An asphalt plant proposed next to the Cedar River in Renton highlights the risk that shortsighted planning can potentially upend an area for generations. Despite multiple warnings that allowing industrial use on the 25-acre Highway 169 tract could have big consequences, Metropolitan King County Council members voted resoundingly for the change in 2008.

That 7-1 decision, followed by a 2016 land purchase by longtime regional paving contractor Lakeside Industries, led to the permits King County approved April 14. Although County Executive Dow Constantine has long opposed the plant, the zoning decided by the council’s long-ago vote enabled it to get this far.

The lesson must extend beyond calling the industrial zoning “a mistake” and a “shockingly bad example of land use policy” — as the area’s County Council representative then and now, Reagan Dunn, does. Such land-use decisions resonate far beyond who happens to own a property the day a vote is taken, particularly when uniquely sensitive locations are in play. 

The plant’s opponents should continue to demand stringent environmental review. The Cedar — source of most of Lake Washington’s water — contains a threatened chinook salmon run and provides drinking water for 1.4 million people. King County worked for 11 years restoring that river’s health, removing 1,200 feet of levee and, at a cost of $6.7 million, buying out flood-prone houses and mobile homes. 

County Council records and video show this site was converted to industrial zoning October 2008. Councilmember Pete von Reichbauer proposed the change, describing a rural site with “almost 60 years of historic industrial use,” which had become an “eyesore” hosting truck repair and welding. 

“Anything here would be an improvement,” von Reichbauer told his colleagues. “This looks like a site that might be found after Katrina in New Orleans.”

A March 2008 county staff memo had recommended a nonindustrial zoning to legalize the site’s landscape-materials processing business. But only then-Councilmember Constantine opposed going full industrial, warning about the danger that heavy-duty land use would expand. 

That’s why rezoning decisions must be handled carefully, and officials should be held accountable for their decisions. Von Reichbauer, other than Dunn the only council member from 2008 still there, did not return a call. Though members who voted for this rezoning are no longer on the council, sitting Attorney General Bob Ferguson was. He also voted for the rezoning without explanation.

Dunn, who has marched with opponents to protest the asphalt plant, wrote a formal letter to a permitting director in 2021 to warn the permit would be “an extremely poor decision of the executive branch of government” and “a mistake of monumental proportions.”

But the permitting officials didn’t make this policy choice. The council did. Dunn said in an interview he had no way of envisioning an asphalt plant when the rezoning proposal only discussed the existent landscaping concern.

“It’s the little things in this business. I didn’t give that more than two minutes of thought,” he said. “It made sense at the time.”

Landscape-altering decisions must come with stronger foresight than that.

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