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04/06/02 Missoulian/Glacier Mall BrawlMissoulian On'ine Archives http://www.missoulian.coin/archives/index...etail&doc=/2002/April/06-1024-news02.txt A iffiMISSOUliancom r news online April 06, 2002 Glacier Mall brawl By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian Future of giant Flathead shopping complex remains muddled at best KALISPELL - Lawsuits, confusing laws, politics and growing concerns about polluting Flathead Lake's waters all have conspired to stall, at least temporarily, construction of what would be Montana's biggest retail shopping mall. Tennessee developer Bucky Wolford had planned to break ground on the site just east of Kalispell in early May, but with that date just a month away, no one is anticipating to start on schedule. According to Jean Johnson, who oversees some of the engineering for the proposed 750,000-square-foot mall, the project is "about the same place it was two years ago. Nowhere." Well, not exactly. The Glacier Mall proposal is somewhere, tangled amid legal briefs and political spats, all floating on dangerously shallow groundwater. Certainly nowhere near where Johnson would like it to be. The first major obstacle came last year when Flathead County commissioners unilaterally changed a joint city -county master plan to pave the way for the mall. County officials contend they were just doing a bit of housekeeping to the document, and as such did not need Kalispell's consent to change the shared land -use planning document. City leaders charge the county acted illegally, and have taken the matter to court. of 8 4/8/02 4:21 PM Missoulian Online Archives http://www.missoulian.com/archives/index...etail&doc=/2002/April/06-1024-news02.txt The lawsuit came amid ongoing land -use planning battles between county and city officials, with the city charging the county commission with abandoning substantive planning in a rush to embrace a philosophy grounded in the primacy of private property rights. The county has countered that the city seeks to spread its sphere of planning and zoning influence into areas over which it has no jurisdiction. Meanwhile, Johnson said, the state Legislature has further muddied the waters by passing a questionable law governing building -code jurisdiction on lands immediately adjacent to city limits. The fate of that bill is currently before the Montana Supreme Court. Another new state law Johnson called confusing attempts to force cities and counties to write long-term planning documents. Some readings of the law indicate that cities and counties cannot undertake any major planning and zoning decisions - such as accommodating the biggest mall in the state - until they first draft an updated growth management plan. A collaborative effort between Kalispell and Flathead County to draw up just such a plan foundered, resulting finally in a split between the government planning offices. The city has requested a clarification of the law from Montana's attorney general, but a response, Johnson said, could be months away. In fact, he said, he would not be surprised if the attorney general simply put off a decision until the next meeting of the Legislature, when lawmakers can "clean up the mess they made." The chosen site for Wolford's mall is in the county, just outside city limits, and as such falls into the gray areas produced by the two state laws. Wolford has requested that the city annex the property, and discussions are under way, but any resolution will require firm answers regarding the lawsuit and the planning laws. Even if the lawsuits and legal interpretations can be untangled, the Glacier Mall project still has to contend with environmental concerns, most of which hinge on the unique groundwater system that flows not so far beneath the site. Conservationists, including members of the Flathead Lakers, already have expressed concern that the geology of the site > of 8 4/8/02 4:21 PM Missoulian Online Archives http://www.missoulian.com/archives/index...etail&doc=/2002/April/06-1024-news02.txt will allow parking lot runoff - laced with battery acid, antifreeze, oil, gas, tire residue, grease and other pollutants - to flush straight into the Flathead River and on into Flathead Lake. Johnson, however, insists engineers can guarantee clean water, saying, "we don't feel it's an unattainable goal to deal with the groundwater situation." The "groundwater situation" east of Kalispell was a long time coming. To get at its beginnings, you have to look back some 12,000 years, when vast sheets of ice flowed down from what is now Canada, carving out the Flathead Valley. The ice stretched all the way to Poison, at the southern end of Flathead Lake, where it pushed up an enormous pile of dirt. When the ice began to melt, according to Dr. Richard Hauer, the volume of water that poured through the Flathead was staggering. Hauer is professor of limnology at the University of Montana's Flathead Lake Biological Station at Yellow Bay, where he has worked for more than 20 years. "When the ice melted," Hauer said, "the flows were tremendous. The Flathead River ran through the whole valley. Basically, the lake was backed up all the way to Kalispell." The big pile of dirt pushed up at the foot of the lake plugged the outlet, causing lake levels to rise 20 