Hood Canal Coordinating Council has finally found some shoreline
property to compensate for environmental damage from the Navy’s
$448-million Explosives Handling Wharf at Bangor.
The shoreline of a 6.7-acre
property to be used for mitigation of the Navy’s Explosives
Handling Wharf at Bangor. // Photo: Hood Canal Coordinating
Council
The 6.7 acres of waterfront property — located near Kitsap
County’s Anderson Landing Preserve on Hood Canal — becomes the
first saltwater mitigation site in Washington state under an
in-lieu-fee mitigation program. The $275,000 purchase was approved
Wednesday by the coordinating council, which manages the
in-lieu-fee program.
The Navy itself is not a party to the transaction, having paid
the coordinating council $6.9 million to handle all the freshwater
and saltwater mitigation required for the wharf project — including
managing the mitigation properties in perpetuity.
The coordinating council’s in-lieu-fee program, which is
overseen by state and federal agencies, allows developers to pay a
flat fee for their environmental damage instead of undertaking
mitigation work themselves.
Nobody doubts the passion that Gov. Chris Gregoire holds for
Puget Sound or that she was instrumental in setting up the Puget
Sound Partnership, which has charted a course for restoration.
But how will the work to protect Puget Sound proceed under a new
governor?
Gov. Chris Gregoire (right) praises a new environmental
mitigation program during a tour of Hood Canal aboard the Coast
Guard cutter Sea Devil. Looking on are Martha Kongsgaard (left),
chairwoman of the Puget Sound Leadership Council, and Gail Terzi,
mitigation program manager with Seattle District Army Corps of
Engineers.
Kitsap Sun photo by Christopher Dunagan
It’s an issue that has not been discussed much in the ongoing
governor’s race. (I need to question the candidates on this issue.)
But I had a chance yesterday to chat with the governor over coffee
(she had tea) in the galley of the Coast Guard cutter Sea Devil on
the way to Dabob Bay.
“I created it, so the next governor can uncreate it,” Gregoire
told me simply, a comment I reported in
today’s Kitsap Sun.
Still, she said, the partnership fills a need in coordinating
the work of many government agencies, businesses and private
groups. The effort has increased awareness and provided
accountability needed to bring restoration dollars to the region.
She seemed to be saying that whatever management structure is used,
coordination will remain essential to the effort.
Gregoire filled me in on a story I had never heard before, one
she later repeated for the 15 or so visitors on the boat ride
across Hood Canal. It was about how the Puget Sound Partnership
grew from a spark of an idea that erupted over a lunch with U.S.
Rep. Norm Dicks.
“We were excited and got quite loud, as you can imagine with
Norm Dicks,” she said. “It was quite a shouting match, and everyone
in the restaurant was watching us.”
After that lunch, Gregoire called on Bill Ruckelshaus, former
director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to head a
study commission leading up to formation of the Puget Sound
Partnership, as I reported in today’s story.
Both Gregoire and Dicks will leave office at the end of the
year, and the governor says she is ready to pass the baton to
others.
The reason for yesterday’s boat ride was to celebrate a new
in-lieu-fee mitigation program for Hood Canal, which could be a
model for other parts of Puget Sound and, as some suggested
yesterday, for the entire nation.
The idea is that developers would pay a flat fee rather than
construct a mitigation project on their own. Money could be pooled,
if necessary, to promote significant long-term ecological
protections.
The Navy is expected to jump-start the effort with several
million dollars for mitigation of damage from its proposed
$715-million explosives handling wharf to service submarines at
Bangor on Hood Canal.
Rather than rehash all the work that has gone into fashioning
this rare mitigation program, I’ll refer you to my stories and
other sources. One thing to note is that the mitigation plan —
outlined in a document called an “instrument” — includes a complex
accounting system to keep track of the money as well as ecological
debits and credits. It’s all geared to ensure that the
environmental damage from development is fully compensated in
ecological functions.
A story related to mitigation at the proposed Bangor wharf
involves compensation to area tribes for the loss of certain
treaty-protected fish and shellfish resources. The story,
“Navy to pay $9 million to tribes in mitigation for wharf
project,” has generated considerable reader comments (134),
mainly about tribal rights.
