Drafter
Clerk 11/12/2010
Title
AN ORDINANCE authorizing the King County executive to amend a gravel purchase and extraction agreement as partial consideration for the acquisition of property on Maury Island known as the Maury Island Sand and Gravel property, located in council district 8, from Northwest Aggregates Co., an Oregon corporation.
Body
PREAMBLE:
In March 2010, the Washington state Legislature appropriated $15,000,000 solely for the Washington state Department of Ecology to assist King County in the acquisition and remediation of property on Vashon and Maury Islands.
The Maury Island shoreline initiative project protects critical shoreline along Maury Island in Puget Sound. As part of its Maury Island shoreline initiative project, King County has negotiated the purchase of approximately two hundred fifty acres of land on Maury Island owned by Northwest Aggregates Co., an Oregon corporation ("NWA"). The property ("the NWA property") has been developed as a sand and gravel mine, including a conveyor system and dock for loading gravel onto barges.
The NWA property has significant ecological value vital to the Puget Sound ecosystem and recovery of species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
More than seventy percent of Puget Sound’s coastal wetlands and estuaries have been lost to development and other shoreline modifications. Permanent conservation of the NWA property will protect this valuable nearshore habitat. The NWA property includes one mile of Puget Sound shoreline adjacent to the Maury Island aquatic reserve.
Part of the consideration to be given to NWA for the NWA property is an amendment to a Gravel Purchase and Extraction Agreement ("the gravel agreement") between King County and Vashon Sand and Gravel ("VSG"), which was authorized by the King County Council in Ordinance 14371. The gravel agreement grants VSG the right to extract gravel from twenty-six acres of county-owned park property on Maury Island. Ordinance 14371 aut...
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