Why WA is demolishing a 60-year-old family auto shop for salmon

LAKE FOREST PARK — Ron Ricker remembers hauling 5-gallon buckets full of small smooth stones — the right size for spawning salmon. It was 1961, and he was preparing to replace gas pumps over a stream through Lake Forest Park.

The new pumps would sit above a three-sided concrete culvert, with Lyon Creek flowing through it, along a gravel streambed intended to welcome migrating fish.

Today, the state is taking that same portion of Ricker’s property through eminent domain, also to help salmon. It will force the demolition and closure of his business, Ballinger Automotive, after more than 60 years of operation.

The Washington state Department of Transportation is planning to restore this section of the creek when it replaces its culvert under Highway 104, more commonly known as Ballinger Way Northeast, as part of a $13 million investment on Lyon Creek.

That project is a tiny part of Washington’s largest salmon recovery program ever, costing somewhere between $3.8 and $7.8 billion, which was the subject of a Seattle Times investigation this year. Under a federal court order, the state is tearing out and replacing hundreds of Western Washington culverts — typically concrete or metal pipes under highways — because they block salmon migration.

The Times investigation found that some of the projects, which can cost upward of $100 million each, were essentially worthless for salmon migration today because other barriers block fish upstream or downstream. Nonetheless, WSDOT has accelerated the work to meet a court-imposed 2030 deadline.

As they pass by these culvert construction projects, drivers might be snarled in traffic temporarily. But for Ricker, his employees and longtime customers, there’s no getting around it. At age 87, he’s now pushed into retirement and his mechanics face unemployment.

Up and down the stream, Ricker points out, there are other obstacles to migration. Some have been replaced, and some let a portion of fish through. But others — like a city culvert a quarter-mile upstream — will continue to block all fish after the state completes its project. In this way, Lyon Creek is like many others The Times examined.

“You can put a fancy, gold-plated stream crossing here,” Ricker said, “but what’s the point?”

A spokesperson for the department declined to discuss its eminent domain action — the taking of private property for public use — because it was in legal proceedings. In an email, the agency said, “The process is not taken lightly and that is why there is state law, procedures and even a court process if necessary to ensure state policies are followed.”

The federal court order and the 2030 deadline are the result of a lawsuit filed by 21 tribal nations. They argued that the culverts had to be replaced to protect their treaty fishing rights, as salmon and steelhead trout stocks declined in part due to the state-owned barriers. In 2013, federal judge Ricardo Martinez ordered the state to remove a majority of the state’s fish-blocking culverts by the end of this decade.

The Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, which has been involved in the WSDOT project design, did not respond to a request for comment.

Creek used to “run red”

Before nonnative people settled this area that drains into what’s today known as Lake Washington, hundreds of streams and tributaries supported Chinook, coho, sockeye and other fish species, said Tom Murdoch, the executive director of the nonprofit Adopt A Stream Foundation.

Urban development like the auto shop and its pavement had a cumulative negative impact. They stripped away surrounding plants that helped keep Lyon Creek cool, which is good for spawning salmon, and free from pollutants.

“It’s a classic stream in an urban environment with all the problems associated with urbanization,” Murdoch said.

“We used to have a lot of salmon in Lyon Creek,” said Katie Phillips, a project manager for the City of Lake Forest Park who works on culverts. “The creek used to ‘run red,’ people say.”

The WSDOT culvert on Ballinger Way is too narrow for the stream, according to state records, causing a “fire hose” effect when the creek is running high, blocking salmon migration. Also, Ballinger Automotive’s culvert — the one Ricker built in the 1960s — has collapsed, completely blocking salmon.

In recent years, government agencies have steadily chipped away at other barriers along Lyon Creek, including the replacement of four undersized culverts at the mouth of Lyon Creek where it enters Lake Washington. Lake Forest Park replaced another culvert downstream of Ricker’s auto shop, and plans to do yet another in conjunction with the WSDOT project.

But much work remains to be done. WSDOT plans another culvert replacement on a tributary of Lyon Creek for $10 million. And the city-owned culvert just a quarter-mile upstream of the shop is slated for removal, but the timing is uncertain.

