Kammerzell gives details on wetland mitigation site

As part of the Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport Runway Realignment Project, an off-site wetland/stream mitigation site has been under construction just south of Colfax to offset the loss of wetlands at the airport.

Tasked with finding an appropriate site for the relocated wetlands, Vince Barthels at J-U-B Engineers in Spokane said he looked into a number of sites in the area before ultimately selecting an 113.6 acre stretch located along the banks of the South Fork of the Palouse River, about two and one-half miles southeast of the Colfax city limits.

Barthels previously told the Gazette one of the reasons for selecting this particular piece of land was because it offered a continuous site for the wetland construction, rather than smaller parcels that would have put the mitigated wetlands in several different locations.

“If you have a bunch of smaller locations, you get kind of a checkerboard approach,” Barthels said. “You’re spreading out your resources versus consolidating those resources.”

Barthels learned about the land from Palouse Land Trust in Moscow, one of the companies he approached to ask if they knew of any suitable land for the development of the wetlands. Palouse Land Trust then referred Barthels to Tom and Cheryl Kammerzell, owners of the land now being used for the mitigation.

Amy Trujillo at Palouse Land Trust said the Kammerzells had been looking for an opportunity to protect their land with a conservation easement for at least four years, but it was not financially feasible.

“They had been looking to protect that corridor for a while. We’d been having informal discussions for a long time with the Kammerzells,” Trujillo said. “They were people who were interested in protecting their land but we couldn’t quite figure out how.”

Trujillo said when Barthels approached her about the wetland mitigation project, she got him together with the Kammerzells.

Palouse Land Trust now holds a conservation easement on the wetland site.

“They put a conservation easement on their land that restricts the development on that land,” Trujillo said.

An article on the Palouse Land Trust website describes the purpose of this easement.

“Nearly two miles of the South Fork of the Palouse River has now been permanently protected by a conservation easement, forever protecting what wildlife agencies have called ‘some of the best remaining wildlife habitat in Whitman County,’” it reads. “The incredible property is home to deer, moose, elk, golden eagles and many more animals. It is one of the few stretches of the river where the floodplain is still intact and the river can meander, providing important habitat for fish and storing potentially destructive flood waters.”

The easement will ensure the land is preserved and that the Kammerzells are in compliance with the easement, as they sold the development rights through the easement to Palouse Land Trust for $2,500 per acre. They still pay property taxes on the land.

A transfer tax affidavit filed July 30 in the treasurer’s office lists sale of a grant deed of conservation for Maple Enterprises, LLC, to Palouse Land Trust, Inc., Moscow, for $284,000.

Sale of the development rights eliminates use of the land for farming, building or running cattle on the land.

Questions have been circulating about this project since a report in the Aug. 13 Gazette. One question was whether or not the Kammerzells owned the land before it was sought as the site for the wetlands.

The Kammerzells did own the land, and have owned it since 2007. They did obtain adjoining property in February of 2014 after the mitigation discussions had begun, however.

“All the work is being done on what we’ve owned for eight years,” Tom Kammerzell said during an interview at the Gazette Tuesday.

They obtained the land being used for the mitigation in January of 2007, following the August 2006 South Palouse fire that destroyed the Risbeck elevator and a state owned railroad trestle.

Kammerzell said he and his sons had been trying to improve the site with 200-300 native tree plantings each year. As part of the wetland mitigation, 19,000 native plantings will now be planted there.

“The two to three hundred was just a drop in the bucket comparatively,” Kammerzell said.

He said he and his wife wanted to protect the land with a conservation easement for some time.

“It’s kind of a unique piece of property with the wildlife out there and not being developed,” he said. “This is a way that we could ensure that our grandkids could look at the same thing we’re looking at.”

The mitigation project allowed for the conservation easement, held by Palouse Land Trust, to be placed on the land and for the wetlands to be developed. Kammerzell previously told the Gazette that when the wetland construction is completed “you won’t know it from natural. It’s going to be a nicer habitat.”

Their Feb. 2014 land acquisition was announced in the Kammerzell 2014 family newsletter.

“While we were not looking for this to happen, we have again added property to our operation,” Tom wrote. “A neighbor of the Meyers Place (the Kammerzell property) decided to sell her farm and leave the area. With her property abutting ours along the South Fork of the Palouse River, we knew that we would not be happy if the property was purchased by someone else with possible designs on development.”

Kammerzell wrote at the time that the family did not know how they were going to use the land.

“The new acquisition consists of 80 acres containing 10 acres of farm ground with the balance being bottom ground and riparian land. At the present time we are weighing all of the options for future uses and compatibility with the rest of the operation.”

