The following are excerpts from conversations between Kim Dobson, host of Parallel University, and Harry Branch, marine biologist, which were broadcast on KAOS 89.3 FM in March 2025. You can listen to Parallel University every Thursday at noon on KAOS.
On West Bay
Kim – So we have a proposal by the city and developer to build West Bay Yards, a 487 unit apartment building, which is not low income and it is gentrified. It is market rate. And they are locked into a 15 year agreement at the current environmental standards. They were not required to do a SEPA or NEPA or an EIS of the site because the city’s lawyer said that they could call it a non-project project and avoid doing the scoping of the sediment layers around and in the building sites until the actual permit was drawn.
Harry – I’ve been sort of monitoring activities … going up West Bay Dr. and you go past what’s left of Reliable Steel, you would come to the Hardel site, which is a very large piece of land. The next site you come to is this other project – five buildings altogether that would be as much as five stories tall. It’s a huge complex. The combined scale of these two developments is enormous. You’re talking of five story buildings one after another all along the waterfront with a required setback of 30 feet or so. There’s no opportunity for restoration.
They would like to build right to the water’s edge, and that’s not allowed, and so what the plan is here is to extend the what’s called the ordinary high watermark ( OHWM) and if we extend that out with fill, then the setback is actually out to the edge of where we wanted to build to start with. I think really that’s the driving wheel here, but they’re calling it a restoration and I think there are a number of reasons why that’s doubtful. Then …there’s another proposal for a place directly north called West Bay Landing and I think what happens here at West Bay Yards is gonna serve as a template for what happens next-door. I mean you’re not gonna grant certain privileges to one place and not to the neighbor. That wouldn’t be fair. So we really have to consider the cumulative impacts of something like eight enormous buildings as tall as five stories right along what’s currently the water’s edge. And among other things, Schneider Creek runs right through the middle of these planned developments. It’s a stream estuary … that’s extremely vital habitat…What the proponent of this proposal is saying that this is all based on the City’s 2016 West Bay Environmental Restoration Final Report which was written by Coast Harbor and Engineering…They have something called a vegetation conservation area, a VCA…The claim is that the VCA would consist of native coniferous and deciduous trees and shrubs and so on and so forth but if you look at the setbacks from the high watermark, it’s not very wide, maybe we’re talking 30 feet. I don’t know how we’re gonna provide all of those ecosystem services in such a a narrow area... Another concern is that they will be piling so much gravel in front of this development to create habitat, but in the process burying a mature benthic community, so you know we’re not really creating habitat, we’re changing habitat, and whether or not it’s an improvement I guess we’ll see. It’s not science based. It’s not ecosystem based and I don’t see how they’re gonna pull it off.
There are so many examples of these kinds of really basic problems. If we were to base our decisions on the best available science as we’re required to do because we have endangered species in the area, this wouldn’t even be a consideration, but here we are once again having to hopefully stop this thing.
Kim – The main excuse that the city uses for not following environmental law is they call it (West Bay Yards) a non-project project which is what it sounds like- it’s double talk. How can it be a project and not be a project? Those two things negate each other…It’s the excuse not to do the EIS or SEPA . ..The City should not allow the project to fill in tidelands for the reason it’s necessary to do so to clean up the contamination on the site. That is not the intent of the Model Toxics Control Act 2…The City has more than enough information to show that that project will have significant impacts on state and federal lands. Therefore, it requires a SEPA and NEPA, which is the National Environmental Policy Act, and an environmental impact statement. It should be done now and include all the projects along Budd Inlet- the Deschutes estuary, the dredging of navigational channels and the cleanup of Budd Inlet.
On East Bay
Harry – Moxlie Creek runs through a large culvert by the Hands-on Children’s Museum and it goes between State and Olympia Avenue There’s a pretty good sized lot there that’s surrounded with a fence and the pipe just runs right kind of through there…There are a number of places along there where it could be taken out of the culvert, but that last stretch between State and Olympia is especially inviting.
We have low dissolved oxygen in East Bay, and you know a daylighted section of that stream is gonna improve the situation and I think the port is kind of interested in that idea. There’s a nonprofit in Portland called the Rose Foundation. The port lost an appeal over the log discharges and gave as part of the appeal a large amount of money to the Rose Foundation, and now the Rose Foundation keeps sending emails saying can we give some of this back, and the port is starting to wonder maybe they would be interested in helping daylight that section of Moxlie Creek since the port has this problem with dissolved oxygen. I think it’s gonna just get to be more of a problem, so at least show that you’re making some effort, and it would be great to have that area be intertidal…
There’s also a large building planned for East Bay by the port… It’s the waterfront center. I think it is where the port offices would be and then there would be some other rooms available…Originally the estuarium was gonna be part of that and I guess they decided it wasn’t affordable. Well one of the ideas that I’ve suggested there, and I have not had a response yet, but I know people are looking at it, is that you go ahead and you get the building permitted where it is located 30 feet back from that pile of rock. Hopefully a little more, but whatever the setback is, you do that with the understanding that although the building may be there when it’s done, the land underneath may not. There’s actually some research that indicates a building overhanging the upper beach is not at all damaging. They’ve come to that conclusion based on ferry docks and large structures over the water. In fact it’s kind of mimicking overhead vegetation and may be a benefit by providing shade in that area, protection for forage fish. So the building is now overhanging a restored beach and you cut light wells through the building and design tidepools and eelgrass and salt marsh all around the place and the tideflats of the slope of the beaches such that it won’t erode away… There’s also some question about the port peninsula that those soils on the actual peninsula..is still contaminated with dioxin and that we should do some core samples and find out what’s there. We’d like them to do that…There’s a contamination hotspot right off there, and generally when you have a hotspot you look to the neighboring shores since that’s where the activities generally occurred. So you know we have a couple of hotspots to run by… and see what’s in the soil there and get the worst of it. We’re not gonna clean everything up, but at least get to a point where nature can start to heal herself. The way it is now it’s just the reintroduction of toxic chemicals and this is one of the problems.
You know in my career driving boats around, I have interacted with whales on a number of occasions so one event comes to mind. About 30 years ago, there were like 200 orcas swimming actually around the San Juans, and one surfaced and it spy hopped so it almost touched the boat. It was just right there and this thing was huge and we’re just, just looking at each other and I’m thinking this thing could have me for a snack so easy and why doesn’t it do? Well, over thousands of years, you come to a sense of kinship. I think I can explain it. You know the Southern Resident Orcas are pescatarian – they don’t eat mammal flesh. Other populations do. Why the difference? It’s not instinct and whales in general, I think rely little on instinct. It’s a lot of learned behavior. They have a language and I think they have mantras and chants and the things that humans had prior to when we were writing. The only advantage humans have is our thumbs. We can write stuff down and make tools, but other than that, we’re just pretty darn normal as animals go.
It’s a beautiful world we live in. Absolutely marvelous.
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You can read more of Harry Branch’s thoughts at gardenbayblog.com
Esther Kronenberg writes regularly on environmental issues.
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