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Renton Mayor’s office was pedaling backwards
Months before the news broke this morning that the Asphalt Plant was halted, “Save the Cedar River” leader Bob Baker was on record with a Churchill-like fortitude “We have every intention of stopping this project. We will take this to the very end. If it takes another five years, it takes another five years.” Similarly, County Councilmember Reagan Dunn made his position clear in an open letter to the King County Council, calling the plant a “Mistake of Monumental Proportions” which threatened the “Cedar River- the drinking water source for 1.4 million people in the region, and critical habitat for Chinook, Coho, Sockeye, and Kokanee salmon..”
Bob Baker’s “Save the Cedar River” organization and Councilmember Reagan Dunn worked to protect salmon spawning grounds and our drinking water aquifer
In contrast, Renton’s Mayor Armondo Pavone published a lengthy press release five months ago undermining Mr. Baker’s and Mr. Dunn’s strong positions, titled “Word on the Street.” This press release attempted to assure the public that the Asphalt Plant proposal was “relatively low” risk. It included two pages of arguments like “The contamination risk is further lessened by on-site requirements of the asphalt plant.” and “Any spills from those tanks would be confined to the containment areas to allow for cleanup.” The Mayor’s press release characterized the many environmental concerns broadly as “misinformation.”
The ridiculous “misinformation” label frustrated Mr. Baker so much that he confronted the Mayor and Council directly on the environmental issues at a Renton City Council Meeting this past March.
Now that Bob Baker, Reagan Dunn, and Lakeside Industries have succeeded in saving the Cedar River and its underlying aquifer from the risk of contamination by the asphalt plant, the Renton Mayor’s office is scrambling to articulate a new position.
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