Cultural Resources and Tribal Consultation

The site sits in the ancestral territory of the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe, within about six miles of the Tribe’s Reservation and less than a mile from Snoqualmie Falls, a Traditional Cultural Property listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Tribe owns a parcel in the same section as the project. SEPA requires the environmental review to address impacts on historic and cultural resources. On the current record, that review has not been done adequately, and the applicant’s own contracting partner says so.

PSE’s own due diligence found the cultural review deficient

Before its board approved the tolling agreement for this project, PSE conducted due diligence and put the results in the record of its 2026 rate case. PSE’s own report says, verbatim, that the developer’s cultural resources review:

“was not completed by a professional archaeologist; it lacks archaeological data accessible in the statewide database (WISAARD) and other sources that archaeologists generally use to complete desktop reviews. The report fails to identify Snoqualmie Falls as a Traditional Cultural Property (‘TCP’) … Further cultural resource studies are needed to appropriately determine potential impacts to cultural resources prior to any ground disturbance.”

PSE also recorded that the project lies within 0.75 miles of the Snoqualmie Reservation, that significant cultural resources including pre-contact village sites and Snoqualmie Falls sit within a two-mile radius, and that “additional engagement with tribes other than Snoqualmie is also required.”

This is an admission against interest. PSE had every reason to clear an acquisition it was asking its own board to approve, and its professional due diligence still concluded that the applicant’s cultural work was done without a qualified archaeologist, without the standard statewide data, without field work, and without even identifying a National Register property a short distance away.

The cited inventory is not in the public record

The applicant’s SEPA checklist names a “Cultural Resources Inventory (Dudek 2025a)” and relies on it to conclude that certain on-site structures are not historically eligible. But that inventory is not in the public submittal. The applicant cites it as the basis for its conclusions without producing the underlying survey, methods, professional qualifications, or findings. The County cannot judge those conclusions, and the public cannot comment on them, when the supporting document is named but not published.

The Tribe has said it will engage

On July 14, 2026, the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe publicly announced that it is engaging King County’s review “to advocate for the protection of the Tribe’s cultural resources and waters of its ancestral territory.” Chairman Robert M. de los Angeles stated that the Tribe “wants to ensure the County conducts a comprehensive and complete review of how the proposed project may impact our ancestral lands.” The Tribe was explicit that its engagement “is not a statement on energy policy or on the merits of battery storage”; it asks only for “a review that is thorough, lawful, and transparent.”

King County’s own government-to-government consultation policy, and Washington Executive Order 21-02, both call for tribal consultation at the earliest practicable stage on projects that may affect cultural resources. Documentation of that consultation belongs in the SEPA record before a threshold determination, not after.

What a comment should ask for

Because the archaeological records themselves are exempt from public disclosure, where only the landowner or a prospective buyer can obtain them, the burden of getting this right falls on the applicant’s submittal and the County’s review. The applicant has the access. The public does not.