Comment to Edmond City Council re: The Comprehensive Plan, 10 December 2024

Given that the Comprehensive Plan is about reimagining the future of Edmonds, I would like to emphasize the importance of this plan to affirming our goals for restoring the Edmonds Marsh. It is essential to recognize that the Unocal property is the keystone that connects and integrates the entire vision for the Edmonds Waterfront, both ecologically and socially.

First, the Unocal property is essential to any ecological restoration of the Marsh, which requires daylighting Willow Creek to allow the free flow of waters between the Marsh and Puget Sound. Only this will open a passageway for salmon to spawn upstream, nourish their growth in the estuary, seek the ocean as their instinct demands, and return to their spawning grounds to lay new eggs and with their bodies feed both soil and animal life—thus completing the life cycle currently blocked by the underground culvert.

In terms of the social ecology of the Edmonds community, the Unocal property is key to building a trail around the perimeter and an overlook on the south side, opening the restored estuary to the public for recreational value. Imagine the profound experience for children of seeing salmon eggs they have raised not only hatch but grow into strong and beautiful fish that return home to Edmonds to continue the cycle of life; imagine the real and cultural value to Edmonds of thus contributing to the wider economy of the Salish Sea. Doing this will mean we will have restored a millennia-old natural process, a process Unocal’s seizure and despoliation had destroyed.

            I think we all sense why this needs to happen, both to restore a sense of agency and hope for the land we have adopted and made our home, and to reintegrate humans back into the natural landscape as creative participants instead of agents of blockage and destruction. I thank the planners for prioritizing the future of the Marsh. It’s a small marsh, but an immense vision, one central to any whole conception of the future of Edmonds. Yet to realize this vision means there is immense work ahead of us, work the Comprehensive Plan needs to openly acknowledge. I urge the language of this Plan be clarified to state 1) that any restoration of the Marsh requires an open reconnection to the Sound, and 2) that such a reconnection requires building a daylight channel through the Unocal property. I fear that any plan for improvements that doesn’t explicitly acknowledge the difficulty as well as the importance of this challenge risks creating an opening for compromise just as soon as the going gets tough—which it surely will!

Laura D. Walls

Edmonds, Washington