The Abbotsfordization of North Lynden Lynden

John Lesow, B.S., JD, is the western territory manager for Cascade Canada Material Handling Products. He is a Whatcom County Planning Commissioner, residing in Point Roberts.

Viewed from space, the demarcation between north Whatcom County and the Lower Mainland of Vancouver, British Columbia, could not be clearer. The sprawl north of the 49th parallel is clearly delineated by the human markers of development: shopping centers, housing developments, industrial parks and roads radiate from Vancouver eastward through the fertile Fraser Valley toward the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.

Miles above the earth, the contrast in development patterns between Canada and the United States is compelling. Just south of the Canada/U.S. border, the forests and farmland of Whatcom County stretch in a line of green from Point Roberts east to the Cascades, with only small patches of gray marking development around the border towns of Blaine and Sumas.

On a long weekend in August, I motor east along the Trans Canada highway from Vancouver toward Abbotsford, B.C. My plan is to head south from Abbotsford, drop down to the U.S. border and check out the Northwood Casino site, situated near the international border, midway between the Guide Meridian and Sumas.

I pass billboards recently erected by the government of British Columbia for the 2010 Olympics, an event often used by proponents to justify the expeditious construction of the new casino. The billboards proudly proclaim that British Columbia is The Best Place on Earth. On a day like today, such taxpayer-funded reminders hardly seem necessary.

I rumble along in the slow lane, surrendering the pavement to a thick procession of Canadian motorists, many in pursuit of a relaxing weekend in the Best Place on Earth. Families in massive SUVs, pulling trailers stuffed with every recreational contraption known to man, quickly pass by.

I notice that many of the kids are wearing headphones. I hadn’t realized how quickly the IPod and onboard TV screens had wormed their way into the cultural experience of today’s youth, marking the demise of that old-fashioned drive through the country, windows down, with the wind blowing the smells of summer past your face.

I moved to this region 30 years ago. Back then, Abbotsford was an idyllic rural area with a rich cultural and religious heritage. Abbotsford was aptly named — a town on the Fraser River with a crossing used by abbots when they forded the river as they went back and forth to the monastery in nearby Mission, B.C.

Back in the 1970s the atmosphere of Abbotsford was similar to Lynden, welcoming, respectful of tradition and exemplified by sturdy families and children with sunny dispositions and 4-H values. Long before the advent of the IPod and hermetically-sealed vehicles.

The B.C. government moved to protect the most productive farmland in Abbotsford by placing the land in the provincial Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) in the early 1970s.

The outcry from developers was deafening, but Premier Dave Barrett’s New Democratic Party was successful in honoring its commitment to the electorate to preserve farmland. The fact that the ALR is still a viable provincial program is testament to the diligence and courage of successive B.C. governments, both liberal and conservative, in honoring a political commitment to the preservation of resource lands.

Unfortunately, the rural, values-based traditions of Abbotsford and other towns in the Fraser Valley are fading fast.

Abbotsford is Canada’s fifth fastest growing municipality, boasting a population of over 100,000. Recently, over 600 acres of Abbotsford farmland was released from the Agricultural Land Reserve for industrial use. Abbotsford’s transformation is a source of pride for the pro-growth crowd, but growth is not without its social costs.

Per capita, Abbotsford’s crime rate is the highest of any city in Canada. Its per capita income is the lowest. Statistics like these are bad barometers of civic health. Obviously, they are not mentioned on the cheery Abbotsford Web site. Nor are the broken promises of politicians to reclaim gravel pits for farmland in exchange for releasing agricultural land from the ALR.

According to Dave Sands, a 30-year employee of the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture, “the government is using the ALR as an industrial land bank. This is occurring all over the province. There’s too much land being excluded, subdivided or being allowed for a non-farm use.”

The stark visual reminders of a region in transition are unsettling. Increasingly, there is less natural division between the aging metropolis of Vancouver and the fresh but familiar sprawl advancing on Abbotsford. This trend has ominous implications for Whatcom County.