The land that the Kammerzells purchased was recorded in the Whitman County Treasurer’s office Feb. 27, 2014, with sale price listed at $96,950. This sale, as said above, is separate from the mitigation. Another sale on the land was listed on April 25, 2014, this time to Tom and Alice Barlass, who purchased the majority of the farm land across the road from the land the Kammerzells purchased.

Barthels said the farm land the Kammerzells purchased is not being used for the wetland mitigation, but he did say J-U-B Engineers holds a temporary construction easement on the land for the duration of the construction process, expected to conclude in early November.

“Some of it’s used for a construction easement right now. It just provides access to the property,” he said.

Another question circulating about this project concerns the announcement that the airport was looking for land to use for off-site mitigation.

Barthels said that process began in the fall of 2012.

“We anticipated roughly 18 to 20 acres of impacts (at the airport),” he said. “Knowing that, we started looking into the need for an off-site mitigation site.”

Barthels said with no wetland bank within the same watershed as the airport wetlands, which is what he would have turned to first for mitigation, the airport needed to find a suitable property within the same watershed and located more than two miles away from the airport, due to the wetlands being a wildlife attraction.

“It’s a pretty unique situation because there’s no bank and you can’t do on-site mitigation,” Barthels said. “We looked at all options. We couldn’t find anything.”

Barthels said about a dozen opportunities were presented, most of which included small parcels of land that offered about an acre each for the mitigation, an approach he wanted to avoid if possible. Another potential land piece was a 15-acre site near Moscow, which was a former runway site that was also being developed as an industrial park.

“That site was very small,” Barthels said. “To get the ecological lift that we needed, that would have been a small piece of the puzzle.”

Barthels said he held a number of open houses around Whitman County to solicit the land needed for the project, including at the PMRA Airport Board, Palouse Conservation District, Palouse Rock Lake Conservation District, an Environmental Assessment Public Open House and the 97th Annual Meeting of the Uniontown Co-operative Association.

Barthels also announced the call for property in the fall 2013 Palouse News, a publication of the Palouse Conservation District.

That advertisement called for willing land owners with greater than 20 acres of riverine wetlands, segments of streams or floodplains for the mitigation effort.

Barthels said there is no standard or legal process for seeking a mitigation site.

“We worked very closely with all the regulatory agencies,” he said. “To find a mitigation site, there are no legal requirements.”

He said he felt the efforts with the open houses, airport board meetings and the advertisement in the Palouse Conservation District newsletter were sufficient for informing the public of the opportunity.

The Kammerzells attended an open house at the Quality Inn in Pullman in November 2013 after being made aware earlier in the same day about the meeting. Trujillo at Palouse Land Trust made the Kammerzells aware of the opportunity after she spoke with Barthels.

Kammerzell said he wasn’t sold on the idea after that open house, so he attended another at the Brelsford Visitor Center in Pullman not long after to learn more.

“We weren’t sure what a wetland mitigation was,” he said. “We did our research and decided it would be a fit for what we were trying to do out there. That met our values.”

Barthels said he is excited about the property chosen for the mitigation.

“We feel super fortunate to work on the ground that we did locate,” he said.

Another question circulating about the mitigation is how it relates to the Port of Whitman County. Kammerzell is a commissioner on the port board.

Kammerzell said the Port of Whitman has not been an active member of the airport board since 2007, and the project has nothing to do with the Port.

“While I may be in office, we haven’t been anything for the (airport) project,” he said.

The airport is scheduled to meet with the Port in October to seek funding for the project, and Kammerzell said he will recuse himself from discussions surrounding the project and any voting regarding it as well. He said the airport did a presentation to the Port about the project earlier this year, and he did not participate in the conversation.

“I’m trying to keep it as clean as possible so there’s no questions as to the relationship,” he said.

Kammerzell said the conservation easement on his property is the first in Whitman County.

“This is very different than anyone’s experience,” he said. “It’s new, it’s different and it’s big.”

Kammerzell said the feedback he has received from the community has been positive. He encouraged people with questions or concerns about the project to contact him directly.

“They could give me a call,” he said. “People, they could ask.”

The construction, being completed by Western Construction of Lewiston, is creating a floodplain that will serve as the relocated wetlands. Currently, dirt is being excavated from the site.

The site is expected to be a draw for local wildlife. Kammerzell said the hope is that it will move the wildlife out of town and provide an area for the wildlife to live in their natural habitat.

The overall cost of the mitigation project is $1.19 million. It is scheduled for completion Nov. 9, Barthels said.