By Rebekah LaSala
SPECIAL TO THE HIGHLINE TIMES

Brett Fish of Normandy Park is in a battle to fight for his cherished boyhood home, and to stop what he adamantly feels is flagrant misuse of the easement road that runs through his property.
Fish is the son of local born, well-loved journalist and writer, Byron Fish who passed away in 1996. Byron Fish was a former Normandy Park mayor.

It has been Brett’s personal mission to launch into a battle with the Southwest Suburban Sewer District that has become fraught with conflict stemming from the SWSSD’s alleged misuse of the road.

The controversy involves an agreement allowing the sewer district to use Fish’s road to access the district’s compost plant. Fish’s house and the plant sit near each other along Miller Creek, just south of Sylvester Road Southwest.

The easement agreement allows the district to use the road for trucks hauling compost and sludge.

A separate front entrance is to be used for personal vehicles, according to Fish. Fish says the district is using his easement road for all traffic. He notes that to access the district’s front entrance means vehicles must make an inconvenient sharp left turn off Sylvester Road.

SWSSD general manager Ron Hall replies, “There are times when vehicles cannot get by any other way, like the sludge trucks and compost trucks. However, I doubt there are as many vehicles as Brett Fish is saying there are going in and out of there on his easement that are part of the district. I have not seen that. We have a “teriyaki day” but I do not know about constant delivery trucks.”

Fish’s property is rich with coyote, hawks, eagles, horsetail, salmon spawning cycles and strong hints of Native Americans who once hunted and gathered there, and their artifacts, with smoothed out rocks that look like kitchen utensils.

The ongoing turmoil between Fish and the district is a long, painful battle peppered with strong implications by the district that because they have “historically enjoyed” this usage of the access road, they will fight to continue to use it in this manner.

Fish states, “You justify the taking because you’ve always done so and you are used to it. Is this like beating a child because they don’t complain anymore? The district’s entire approach is to blame the victim.”

Fish says that the term “prescriptive easement” is defined as a way to keep doing what they have always done. Therefore, they continue to abuse the road because they think they can.

Hall admits, “We were not using the road the way we were supposed to.”

That is past tense, but Fish says they are still abusing it.

Hall says, “Now he is saying something, but he didn’t say anything for years about the access road being used and always stated he was being a good neighbor.”

Hall notes the district believed that it had already acquired expanded rights of use of the access road through a prescriptive easement based on its historic use of the access road over the past 15-20 years. However, in an effort to be fair to Fish, Hall said the board authorized negotiations to reach a resolution of the claims and its willingness to pay a fair amount of its prior use of the access road.

That amount was $200 a month, which Fish rejected outright due to the refusal of Fish’s counter-offer that they abide by the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. time frame as is stated in the 1987 agreement that has been lost.

Fish states, “I based the $200/month on 17-25 vehicle trips per day, about 50 cents per vehicle trip, for $200 a month plus sewer usage. Their use has frequently exceeded 40-50 trips per day, 57 recently and over 60 in a three hour period one day. Between their incessant breaches of the terms of the Temporary License and refusal to cease and desist abusing it, the license had to be terminated.”

Hall has decided to get an appraiser in response to Fish’s counter-offer and stated in a March 6 e-mail that, “Once the appraisal work is completed, if we are still not able to resolve this matter on reasonable terms, the district will need to proceed with a condemnation action in order to ensure that it has the required access easement rights it has historically enjoyed.”

Fish states that the word “condemnation” has been used in a verbally hostile manner at district board meetings.

Fish stated in an e-mail to Hall dated Jan. 10 that, “When my Dad passed away, use of the road went viral and has escalated rapidly to deliveries by all of your vendors. The two or three legitimate compost trucks have been dwarfed by all other vehicle traffic, as much as 50 trips in a three hour period.”

Fish records all incoming vehicles and has determined on his video surveillance system that records every vehicle that only 3.5 percent (two compost trucks) of all of the 57 vehicles that came through his property on April 30th were permitted vehicles.

Clay/shale dirt was piled next to the Fish property by the district when they originally built the road in 1985. Fish claims it has been minimally landscaped and is causing slides.

No environmental study was initiated by the SWSSD on how this could affect their house or the surrounding earth around it, according to Fish.

Fish states the older staff at the SWSSD consisted of “district bullies” who would come periodically at random times to verbally threaten his father with “condemnation” of his beloved property if he did not give into their coercive demands.

Hall, who left for years and returned in 2008 after a stint in Edmonds, admits that those were bad times for the SWSSD, and says, “I have brought integrity to my post here as general manager.”

Fish said “In context of the Jan. 8th (sewer district” commission meeting, they were intimidating me with threats of condemnation, prescriptive easement, and a possible law suit. I told them I was holding back the road use as a bargaining chip to get them to take care of my house and a slide.”

Fish adamantly proclaims that his father, Byron Fish, signed a revised agreement in 1987 regarding his father being unhappy with excessive use of the road. Fish says that at the Jan. 8 meeting, Hall offered him a copy of the 1987 agreement, and that he declined, thinking at the time he would not need it.

Fish said if he could find that agreement that has disappeared, then the SWSSD would be legally responsible for the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. road-usage hours stated in that agreement.

Fish maintains that he cannot afford an attorney, and continues to be threatened by the district’s attorneys. Fish said he spent all his money restoring the house.

Fish states that although his father reluctantly signed documents, he was coerced by the former general manager to do so with threats of “condemnation.”

He wants to be reimbursed by SWSSD. Fish said he only wants the district to make good on what they messed up.

Fish says in November of 2006, after a severe rainstorm, a slide started, and never has stopped.

In 2008, Hall said he went to Fish’s house and after viewing the property said, “Of course, it is not your fault” in terms of the slide.

Fish contends the gradual slide, which has had a “pulling from underneath” effect on his entire house. Since 2003, Fish said the slide started happening most noticeably in the yard next to his house, but damage continued to happen in the house. There is water coming through the area under the earth that was not happening before and Fish believes that the clay is rerouting the water under his house.

Hall says, “We just want Fish to fill out the claim form so it can go through proper insurance channels.” Fish says that this is just more of the same tactics they have used with the “prescriptive easement” and that he still needs an attorney to navigate through the claim.

Hall counters, “Fish just needs to follow the proper protocol.”

The house almost looks like it is grieving when one walks inside it, with floorboards separating, walls that are coming apart from their columns, new and strange cracks and holes form every day, every week.

An old typewriter sits in the same spot it had been since the 1940’s in the office of Byron Fish. Fish remains dedicated to his father’s memory.

Hall states, “I respect Brett as a member of this community. I want to be able to talk to Brett in person, and figure out a way to work this out.”

Fish states that due to the fact that they will not “cease and desist” in using his property as their personal shortcut, there is no room for discussion. Fish states, “The most grievous part is their response to all of it including the house slide, the road use and their threats to take whatever they want. They did it to my dad and they’re doing it to me. They have their own entrance, but they don’t use it.”