Exiting the Trans Canada at Sumas Way, I head south to the Sumas border crossing. The route takes me along a former agricultural corridor that has been transformed into a Houston-like strip of big box stores, commercial strips, junkyards, RV lots and gravel deserts that stretch all the way to the U.S. border.

The Sumas border crossing is too small to handle the traffic flow from the Trans Canada Highway/Abbotsford area on this busy day. If the good citizens of Whatcom County are going to stake their future growth on shopping, tourism and gambling, they’re going to need a larger border station.

Traffic jams and border waits are less frustrating when there is some small measure of forward motion. For whatever reason, there is none at Sumas on this particular day. The motor in my aging pickup does not take kindly to prolonged idling, so I abandon my place in the border queue and backtrack to the Lynden/Huntington crossing at the Guide Meridian.

The backup at Huntington is still about a half hour, so the time saving is negligible. But the motor cools down and so do I. Crossing into the United States from Canada is a breath of fresh air. Sprawl, Canadian or otherwise, is psychologically repellant to all but the most committed shopper. The lure of American open space is contagious.

Heading south, the Guide Meridian is bounded by green fields and pastures as far as the eye can see, a marked contrast to the commercial gateways from Abbotsford to Sumas. Eastward, across miles of fertile farmland, Mt. Baker rises majestically on this picture-perfect day.

I follow the Guide south for a mile, then turn left on Badger Road and head east. Mt. Baker is framed by the front window of my truck.

As much as I admire the view of Mt. Baker, for me stewardship always trumps scenery. The agricultural lands along Badger Road speak volumes about why respect is accorded wise farming practices. Nowhere is this stewardship more evident than in northern Whatcom County.

Approaching Vinup Road, I cross a small bridge over Fishtrap Creek and pull over. Despite the lack of summer rainfall, the creek flows gently along, meandering its way west towards the Nooksack River. A sign next to the bridge reminds me that “This Stream Is in Your Hands.”

Judging from the number of small fish I observe darting through the clear water, it appears that the hands that have preserved Fishtrap are doing a commendable job. The fish on the sign is obviously a salmon, but I could care less if the silver slivers of life in the water below are sockeye, cutthroat or carp. The point is that they are alive and thriving. A hopeful sign.

My admiration continues as I turn left off Badger and head north on Northwood Road. I pass well-tended farm homes, with manicured yards and an abundance of gardens and flowers. The road is narrow and arrow-straight. The residents of this part of the county obviously live where they work. Tractors and farm equipment are the commuter vehicles here, and I slow to give them a wide berth.

I pass a trio of kids on their bikes. T-shirted, bluejeaned and helmet-less. The bikes are one speed, appropriate for the flat terrain. They wave and I honk. I know they can hear me because they aren’t wearing IPods.

The casino site at Northwood and Halverstick is a heavily wooded 20-acre parcel that was planted in Christmas trees about 30 years ago. The trees were never harvested, so over the years they matured, along with a naturally seeded mixture of alder, cottonwood and birch. Neglect has its advantages.

Since the water table in the area is high, the wooded glen became an effective natural sponge for the runoff from adjacent agricultural land. That environmental benefit has now vanished, virtually overnight, with the construction of the Northwood Casino.

The first glimpse of the casino site engenders the same feeling you get when you approach the scene of a very bad traffic accident. Construction equipment has ripped up the trees on a portion of the site and the debris has been piled for eventual disposal. The topsoil has been scraped away and replaced by gravel in preparation for paving.

Clearing of the site has been swift and rapacious. The effect on the adjacent property owners is devastating. One County Council member has characterized the casino as “an environmental and cultural disaster.” This is more understatement than hyperbole.

Development will effectively remove the natural functions of the site and replace ground cover with impervious surfaces. The addition of asphalt for parking has immediate implications for farmland west of the site, which, given its slightly lower elevation, historically floods during the rainy season. The loss of trees and vegetation on the Northwood site will make matters much worse.

Since there is no sewer to service the casino, the plans are to build a large- scale septic on the property. The result will be an environmental double whammy — effluent percolating into the watertable only five to 10 feet below the surface, plus the inevitable runoff into ditches that border the neighboring properties.

