Dirty Dirt, Cover Ups, and Contractors

While going through some public records at the beginning of February, I noticed a violation in regards to land use up in Arlington, outside of the city limits.

It was mildly interesting but I didn’t think much of it at first.

Then several things happened:

I got some time to check the backgrounds of the people involved. The person who was being cited is from another country and has a violent criminal history as well as charges for DUI’s, Check Fraud, more then a few traffic tickets in regard to failing to get proper licensing and securing loads.

The story as near as I can put it together is that a man named Misha or Mike, or Mikhail, or Michael, Snitko or Bidwell (take your pick which name he is using for what) worked as a sub-contractor for a company named Allied Construction Associates,

Snitko is operating under the name of Tyler’s Construction, but it seems he operates under different names as well as opening up a company every few years until he gets sued a few times, then he shuts down that company and opens a new one.

He was evidently supposed to take the contaminated soil from the Lakewood High School Project, and it was supposed to be taken somewhere to be cleaned.

He instead took that soil and dumped it on his property which is running off into Cougar Creek which is a protected Salmon stream.

Now here is where it gets even more interesting:

This property is in a Homeowners association with roughly 20 houses. I tried to talk to everyone but they were all terrified because of this man’s violent history and the fact that the one man who tried to protect himself from this man has been falsely charged with a felony because the cameras outside of his house caught part of the street and somehow captured this Snitko guy.

I’m not sure of all of the particulars of it but I did find a case number and a case associated with Snitko and a neighbor. I’d rather not name him right now because he is a private citizen whereas Snitko is being paid with our tax dollars

Snitko, Michael Petitioner Sno Co-cascade Div U16-143T 07-27-2016
Snitko, Michael Petitioner Sno Co-everett Div U16-00143 07-25-2016

He seems to be very adept at working the legal system, (possibly because he has been piling up criminal charges since he turned 18) so he immediately ran out and got a protection order of some kind.

It seems that Mr Snitko has protection from high places though.

He was cited for improper storage of his big rigs and that was swept under the rug

Then he applied for a land disturbance permit after he dumped all of this soil and got away with that. I have a feeling that it has something to do with the charge up above but until I get records I can’t be sure.

He also seems to have a Snohomish County Deputy in his pocket who is single-handedly making everyone’s life a living hell. Deputy Quinonez (spelling?)

So between this Snitko guy and this Deputy these folks are terrified to talk.

I went to the county and requested public records to get a better understanding of what is going on here, and several more things happened:

I ended up with a source inside of the county who filled in a few blanks for me, and one of the people who live in the HOA has a friend who has filled me in on some other things.

Seems that the county called these folks and they were furious because they somehow thought that they had me poking around or had put me up to it.

Evidently they don’t understand how public records work, items exclusive to them don’t always stay in their department or even in their own agency.

I also got a call from them asking me to pare down my request which I did because at the time I didn’t know that they had called those folks, maybe even more of them for all I know.

The same day (before I talked to the county) I also got a call from the neighbor’s friend telling me that this Snitko guy was drilling a well without a permit, and the county said they were going out there the next day, they didn’t.

So now he has further contaminated the soil and the stream and Snohomish County is doing absolutely nothing to stop it.

I also didn’t know that the county had alerted the Herald to come and try to interview them claiming they had previously done a story about Eastern Europeans moving dirty dirt all around illegally.

I can’t find a story that corroborates this in any way but I don’t read the Herald so I don’t know. I also don’t know if the person agreed to do an interview or not.

I wasn’t going to do this story until I had the records but I am afraid for my Salmon, and for the environment, and now I know that there is going to be some kind of effort to take the focus off what the real issue is and cover up whatever is going on.

If you recall once I did the Mt Index Riversites story, the Herald came out with a story that all of the trouble was related to drugs which was a lie, but it was meant to take the focus off of the actual criminal activity that is still going on.

I sent records request to the Dept of Fish and Wildlife, the Lakewood School District and to the county. DFW and the Lakewood School District have completely ignored my requests and I haven’t even received a 5 day letter from them.

The last thing that happened is that I got a very thinly veiled threat about messing with the “mob” and again, just because you are a group of criminals doesn’t mean that you’re any kind of mob, it simply means you are criminals and that you have made your way in life by doing things dishonestly, and bullying people.

Also any legitimate organized crime syndicate doesn’t go announcing themselves and advertising who and what they are. (That’s why I laughed at you) Maybe you should read my newspaper more often, threatening me only makes me dig in harder and want to investigate even further.

Anyway my records are supposed to be available tomorrow, so I will continue with the story once I find out more but this seems to be getting bigger and bigger by the minute. The fact that I’ve been threatened, has piqued my interest even further.