‘Audacious power move’: Farmers slam Seattle City Light over Skagit Valley land grab
Aug 1, 2025, 2:28 PM | Updated: Aug 3, 2025, 8:40 pm
Seattle City Light is pushing the Seattle City Council to approve a controversial Skagit Dam relicensing deal—but critics say it’s nothing more than a thinly veiled land grab by Democrats disguised as environmentalism.
Save Family Farming Vice President and Skagit dairy farmer Jason Vander Kooy issued a blistering rebuke of the plan.
“Let’s call this what it is: an audacious power move by an energy company 80 miles away that thinks it has the right to seize rural farmland under the guise of a fish recovery plan they wrote without even involving the people most affected,” said Vander Kooy.
Land seizure is a deal breaker
At the center of the controversy is Seattle City Light’s push to include condemnation authority—government-backed land seizure—in the agreement. That’s a deal breaker for local stakeholders, including Save Family Farming, the Skagit Irrigation and Drainage Districts Consortium, and the Skagit County Board of Commissioners.
They say Seattle City Light is using fish restoration as political cover to usurp private land rights.
“The proposal threatens to remove more than 1,300 acres of productive farmland from use, with no clear benefit to fish or the environment and no local buy-in,” Vander Kooy added.
The Consortium echoed the concern in a direct message to Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell.
“The programs fail to balance fisheries recovery goals with long-term farmland preservation,” the Consortium wrote.
The Skagit County Board of Commissioners was even more direct in its own appeal to the mayor.
“We require a clear, unequivocal and binding statement that the City of Seattle will not exercise eminent domain authority to acquire land in Skagit County pursuant to its Estuary and Mainstem habitat funds,” they wrote in an email to the mayor.
No Deal with Condemnation on the Table
The message from Skagit County is unmistakable: drop the land grab, or the deal is dead.
“The Consortium cannot accept any aspect of the settlement which would allow the City of Seattle to exercise condemnation authority over Skagit County farmland.”
Seattle City Light wants land. Skagit farmers want their rights. And unless the power company backs off its push for condemnation, there may be no middle ground.
