how the community at large feels about the Council's decision to rezone for Triway just differs dramatically from mine...

    Thad Curtz
  • Laurian
    The Lake is a Fake, 50 year old mistake.
    Time to clean it up.

    As for the marinas well they were built on a myth too.

    I do agree the state needs to share the impact costs of an estuary but I think that about nearly all City/State issues
  • What happens when there is conflict between environmental health and economic development? What happens when "economic development" harms the environment?

    I am sure that there is a way to develop in a manner that is not harmful, but until we reach that level, then it makes sense to protect the environment - in specific the health of living ecosystems - from destructive human activities.

    The world has changed so much in the last few hundred years. In some ways, things are better. In many ways, things are worse.

    Restoring the estuary would be of real and substantial benefit to the ecological health of South Puget Sound.

    In order to be fair to current and future generations, economic development must be balanced with economic stability, equal opportunity for all, and ecological sustainability.
  • Susan Hendricks Ritter
    I totally agree with Mr. Sermonti for the reasons he presented. Not only does the state have a responsibility to maintain the lake for it's original vision and purpose, but also to protect the landowners who have purchased "lakefront" property over the years. I grew up on Capitol Lake. The beauty, serenity and water was the motivation behind my parents' purchase of the property. I haven't lived on the lake for years, but many others have purchased their property for that very reason. When the lake was built, it wasn't built with the idea that it was temporary. It was a lake to enhance our beautiful capitol and legislative buildings, and surrounding capitol city. And it has. Keep the vision, Washington. Your citizens deserve it.
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