feet above what is now considered full pool. The result, Hauer said, was a vast delta that stretched across much of the land that is now being developed east of Kalispell - including Wolford's Glacier Mall site. The massive river poured across the delta plain, Hauer said, sorting out gravel and smaller materials such as sand. Even today, he said, pilots can see the ancient meander scrolls of that river carved into the Flathead's farmland. The result, he said, is that much of what's underfoot east of town is in the form of large, loose cobbles, through which water flows with ease. Just how much ease was discovered by Hauer's colleague, Dr. Jack Stanford, who is director of the Biological Station. ; of 8 4/8/02 4:21 PM Missoulian Online Archives http://www.missoulian.com/q-hi,,-c/;,,tiPy Pra;i&doc=/2002/April/06-1024-news02.txt Back in the 1970s, Stanford was completing his doctoral studies on the Flathead River, studying a relatively rare species of stone fly. He was attempting to crack the mystery of why the mature stone flies were found in abundance in the river, while the younger growth stages were missing. Then came the eureka, or, to be more precise, the phone call from the town of Eureka. City officials there had just tapped a new municipal water supply, pumping groundwater from the shallow alluvial gravel. It wasn't long, however, before they started finding "maggots" in the bottom of their glasses. Stanford immediately recognized the bugs as the young nymph stage of his elusive stone flies. The fact that the tiny critters had turned up in wells hundreds of yards from the river was a shock to everyone. Until then, river ecologists believed substantial exchanges of groundwater and river water only happened within a yard or so of the riverbed itself. "It was groundbreaking," Hauer said of Stanford's discovery. "Suddenly, scientists all around the world were rethinking river ecology." Rivers - especially gravel -bed rivers carved by glaciers - were no longer viewed in a linear fashion, but rather were seen as having a broad, lateral component as well. Taking his new understanding of river dynamics back to the Flathead, Stanford tapped wells far beyond the riverbanks, each time hitting groundwater within a few yards. That water, not surprisingly, was full of young stone flies. In essence, he said, he had tapped into the river itself, only this portion was flowing underground. Stanford also realized that the groundwater was moving at an incredible rate through the cobbles - several yards per minute in most places. That compares to an average groundwater rate of inches per month. "What that means," Hauer said, 'Ss that if something is spilled on top of these ancient meanders, the ground is so porous, all the nasties will go straight into the groundwater and be rapidly transported to the river and down into Flathead Lake." Which is exactly why the unincorporated community of 4 of 8 4/8/02 4:21 PM Missoulian Online Archives http://www.missoulian.com/archives/index...etaiI&doc=/2002/April/06-1024-news02.txt Evergreen is now linked into Kalispell's city sewer service. The community, sprawling east of Kalispell just south of the proposed mall site, sits atop those old meanders, as would Wolford's mall. And it was the only spot along the old delta, Stanford said, where his stone fly nymphs were not to be found. Urban pollutants, seeping down as runoff, were directly poisoning the shallow groundwater, and, indirectly, the river and the lake, he said. Although Stanford's work confirmed it, the pollution already was common knowledge to local residents, who had long before abandoned shallow wells as undrinkable, tainted with urban runoff. Today, that long history - from Pleistocene ice sheets to Evergreen's sewer hook-up in the mid- 1980s - is exactly what has people like Charles Mercord so worried. "There's a lot of really, really nasty things that can come off parking lots," said Mercord, who sits on the board of the Flathead Lakers. "There's all kind of stuff that will wash down the drain." Mercord has twice taken his concerns - as well as maps produced largely by work Stanford and associates have completed in the Evergreen area - to city and county officials. "No matter what else happens," Mercord said, "they are going to have to take steps to ensure that parking lot runoff doesn't get into the aquifer and on into Flathead Lake." Mercord's concerns about parking -lot runoff are shared by many water quality watchdogs, who point out that the mall will come with about 2,500 parking spaces. And that does not count the spaces needed for the attendant retail growth Johnson is certain will grow up around the mall. No one, Hauer said, would put up with a system that collected parking -lot runoff and pollutants and piped them directly into Flathead Lake. However, the geology of the proposed site, he said, creates something of a natural pipeline to the river and the lake, resulting in the same effect. At the nearby Costco site, all parking -lot runoff is funneled of 8 4/8/02 4:21 PM Missouli,an Online Archives http://www.missoulian.com/archives/index...etail&doc=/2002/April/06-1024-news02.txt into a vast hole, which pours straight into the shallow, fast-moving aquifer. "This particular location is extremely vulnerable and extremely risky," Hauer said of the mall