o Previously: Washington State Department of Transportation purchased land near Ridgefield for a wetland mitigation site and began construction in September 2009. Property owners in the area won’t allow WSDOT to use their private road to access the site. WSDOT began eminent domain proceedings last year.
o What’s new: WSDOT purchased additional land near the wetland mitigation site. The state and property owners are preparing for the eminent domain court hearing.
o What’s next: WSDOT and the property owners have a hearing at 9 a.m. March 30 in Clark County Superior Court.
The Washington State Department of Transportation is taking a group of Ridgefield-area property owners to court this month in an attempt to gain access to its wetland mitigation site.
o Previously: Washington State Department of Transportation purchased land near Ridgefield for a wetland mitigation site and began construction in September 2009. Property owners in the area won't allow WSDOT to use their private road to access the site. WSDOT began eminent domain proceedings last year.
o What's new: WSDOT purchased additional land near the wetland mitigation site. The state and property owners are preparing for the eminent domain court hearing.
o What's next: WSDOT and the property owners have a hearing at 9 a.m. March 30 in Clark County Superior Court.
The state and the property owners have been at odds for more than a year after the neighbors say the state trespassed for several weeks by using their private road, Northwest 289th Street, to access the site. WSDOT officials said they didn’t know the road was private property until after construction began in September 2009.
Vicki Purcell, who owns 5.8 acres that includes a majority of the road and a 30-foot strip of land north of the road, won’t grant the state permission to use the road. She says she isn’t allowing access because, in addition to trespassing, construction crews removed topsoil from the mitigation site and stored it on her abutting property without her permission. That topsoil is still there.
The state offered Purcell $2,400 for easement rights to the road. David Harjo, WSDOT southwest region real estate services manager, said the state doesn’t want to purchase the land from Purcell, just the right to use the road to reach its mitigation site.
But Purcell turned down the offer and discussions halted.
So last year the state launched eminent domain proceedings and will meet Purcell and several neighbors who have access rights to the road in Clark County Superior Court on March 30.
“If they followed lawful procedures for acquisition and construction, we wouldn’t be here,” said Danielle Davis, one of the property owners.
WSDOT purchased a 7.85-acre conservation easement at 610 N.W. 289th St. in 2007. The land will be the mitigation site to offset wetland impacts at the Ridgefield Interstate 5 interchange about a mile to the southwest. By law, when wetlands are filled, new areas must be created.
For three weeks WSDOT used Northwest 289th Street to access the site and begin construction. Then, after receiving complaints from neighbors, WSDOT realized the easement it purchased didn’t include access rights to that private road. Instead, the property’s access point is off Northwest Seventh Avenue, which branches off 289th Street. Harjo said Seventh Avenue is not the preferred access point for the project. To get to the site from there, crews would have to damage wetlands and cross a drainage area.
The title insurance company WSDOT hired incorrectly said the state had all the legal rights it needed to move forward with the project.
WSDOT shut down construction of the mitigation site in September 2009 while it tried to resolve the access issue. But because an agreement couldn’t be reached, WSDOT will let the courts decide, Harjo said.
The state will argue it needs to acquire access rights to the road for a public use — the mitigation site, Harjo said. If the judge agrees, he or she will determine “just compensation” for Purcell, as required by law, he said.
But Purcell, Davis and neighbor Michelle Prouty worry about the future of their rural neighborhood if WSDOT is granted easement rights to the road.
“They’re eking their way into the neighborhood,” Prouty said.
Proof of that, the residents said, is a recent purchase by WSDOT.
The state purchased a 20-foot strip of land that runs parallel to 289th Street in October. The land is south of the road and runs from Northwest Seventh Avenue to Northwest Second Avenue, both private roads. WSDOT paid $15,000 for the 20-foot strip, which stretches less than a quarter mile.
WSDOT purchased the land from the estate of a previous landowner in the neighborhood. Residents in the area believed the current property owners also owned that strip of land, which wasn’t the case.
The purchase doesn’t alleviate the state of the need to get easement rights to the road from Purcell.
WSDOT officials said they purchased the land in order to gain access to their wetland site.
The state needed easement rights from the property owners because the road crosses over a portion of the land, Harjo said. The property owners wanted to sell the strip of land rather than sell easement rights, he said.
“They requested we purchase it in total because it wasn’t usable for them,” Harjo said. “We agreed to purchase that just so we could have the rights.”
But area property owners suspect WSDOT has other plans in the works for their neighborhood such as constructing additional wetlands when future projects need mitigation.
“It’s like they’re playing Monopoly,” Prouty said. “The more land they can acquire, the more they can do.”
The Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council’s metropolitan transportation plan for Clark County identifies a project involving the private road. The project calls for extending Northwest 289th Street from Northwest 11th Avenue to Northeast 10th Avenue, which would make the private dead-end road a through street.
Project engineer Chris Tams said WSDOT did not purchase the land for future use.
“It was strictly to have access to the wetland mitigation site,” he said.
“We can certainly understand the property owners’ concerns,” said Abbi Russell, WSDOT spokeswoman. “We simply are looking for the ability to access the land we own.”
Marissa Harshman: 360-735-4546 or marissa.harshman@columbian.com.
