King County to buy contested Maury Island acreage, create marine park

King County officials and environmental leaders expressed confidence Wednesday they can raise $19.1 million in private and county dollars over the next seven weeks to turn a Maury Island gravel mine into a milelong shoreline park for kayakers, hikers and wildlife.

"On Maury Island we have a chance to protect the longest remaining piece of undeveloped shoreline in King County," County Executive Dow Constantine said at a news conference at West Seattle's Me-Kwa-Mooks Park. "That's why I've spent the last 12 years of my public life advocating for the protection of Maury Island shoreline."

Combined with the existing Maury Island Marine Park and other public lands, Constantine said the 250-acre purchase would create a block of 700 acres of open space stretching from Maury Island's eastern shore on Puget Sound to its western shore on Quartermaster Harbor.

Under an agreement announced Wednesday, the county would buy the land, which includes a partially excavated gravel mine, from CalPortland for $36 million. The funding package includes $14.5 million from the state and a no-cash agreement valued at $2.4 million allowing CalPortland to continue mining gravel from nearby county-owned property until 2030.

The sale, scheduled to close by Dec. 30, must be approved by the Metropolitan King County Council. King County would spend $19.1 million from its conservation-futures property-tax levy, and a fundraising campaign by a coalition of environmental groups would reimburse $2 million of that amount.

Constantine's office said the property was appraised at $39.7 million.

Although the deal would allow CalPortland, a Japanese-owned concrete producer, to mine gravel for use on Maury and Vashon islands, it ends more than 12 years of strife over the company's plans to excavate a much larger pit and ship sand and gravel off the island by barge.

The company said the materials were needed for the construction industry, while environmentalists claimed the proposed barge operation threatened orcas and chinook salmon.

Ron Summers, senior vice president of CalPortland's Materials Group, said company executives had "mixed emotions" about the sale. He said the agreement meets the company's business needs, but said it wasn't clear how the region's construction industry will obtain sand and gravel after other mines such as CalPortland's large DuPont operation are exhausted.

While Democratic County Councilmembers Jan Drago, Bob Ferguson and Larry Phillips lauded the agreement, Republicans Reagan Dunn and Kathy Lambert expressed reservations.

Lambert said she was concerned about losing a rich source of building materials, and Dunn said he worried that the use of the conservation-futures tax would leave insufficient funds to buy large stretches of BNSF Railway's former Eastside Rail Corridor from the Port of Seattle for future trail and passenger rail use.

"I've talked to two other members of my caucus, and it has the potential to be a party-line vote if these questions aren't answered," Dunn said.

Sung Yang, Constantine's intergovernmental-affairs director, said the Maury Island deal won't keep the county from buying trail rights on the old rail line. There could have been a funding conflict, he said, if the county hadn't determined that conservation-futures money couldn't be used to buy rail rights.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com

Cascade Land Conservancy, People for Puget Sound, Preserve Our Islands, Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust and Washington Environmental Council began a campaign Wednesday to raise $2 million toward purchase of the CalPortland gravel mine for a future park. For information, see http://www.cascadeland.org.