According to a story reported by KUOW, internal City of Seattle communications leaked to KUOW show that officials planned to withhold some environmental concerns from the public and federal regulators regarding Sound Transit’s planned West Seattle Link light rail extension. The KUOW story states that these records, from last fall, detail “critical issues” that city departments found Sound Transit failed to properly address in the final environmental impact statement it filed for federal approval of the project.

According to the KUOW story, in a 19-page draft response letter that KUOW reviewed, city officials wrote that Sound Transit still needed to lay out plans to restore salmon spawning habitat in Longfellow Creek that would be damaged by the light rail construction.

According to the KUOW story, in a section on environmental justice, the city criticized Sound Transit as having failed to thoroughly assess “long-term impacts of displacement and relocation” that, according to the city officials cited in the story, “could irrevocably harm” people from marginalized communities without an adequate plan for compensation.

The K story indicates that rather than send this response in a public letter to regulators, as is usual practice, internal city communication shows that Department of Transportation officials last September unveiled a different, two-pronged strategy in a presentation to other city departments. According to the slide deck presentation reviewed by KUOW, the city’s public response to federal regulators would be short, supportive, and mention only a few concerns. Then separately the city would later send a “nonpublic letter” to Sound Transit detailing outstanding critical issues with the West Seattle Link extension. According to the story, a bullet point on one slide called this plan “Good for City’s relationship with Sound Transit”.

According to the story, one slide read, “Sound Transit has expressed a strong preference that the City not submit a public letter challenging or commenting on the federal environmental impact statement”. The story also states that officials noted they wanted to “keep positive momentum as we work to build a stronger interagency partnership,” given significant progress on many outstanding issues.

According to the KUOW story, political pressure to start construction on the West Seattle line has mounted after two years of delays and a massive jump in the projected price for the project, from $2.3 billion when voters approved it to as much as $7.1 billion. Construction is now projected to begin in 2027, with the service coming online in 2032.

The story states that SDOT officials warned on one slide that the “City’s strong comments about final environmental impact statement shortcomings might be fodder for public lawsuits”.

According to the story, Jen Osborn, who might see her family’s 104-year-old SoDo pest control business, Paratex, taken via eminent domain for the line, believes the city’s plan to conceal concerns confirms her cynicism. The story quotes Osborn stating, “I don't think they were listening - they were never going to be listening when the public had comment about impact, or lack of transparency”.

According to the  story, Jordan Crawley, Operations and Policy Director at Alki Beach Academy, a child-care center that would be razed for the line, highlighted the inadequacy of Sound Transit's proposed $50,000 compensation. The story quotes Crawley estimating the replacement cost for their large child-care center at around $3 million, calling $50,000 “virtually nothing for any business, let alone one like ours”. According to the KUOW story, Crawley believes it's a problem if officials decide not to publicly address serious concerns about the line's effects “for fear of upsetting Sound Transit or disrupting the process”. Crawley and others have been part of an effort to raise the compensation limit that has been underway in the legislature in Olympia. Crawley said," HB 1733 passed the legislature with unanimous support. The Senate weakened the bill a bit with its amendments, but the reason for doing so came from Senator Marco Liias who said his Senate Transportation Committee did what it was supposed to do and "made the bill less expensive". Their changes included setting a separate standard whenever state agencies are the displacing entity, and changing the annual increases from an inflation-based standard to a flat 2% annual increase. Still, a regional transit agency like Sound Transit — or a City- or County- specific agency displacing a business — will have a new statutory cap of $200,000 on reestablishment expenses once Governor Ferguson signs the bill into law.

Because it wasn't delivered to the Governor until April 26, he has twenty calendar days from then (excluding Sundays) to act on it. That works out to a deadline of May 20."

According to the KUOW story, Seattle Department of Transportation spokesperson Ethan Bergerson defended the city’s approach. Bergerson told KUOW that the leaked slide deck “describes a preliminary concept” for how the city would voice its critiques. Ultimately, he claimed to KUOW, the city’s “strong procedural quality controls” “led to… the proper and more transparent approach” – a single, public comment letter to federal regulators listing more concerns, rather than privately sending those issues only to Sound Transit.

However, according to the KUOW story, a comparison between a September draft of the “critical issue” letter the city planned to send Sound Transit and the final public letter, sent in October, shows it was much less critical. The story points out that while the city’s first version told Sound Transit that it failed to assess “long-term impacts of displacement and relocation” that “could irrevocably harm” marginalized communities, the city’s final letter merely said it “remains concerned about project impacts” on those communities.

Similarly, according to the KUOW story, the first response draft said salmon spawning grounds in the path of the West Seattle light rail are “already insufficient” and Sound Transit had not planned enough restoration work9. The story indicates that the final, public letter only alluded to habitat impacts that are part of “ongoing conversations” and did not specifically mention salmon.

According to the KUOW story, a Sound Transit spokesperson denied that the agency asked the city not to publicize its concerns and said Sound Transit welcomes such feedback.

The story concludes by noting that after Sound Transit received Federal Transit Administration approval of its environmental assessment for the West Seattle extension this week, the agency can now start the full design phase of the project. Construction is still slated to begin in 2027.