City responds to critics of the flow-diversion structure
By Brian Soergel
Edmondseditor@yourbeacon.net
Posted Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Link to Edmonds Beacon article
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) has granted the City of Edmonds an expedited permit allowing crews to begin debris-clearing work at the city’s controversial flow-diversion structure on lower Perrinville Creek – a move that environmental advocates say again sidesteps long-standing legal and safety obligations.
The Hydraulic Project Approval (HPA) permit, valid through Jan. 13, authorizes City staff to use handheld tools to remove sediment, branches, leaves, and trash from a steel culvert near 8229 Talbot Road and the railroad tracks. It’s located in a City right-of-way.
The City says the work is needed to prevent flooding during significant fall and winter storms.
There has been a years-long dispute over the creek’s management, with homeowners’ flooding concerns, biologists’ salmon-restoration goals, and growing criticism of the City’s reliance on what environmentalists say as an aging, unsafe, and illegally installed diversion structure.
“It’s now too late to save this year’s run of coho salmon from the upper Perrinville Creek salmon recovery project,” said Joe Scordino, a retired marine biologist and critic of the City’s action on the diversion.
“The returning adult salmon would already have tried to enter Perrinville Creek’s attraction water coming out of the City’s pipe and either died or injured themselves trying to get past the impassible situation the City has created.”
Local independent engineer Bill Lider, another critic of the culvert, said, “The City of Edmonds is again seeking to circumvent compliance with state environmental law in order to avoid preparing a valid environmental determination of the impacts from its structurally deficient and hydraulically deficient 40-inch steel pipe from its fish-killing diversion structure in Perrinville Creek.
“By obtaining an expedited HPA permit on an emergency basis, it can avoid compliance with SEPA to perform routine maintenance under the guise of an emergency.”
City spokesperson Natasha Ryan said the City coordinated with DFW to obtain the permit to mitigate potential flooding.
In March, the City’s hearing examiner remanded the City’s 2024 Determination of Non-Significance (DNS) decision back for correction, due to safety concerns regarding a large hole in the City-owned 40-inch steel pipe.
“The hearing examiner,” said Ryan, “remanded the determination of non-significance for the limited purpose of evaluating whether the alleged joint defect located 93 feet into the pipe is a fault that can lead to structural damage to overlaying railroad tracks, a risk that the hearing examiner described as ‘small.’
“There was no decision to restore fish passage. In fact, the hearing examiner found that maintaining the diversion structure in the manner that has been done over the last many years would not create any significant adverse impacts to fish.”
That meeting was recorded and is available to the public, Ryan said.
Lider said the hole is undermining the railroad track above by allowing large ballast rock to drop into the pipe.
“At the hearing, the City claimed the hole was not under the railroad tracks; however, a survey done by the City last summer found the hole is directly under the railroad tracks, which is a major safety concern. Loss of rock under the railroad tracks might not be detectable at the surface until a sudden shift in the rock causes a derailment into Puget Sound and a potential loss of life from an East Palestine-type disaster.”
According to the City: “Our objective in this process is to follow nationwide standards and continue to monitor the situation. The examiner did not find a ‘major safety concern.’ Rather, the examiner concluded: ‘With continued maintenance under the ‘current condition’ baseline, there is a minor chance that the pipe can cause railroad track damage. The same conclusion regarding impacts can be made under the ‘no action” baseline, where flows would no longer go through the pipe and thereby jeopardize its integrity if no action is taken.’
“Of course,” the City continued, “the ultimately authority on the safety of the tracks is BNSF, which conducts regular inspections for that purpose. The modeling shows both pipes can handle the capacity in total. We are using up-to-date data and current standards. If the property owners believe it in their interest, as a flood control measure, to reestablish the flow to the BNSF culvert, they are free to do so.”
Scordino said it’s a “travesty” that the City could have prevented by simply reopening the creek it illegally blocked in 2021.
“This could have been done while maintaining their diversion structures to prevent flooding. These are not mutually exclusive. The current administration’s disregard for the larger regional effort to restore salmon populations and our natural environment is disconcerting, to say the least. And I can only wonder why the Department of Fish and Wildlife is allowing the continuation of an illegal fish-blocking activity at Perrinville Creek.”