SNOHOMISH — Snohomish County’s conversion of an unused rail line into a future bicycle and pedestrian trail segment from Snohomish to Woodinville cleared major hurdles with the federal rail authority in the past eight weeks.
On July 11, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) issued the county a Certificate of Interim Trail Use. It is a breakthrough that lets the county go ahead with the trail, formalizing a change in use which short-line railroad operators GNP RLY had held up in court for years.
In the courts was the county’s part of the Eastside Rail Corridor which the county is calling the Centennial Trail South.
The breakthrough came after the county filed to the STB in October seeking to get a decision of adverse abandonment: The rail line hasn’t been used for years, and the county owns it, so strip the railroad’s rights.
The line’s rail operators, GNP RLY, did not oppose it, according to the STB’s decision.
The county bought the in-county section of rail line in 2016 from the Port of Seattle, which had bought the Renton-to-Snohomish line from BNSF in 2009.
The King County part of the corridor is actively being built.
Snohomish County Parks has to set aside more money before it can start building the Snohomish side. The 11.9-mile trail will cost upwards of $100 million to build, Meghan Jordan, a county spokeswoman, said.
The county has $2 million in grants secured to do a preliminary design. Jordan said they’ll begin design work next year.
The trail’s project webpage says it likely would be completed in sectional phases.
The somewhat complex 12-mile trail will be along “60 culverts, 13 at-grade crossings and 7 elevated crossings,” Jordan said.
Landowner lawsuit cases
Meanwhile, law firms have been advertising to landowners alongside the former rail line with an offer to sue. The rail line was laid, in part, using right-of-way easement agreements made between property owners and the railroad more than 100 years ago.
The lawsuits do not affect Snohomish County’s trail plans, said attorneys from LewisRice, one of the firms seeking clients.
These lawsuits are against the federal government. The lawsuits argue the STB allowed the cessation of the rail line for a public trail, which is a change of use that goes against the rail easement agreement between the railroad and the landowner.
The easement was to only be sold to another railroad to continue rail use, LewisRice attorney Meghan Largent said during an attorney representation pitch meeting in Maltby last week.
Another way to look at it is an “inverse condemnation,” Largent said, “because if it was abandoned, you would have had (the rail line easement) property free and clear” returned to you but instead it’s turning into a trail.
Reed Riley, an attorney at Stewart Wald & Smith (SWS), was in town last week, too. It’s the 10th time he’s visited. The boutique firm works rails-to-trails cases and has so far signed up about 125 clients along the 12-mile stretch of rail-to-trail.
Riley said perhaps 90% of the easements possessed by landowners along the line, “in our view, are clear, clear easements.” Obvious easements set with the railroad from the late 1800s. “By and large these landowners, in our view, have ‘slam dunk’ cases,” Riley said.
SWS, based in Missouri, filed a first collection of claims July 12, a day after the STB granted the county authority.
St. Louis-based LewisRice is preparing to file later this month. They’ve pinpointed and approached about 150 landowners who they say have meritorious claims — in other words, ones they think are winnable.
A third Missouri firm, Flint Cooper, is also advertising for clients. They have about one dozen Snohomish landowners signed up so far, said the firm’s marketing officer Fred Licon.
Similar rail-to-trail lawsuits have happened nationally for 30-plus years. These use The Tucker Act. In Washington state, these have included suits about the Eastside Rail Corridor section in King County, the Yelm-Tenino Trail and the Sammamish River Trail. Predominantly, the landowners won their cases, the attorneys said.
The three law firms in this story, plus others, represented hundreds of clients who filed claims in the Eastside Rail Corridor rail-to-trail conversion.
Cases against the federal government can take upwards of at least two years to complete, Ripley said. Attorneys said in most cases the government agrees to settle versus go to trial.
Rail-to-trail property rights cases are a niche legal practice, Licon from Flint Cooper said. So many of these firms are rooted in Missouri because they branched off of one another, Ripley said.
There’s a six-year statute of limitations to file a claim. That clock began July 11.
The federal government won’t approach you to remediate, attorneys emphasize.
“It could be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” but only if you sign on with a law firm, Licon said.
