Sean Arent is the president of the Clover Creek Restoration Alliance. The speech was presented at the public hearing of the Dupont mine’s expansion. The zoom connection failed during his presentation. It is printed here:
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Let me tell you about the Clover-Chambers-Sequalitchew Watershed.
Our watershed, located between the Nisqually and Puyallup watershed, is an entirely, rain and groundwater fed system, no snow or glacial feed.
Our lakes and wetlands, and forests are what feeds the creeks, ultimately by recharging our groundwater and aquifers.
This watershed was the first to be impacted by European colonizers in Puget Sound. Fort Nisqually was built here, and historical records describe Sequalitchew Creek as a little river with a vast estuary, difficult to imagine with the trickle it is today.
Colonization has continued to impact this watershed, decade after decade, layer after layer. Vast forested areas have been lost to ruthless exploitation by corporations like Weyrhauser. The Sequalitchew estuary has been choked by a BNSF Railroad berm with a tiny culvert. Water has been diverted from Sequalitchew lake by Fort Lewis out to Solo Point. The Calportland mine has mined hundreds of acres. Now they want to take the rest.
To understand the fate of Sequalitchew Creek, we do not need to leave the watershed to find an example.
Spanaway Marsh, Spanaway Lake, and Spanaway Creek all flow into Clover Creek. And for most of the year, all this water only gets so far before it disappears back underground. Unrestricted development and water withdrawal has done this to a creek that was once the main drinking water source for the city of Tacoma. The aquifer in other parts of the watershed has already been drained, creating a situation where the Department of Ecology has closed it to further withdrawals.
You see the level of the aquifer is what determines the flow of our creeks. By draining the aquifer, there is no way to restore Sequalitchew Creek. The surface water released from Sequalitchew lake will simply dissappear underground. In the proposed Sequalitchew Restoration Plan offered by the mine, there are describing a bottomless Edmond Marsh and a bottomless Sequalitchew Creek
This so-called plan was led by the mine and its contractors. Its primary function is not to restore the creek. It is to allow the maximum extraction of gravel from this region by re-engineering a complex hydrological system.
Almost all of the necessary mitigation is tied to this plan, which somehow is not being scrutinized. And importantly, I’ll note that the creek can absolutely be restored without money from Glacier Northwest.
Re-engineering the creek threatens to destroy it. Mitigation is built on promises by an industry that frequently uses shell companies and bankruptcies to loot the earth while leaving the public to clean up the consequences.
There is no way to move this project forward without destroying far more wetlands than mitigation will be able to replace. There is no way to move this project forward without damaging critical habitat for salmon and eliminating over 80 percent of Sequalitchew Creek’s cooling groundwater flow.
With a recently announced drought in our region, rising sea levels threatening to salinate the aquifer, there is no way to move this project forward in the name of sanity.
Is it right for this mining company to scrape every last pebble out of the mine?
Or is right of the Nisqually Tribe to preserve their cultural resources?
Or is it right for the salmon to return to the creek?
Or is it right for Dupont residents to secure their aquifer?
Of course not!
Often, what is right and what is legal is not the same. But today, we have a proposal that is both wrong and illegal. In the name of all things that are green and good in this world, reject this proposal.