Gravity can be a troublesome thing. The water in the ditches flows into Fishtrap Creek, just a quarter mile west of the casino site. The result will be a toxic cocktail of parking lot runoff and the septic effluent that will inevitably find its way into that sparkling clear water of the stream whose future “Is In Our Hands.”

The casino could be a text case in social impact analysis and environmental review by a responsible government. Don’t bet on it. Most members of the press, business community and government have adopted a posture of benign neglect on this political hot potato.

Adlai Stevenson said that politics was basically a contest between the concerned and the comfortable. In this case, the county comfort zone increases exponentially as you move away from Lynden, further from those traditional community values and closer to countertribalist Bellingham, upscale Sudden Valley and the looming retirement havens in Birch Bay.

Few of the citizens of these jurisdictions have any idea of the environmental effects of the casino or the implications of changing land use on the agricultural community of north Lynden.

Whatcom County had 200,000 acres of farmland in 1946. Today, there are about 100,000 acres left. One can argue that this loss of land has been gradual, given the 60-year time frame. But the growth surge in Whatcom County is recent. It is entirely possible that a continuation of these growth trends will effectively remove the county’s productive agricultural land base within the lifetime of anyone reading this article.

A gambling casino in the middle of productive farmland is an environmental absurdity, but few outside the Lynden community care to voice their concern.

Apologists in the development community cart out the usual excuses and public relations bromides. The casino will be “green.” The “best technology” will be used to prevent contamination of Fishtrap Creek and the aquifer below the casino site. Canary grass and bioswales will negate the effects of runoff on fish. I don’t believe any of this.

Building industry spokespeople and real estate pitchmen will deliver up soothing platitudes about the impacts of the casino and remind us that development is “good for the economy.” Whose economy? Certainly not the agricultural economy of north Whatcom County.

Some local contractors, despite their personal aversion to the Lasvegafication of the area, will continue their dutiful desecration of the site on the pretext of just following orders.

How about our county politicians? Who among them are willing to move beyond sound bites and actually do something to avert this environmental and cultural disaster? And just what does “mitigating the traffic impacts” of the casino involve? Widening the roads so that tipsy casino patrons can negotiate Badger, Northwood and Halverstick roads at a higher rate of speed?

I’ll leave it to those politicians to explain to the fresh-faced kids bicycling along Northwood Road that their government’s “impact mitigation” is going to erase the joy of cruising a rural road on a sunny summer afternoon. Forever.

In the midst of the casino controversy, local heroes are few and far between. But I count Julie Jefferson and Craig Mayberry in that group, as well as members of the North County Community Alliance that are waging a principled effort to prevent North Lynden from devolving into an American version of Abbotsford — sprawling, crime-ridden and agriculturally bankrupt.

I turn around and head for home, slowing to 10 mph to negotiate the right angle turn at Northwood and Halverstick, an obvious traffic impediment that will have to be “mitigated” at taxpayer expense to allow faster access to the new casino.

Shortly after land clearing began, a neighbor erected a sign across the road to warn motorists of the danger. The sign was burned down by unknown arsonists.

In December 2006, Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo recommended denial of the Northwood Casino’s liquor license application to the Washington State Liquor Control Board. Elfo’s concerns included the proximity of the casino to the Canadian border and the “winding, agricultural roads around the casino.”

He added, “There is a concern about the busses shuttling casino patrons to and from Bellingham and Canada. These busses have to navigate around large agricultural machinery on the roadway. It concerns me about the ability to maneuver around them. The effects this casino has on the neighborhood are profound.”

Elfo later noted that it takes a sheriff’s deputy about four hours to process one DUI. Given that administrative circumstance, there will be few, if any deputies available to maintain law and order in the vicinity of the proposed casino.

Last fall, the North County Community Alliance filed a lawsuit against the National Indian Gaming Commission for its failure to follow federal requirements to protect the environment, as well as the status of tribal trust land and whether or not it is eligible for a casino. §

•North County Community Alliance — http://www.agyes.org.

•National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling — http://www.ncalg.org.

•Gambling Research — http://www.citizenling.org/fosi/gambling/cog/A0000001154.cfm.