Still, even with all the public investment, salmon will have a hard time traversing portions of Lyon Creek. Some privately owned culverts downstream, for instance, partially block migration, letting some but not all fish through, depending on conditions. Homeowners and others that impede migrating salmon are technically violating state law, but today the state doesn’t force people to replace their culverts. Officials are still developing rules to encourage or force compliance.

“WSDOT barriers are often the most expensive in a system. When we correct our barriers, it leaves less expensive barriers that likely will score higher for grant funding,” WSDOT spokesperson Barbara LaBoe said in an email.

More than 7 miles of Lyon Creek and its tributaries are upstream of the auto shop. Based on the federal court order, WSDOT could count all of that as “potential” salmon habitat the agency has opened, despite other barriers on the stream. This metric — the amount of potential habitat upstream — is driving WSDOT’s project choices as it races toward the 2030 deadline, not the quality of habitat, The Times investigation found.

WSDOT makes an offer

For now, the focus is on the section of stream near Ballinger Automotive. WSDOT will try to simulate natural stream conditions within the confines of asphalt and other development built over generations.

Transportation officials offered Ricker $124,000 for a triangle-shaped parcel carved out of his land, plus the temporary use of another area for construction equipment, an amount that accounts for the cost to clean up polluted soil, Ricker said. He says it’s not enough compensation, and aims to make his case in court. A trial date has been set in January.

WSDOT moved to take the property, as allowed under state law. Typically, government agencies try to avoid taking private land because of its impact on residents and businesses, but WSDOT said in court filings that it was necessary. A judge ruled in June that taking the property was for a valid public use.

Dan Junkers, the auto shop’s general manager, has been working at the shop for 30 years. He recorded a voicemail announcing the closure and has been telling customers individually the shop can’t help them any longer.

“It was rough,” he said. “People were genuinely upset.”

On a recent Tuesday, Margaret Salmi stopped by in her Toyota Rav 4, which she has been getting serviced at Ballinger Automotive for years. She also owns a Toyota Tacoma with 397,000 miles on it, she says proudly, thanks in part to the shop’s mechanics.

“We trust them.” said Salmi, 65, who grew up in Lake Forest Park. “The work was always reasonable and right on.”

She tried to entice one of the mechanics to move the business to a nearby shop — “You could move with all your customers…” — but he said they couldn’t find a workable space.

WSDOT showed Ricker three options for leasing other auto shops, he said, in Bothell and Mountlake Terrace. One had no parking and was too big (Ballinger Automotive has just two bays). The others would cost between $6,000 and $12,000 per month in rent, which he said would require the company to triple its volume.

“We don’t owe anything” on the current property, Ricker said. “We’re scot-free.”

Ballinger Automotive has a base of roughly 800 customers, he said, and until recently would be booked out for three weeks.

This isn’t the first time Lyon Creek and the culvert stopped Ricker’s business. On New Year’s Eve 1996, a massive rainstorm swelled the creek and the culvert cracked under the gas pumps. The pavement caved in, creating a gaping sinkhole (Ricker blamed the city’s undersized culvert downstream for backing up). He got rid of the gas station and has since operated the repair shop only.

Ricker said that he’s tried to bring state, city and tribal leaders together to figure out a fix for this stretch of Lyon Creek that would also save his shop. He held off on repairing his own culvert, he said, because any construction would have to be coordinated with the state’s replacement, which was not scheduled until recently.

“We tried, off and on, for 25 years to get an audience,” Ricker said. “Nobody ever wanted to sit down and do a collaborative approach.”

In the past few years, as the 2030 deadline loomed, WSDOT ramped up its huge culvert replacement program in Western Washington and the Legislature funneled billions of dollars to various projects. One of the biggest is on Interstate 90 in Bellevue, costing $110 million to install bridges over a stream that, like Lyon Creek, still has other salmon barriers.

Some neighbors have come to Ballinger Automotive’s defense. One posted on the social media site Nextdoor, calling on customers to write to the state Attorney General’s Office with their concerns.

“Well, chalk one up for the salmon and a zero for a family business,” Dr. Nina Svino, whose dental office is near Ballinger Automotive, said in an email. “A neighborhood business. Not a huge chain that has the resources to go anywhere. A good neighbor. Gone for good. A loss that can’t be replaced.”

But facing a court-ordered deadline, Ricker and his mechanics moved out last week.