27-02-2025
Is work on a controversial homeless village causing fish to die near Spanaway Lake?
Neighbors of a controversial homeless village near Spanaway Lake say the development is causing hundreds of fish to die in nearby waterways.
State agencies investigating those claims report seeing only a dozen or so dead fish and have been unable to confirm that the fish are dying due to nearby development.
In early February, The News Tribune began to receive reports of dead fish in Spanaway Lake and a small creek that flows into it known as Coffee Creek. Multiple neighbors reported seeing hundreds of dead fish and pointed to recent development on Tacoma Rescue Mission's Good Neighbor Village as the cause.
'Because of all this deforestation and replacement of culverts causing silt and iron to come into Spanaway Lake now probably more than 500 fish have been killed in the last 4 weeks all around Spanaway Lake and no one is doing anything about it,' Sandy Williams, wrote to The News Tribune on Feb. 18.
Williams is the chair of the Friends of Spanaway Lake, a local advocacy group interested in preserving Spanaway Lake.
The News Tribune was unable to obtain photographic evidence of hundreds of dead fish. Local residents provided photos of dozens of dead fish collectively.
The Good Neighbor Village would house roughly 300 chronically homeless people. The project has been met with resistance from a group of neighbors who have organized themselves as Spanaway Concerned Citizens.
Members of Spanaway Concerned Citizens have protested the Good Neighbor Village since its conception, raising concerns about the development's potential impact to multiple adjacent wetlands.
The death of fish was reported to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) near the end of January, and the agency sent investigators to the area within days of the initial report.
Bridget Mire, a spokesperson for WDFW, told The News Tribune investigators found about a dozen dead fish.
'Upon first hearing of the fish mortality, an epidemiologist with WDFW's Fish Program tested four of the fish for pathogens and gill condition,' Mire said in an email to The News Tribune. 'Our testing was inconclusive, and there may be other factors at play that are outside of our purview.'
On Feb. 18, Mire said the WDFW was no longer involved with the case and had passed it off to the Washington State Department of Ecology.
Brittny Goodsell, a spokesperson for the Department of Ecology, told The News Tribune on Feb. 21, 'There are still no known issues about the water quality in the area,' following the agency's investigation and that it had closed the case.
Don Russell has been doing water-quality monitoring in the Pierce County area since the 1950s. For 35 years he has been doing so as a volunteer and currently works with the Chambers-Clover Creek Watershed Council.
Russell has advocated against the Good Neighbor Village project alongside Spanaway Concerned Citizens.
He told The News Tribune that he was made aware of the fish deaths by folks who were previously involved with Spanaway Concerned Citizens. He said using tests that have been standard for water-quality monitoring through his career, he tested the water and examined the a few dead fish. He provided The News Tribune with a photo of a fish he dissected to examine its gills.
In an interview with The News Tribune, Russell said he concluded the fish had died of impaired gill function from oxidized iron in the water, leading to asphyxiation.
In an email sent to the Pierce County Council and the Pierce County Executive on Feb. 25, Russell noted that the sediment in the water could have also had an impact.
'Bear in mind that fish are sight dependent feeders and any turbidity in the water whether caused by iron or bentonite clay turbidity would prevent prey acquisition and lead to starvation.' he wrote on Feb. 25. 'It is notable that the stomachs in some fish examined were devoid of any significant content.'
In fall 2024, workers hired by Tacoma Rescue Mission cleared a fish culvert under a road that they wanted to use to get heavy construction equipment onto the project site. They did so without a proper permit, violating county and federal regulations.
Duke Paulson, executive director for Tacoma Rescue Mission, told The News Tribune the fish culvert was cleared to allow water to pass through in hopes of preventing high-water flooding of the road.
Russell told The News Tribune the road serves as a dam of sorts, preventing water from a wetland marsh south of the road from flowing into Coffee Creek. He hypothesized that when water from the wetland caused the water level of Coffee Creek to rise after the culvert was cleared, it caused a reaction with iron saturated soils near the creek bed.
He said he suspects that is how iron sediments saturated Coffee Creek and caused the fish deaths.
Last year Spanaway Concerned Citizens hired lawyers to make a case against the village during a Pierce County land examiner's hearing that lasted weeks. The project was eventually approved by the land examiner.
This year, a new land examiner heard an appeal filed by Spanaway Concerned Citizens due to the unpermitted fish culvert work done by Tacoma Rescue Mission. The appeal was denied.