proposal. "The groundwater issue is a big issue," Johnson said, "but it's an issue we deal with every day in this business." Johnson said he remains convinced that project engineers can develop a system that does not move pollutants into the river. In fact, he said, at least three or four engineers are currently working on just that. Groundwater concerns in nearby Evergreen do not provide an accurate analogue, he said, because the aquifer is much more shallow there than at the project site. "We respect their opinions," he said of the water quality watchdogs, "but we answer to the Department of Environmental Quality, the Department of Natural Resources Conservation and the Environmental Protection Agency. By the time we get done with those guys, we've pretty much been run through the ringer." But while Hauer admits the project could be built to handle the runoff, despite the unique aquifer beneath, he is not so sure Mother Nature will allow a long-term development on the site. "You might be able to engineer it to make it happen," he said, "but then again, 1964 wasn't that long ago." His reference was to the 1964 flood, which left the Evergreen area deep under water and raised Flathead Lake almost eight inches over full pool, despite the help of Hungry Horse and Kerr dams. And just a century ago, he said, in 1896, a truly huge flood poured over the landscape there, raising the lake as much as seven feet over full pool. But the real problem, according to Mercord, is not really floods or aquifers. The real problem is political - a lack of land -use planning in Flathead County. If county officials had taken planning firmly in hand, he said, producing maps that took into account transportation and geology and hydrology and other on -the -ground realities, then some areas could have been placed off-limits to large-scale development while others could have been recommended. Instead, he said, the county seems doomed to fight over each i of 8 4/8/02 4:21 PM Missoulian'Online Archives http://www.missoulian.com/archives/index...etail&doc=/2002/April/06-1024-news02.txt development proposal, a prospect that leaves people like Wolford on very uncertain ground. Hauer agrees, and added that "not all areas are as good as others for particular uses, and developers should know that up front, before they invest a lot of time and money. It all gets back to the problem of poor land planning, no land planning, in the Flathead Valley." The complication of politics in the process came into sharp relief for Hauer when the scientists' findings were first brought to bear on the project in a public forum. Although Hauer has offered no advocacy opinion on the matter, Republican Flathead County Commissioner Dale Williams took him to task during a discussion on a controversial talk radio show. Williams said Hauer was a newcomer to the area, and that a close look into Hauer's background would reveal his work with spotted owls, the now -famous birds that are credited by some for hampering the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest. In reality, Hauer has lived and worked in the Flathead for decades, and, as a fisheries biologist, knows little or nothing about owls. "I've never even seen a spotted owl," Hauer said. "I have no idea where Mr. Williams gets his information." Politics aside, he said, the science that has been ongoing for decades is crystal clear on the geology and hydrology of the proposed site. Anything making its way into the groundwater there, he said, "will flush straight into the lake. It's really that simple." Hauer does not, however, want to be in a position of telling land managers and developers how to do their jobs. Likewise, although the Lakers' Mercord is unshaken in his belief that "that's not the best site in the valley for a mall of that size," he also said he is able to "recognize the fact that if a developer comes in and works in the guidelines and regulations, then he has every right to complete his project. We're not going to try to dictate to the developer where he should or should not site his project." Which is a good thing, Johnson said, as Mercord and others have no say in the matter, anyway. The site, he said, was 7 of 8 4/8/02 4:21 PM Missoulian=online Archives http://www.missoulian.coin/archives/index...etaiI&doc=/2002/April/06-1024-news02.txt chosen for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was proximity to shoppers. Moving it now, he said, is not likely, and developer Wolford is fully committed to the Evergreen location. "It can't be built up the Canyon or up in Eureka or Olney," Johnson said, adding that placement of a retail center such as this is always tricky business. "Nevertheless," he said, "I am convinced we can meet the statutory requirements regarding groundwater and water quality." Whether those requirements will be enough to appease naysayers remains to be seen. "There is technology out there that can solve these water quality problems to a large degree," Mercord admitted, "but I'm sure that cost will enter into the equation at some point, and that's always where push comes to shove." Reporter Michael Jamison can be reached at I-800-366-7186 or at mja»iison@missouliaiz.com. Word one Search for *andoorOnot Word two * and 0or0not Word three Maximum stories: 25E Start Search _ Clear 3 of 8 4/8/02 4:21 PM