Pine Lake Creek Basin Plan
Project Overview
The City's Storm and Surface Water Comprehensive Plan recommends basin planning as a component to support the management of the City’s surface and stormwater system to benefit the community and meet the City’s overriding goal of health and sustainability.
Basin planning is essential to assess current conditions, identify problems and opportunities related to maintenance, operations, preservation and restoration of natural resources, and development of integrated strategies for surface and stormwater management within the basin.
Basin planning provides a tool to identify, prioritize and schedule surface water capital projects and identify surface water management strategies that support protection and/or restoration of the City’s natural resources.
The Watershed
A watershed or drainage basin is an area of land where precipitation drains to a common location, like a river or other body of water. This basin drains into Pine Lake Creek before discharging into Lake Sammamish.
The Pine Lake Creek watershed encompasses approximately 1,175 acres between 228th Avenue SE and Lake Lake Sammamish. The basin's most recognizable feature is 88-acre Pine Lake.
Basin Planning Elements
Basin planning seeks to understand the general health of a watershed and identify specific strategies, programs and projects that will maintain or enhance basin health.
The City brought in a team led by Northwest Hydraulic Consultants (NHC) to implement this planning effort. The Basin Planning program consists of the following elements:
Basin Review
This element seeks to develop a clear understanding of the watershed through stream monitoring, physical inspections, and reviewing existing data. This exercise helps the team better understand both the natural and built resources, and identify basin concerns and characteristics.
Modeling
The consulting team will develop a basin-wide hydrologic model to assess the behavior of streams and storm drain system.
Public Outreach
Community feedback is critical to better understanding specific conditions and problems within the basin. Outreach also helps to identify neighborhood concerns and assess community support for specific programs and projects.
Program Development
The team will develop specific projects, strategies and programs to protect critical basin resources and tackle high-profile problems. These items are prioritized with Public input to ensure the City invests limited resources to those areas with the greatest benefit.
Final Report
NHC will compile the information developed through the planning process and finalize the different conclusions and recommendations. The final plan will be adopted by Council.
Outreach and Community Engagement
The City strives to conduct a thorough and comprehensive public engagement effort on all projects. This is especially important on basin plans where residents’ knowledge is critical to assessing basin health and understanding localized problems. Additionally, community input ensures the plan recommendations reflect community priorities and viewpoints.
The project team developed a robust public engagement effort for the Pine Lake Creek Basin Plan including the following key milestones.
Stakeholder Outreach
Staff and project consultants hosted two public stakeholder meetings at City Hall on July 10, 2023. Two meeting – one geared toward Pine Lake and the second toward the overall basin – provided a forum for parties to identify important concerns within the basin and learn of the planning effort.
Staff kicked off each meeting with a brief presentation. A copy is available here.
Open House
The project team will host an open house at City Hall on September 26 to offer the public a progress report and gain valuable feedback.
A second open house is planned for January 2024 – Stay tuned for a final date.
Project Facts
Schedule
The anticipated project schedule as of August 2023 is posted here.
Funding
The project's $375,000 cost is funded by the City's Stormwater Operating Fund. Revenue is collected annually from residential and business rate payers.
Project Team
Patty Dillon, Northwest Hydraulic Consultants (prime consultant)
Erin Nelson, AltaTerra Consulting (strategic advisor)
Craig Buitrago, PBS (civil design)
Bryan Berkompas, Aspect Consulting (stream sampling/monitoring)
Bill Mavros, PBS (habitat & biological assessment)
Chris Hoffman, B&W (public involvement & outreach)