From Stark
Correction:
The Bellingham City Council’s waterfront committee has scheduled a 90-minute session Tuesday , Aug. 9 to review the waterfront planning and development regulations now being hammered out by city and Port of Bellingham staffers. The meeting will be in the Mayor’s board room at 11 a.m.
I apologize for my original post announcing the date of this meeting as today. City Council always meets on Mondays, except when it meets on some other day.
Mayor Dan Pike and Port Executive Director Charlie Sheldon have said that major disagreements have been resolved and a draft set of plans should be ready for public review this fall.
Also on todayTuesday’s committee agenda is an overview of millions of dollars in new street connections to the water that are a prerequisite for meaningful redevelopment. At this point, nobody is sure where those millions will be found.
I’ll have an update here after the meeting, and a report for Wednesday’s tomorrow‘s print and online editions.
I regret not having more enthusiasm for this new found agreement.
The market analysis that is the foundation of this waterfront plan is beyond obsolete. It verges on the ridiculous. High end condominiums, foo-foo boutiques and waterfront office space is probably not going to be in high demand for a long, long time. Finding four hundred 40-60 foot yachts needing mooring could take a long time, too.
Why not evaluate what could be done in the near term to increase utilization and revenue, while reducing immediate costs? For instance, the G-P lagoon requires no remediation if continued for water treatment. That saves money. Keeping it for treatment retains the value of the industrial water supply already serving the site. That prevents waste. Why wouldn’t City and Port officials attempt to recruit some business with the surplus water supply and treatment capacity? Even clean industry needs water and treatment. That could create jobs and help the local economy. Local officials refuse to try.
Also, stop doing useless things like “capping” the Cornwall landfill. That is only a ruse to give the Port a cheap out on disposing of their toxic sediments. We all know it won’t work. Groundwater from Sehome and South Hills will flow down the hill, under the cap, into the bay, washing whatever we’re supposedly “capping” away. State documentation of this plan even includes a graphic detailing this unavoidable circumstance.
The failure of this concept was already proved by the “capping” of the ChemFix slab, where G-P buried an estimated 15 tons of mercury in the seventies. The State required an asphalt cap and years later, recent studies showed that mercury levels in the slab were much reduced despite the effort. There is simply no way to prevent groundwater from running downhill and washing toxins out from under the cap. Meanwhile, the toxins in the cap will wash away, also.
It is disappointing to see the Port, City and State adopting the “put it wherever it will wash away” tactics perfected and employed throughout the County by Georgia-Pacific. I suggest voting for anyone who questions this billion dollar boondoggle, not those who blindly approve it.
As I understand it, the new plan will to some extent reflect the changed economic realities. (Note that I said “to some extent…”)
As we have previously reported, the area around the shipping terminal is now envisioned to remain in industrial use for 20 years or more, and the timeline for marina construction keeps getting pushed back. But your longstanding suggestion to keep the lagoon for wastewater usage is an intriguing one that has yet to get much serious attention at City Hall or at the port. What kinds of industries could be attracted to it, do you think? Could such an industry generate shipping at the nearby terminal, as G-P once did?
Who’s got some specific ideas on this?
I’ve often wondered why the site, with its ample fresh water source, isn’t developed to raise and release salmon. Returning fish would create jobs in traditional industries.
Japan and Alaska are great examples of such an undertaking.
Greg: No need to raise and release when there are three species of salmon that can be found in this area, including Chinook. The City and Port have refused to mitigate for impacts to species and habitat, or to acknowledge Lummi Treaty rights to fish.
I am afraid that with all the focus on the SSA coal terminal, no one will be watching the City/Port dealings on the Waterfront. With all the pressure to create jobs, environmental concerns are going down the toilet.
Henning Gatz and others are currently researching aquaculture at the site. Food production is one very, very sustainable route to pursue. Keep in mind that the Shipping Terminal is not contaminated. Much of G-P is not contaminated. Such lands could be utilized for economic development today, using existing infrastructure. For instance, the lagoon might be ideal for processing wastewater from vegetable or fish processing. In the past, vegetable processor’s sugars made inclusion in the City’s wastewater treatment problematic. At one time, producers were investigating a rapid land infiltration system, but I don’t know if that was fulfilled. I haven’t followed what happened to their production, but we may be able to really help local agriculture by providing water treatment for their processing. I believe BOD from fish processing at one time encountered a similar situation, but haven’t followed what solutions, if any, were found. The lagoon can be easily and cheaply subdivided (sheet piling) to provide different treatment options.
There are many light manufacturing jobs that require water supply and treatment that cannot afford to provide whole systems from scratch themselves. But companies must know they are available here before considering Bellingham a place to locate those jobs. Right now they are not available. It’s going to become a marina for 40 to 60 foot yachts. That’s the plan. Period.
The upshot is that surplus water supply and treatment capacity should be a big plus in recruiting family wage jobs. We don’t have to go with big polluters like G-P. But if we build the Port’s marina, wrecking the treatment capacity and rendering the industrial water supply useless, we forever foreclose on any opportunity for those future jobs.
My complaint is that the Port refused to consider studying these questions by putting their marina in the “NO Action Alternative” of the EIS. Then, following the brouhaha over street direction and building retention, the City and Port adopted a new “Framework and Assumptions” that moved the marina into the “Preferred Alternative” for final review. This constituted a major change of scope for the project, but scoping was never reopened to accommodate the rejected questions for review. It’s questionably legal. Not one City, Port or State official has suffered the courtesy of responding to repeated deliveries of these questions. John, you know I don’t give up.
Beyond the lagoon, the location itself is ideal for treatment by virtue of being at the bottom of the Whatcom drainage – with an outflow to mid-bay and a state-approved mixing zone. Even if filled with the controversial contaminated sediments, it could still support regimes of clarifiers for a variety of treatments, e.g. industrial, stormwater or sanitary. It’s only a matter of time before Post Point is too small. We don’t know where we will meet anticipated stormwater treatment requirements. End-of-pipe, rain garden and bio-swale systems are proving unmanageable and inadequate. Lake Whatcom, like Lake Washington, may eventually require diversions to control algae blooms. Where will we treat those volumes? If we ever decide we want living wage jobs, where will we treat their effluent? Where will the rate-base replace the capacity already owned by the public if the Port builds their marina – and at what cost?
That’s why the Port’s proposed marina is Bellingham’s Billion Dollar Boondoggle.
One has to wait years for a slip..so how are there enough slips already?
Last time I checked, the Port had hundreds of empty slips. How they inflate demand with their waiting list is another matter.