Huxley College Class Tackles Bay Contamination Problems

Alison Bickerstaff has been published in the Every Other Weekly, in Northwest Ecosystem Alliance’s quarterly newsletter, in Huxley College’s Planet Magazine, and on http://www.tidepool.org—News for the Rain Forest Coast.

Last summer, Briana Armstrong worked at Squalicum Harbor on Bellingham Bay for a charter company. She is an environmental economics major at Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment.

“It was great to work down on the water and hang out at the docks,” she said. “It’s just beautiful down there on the bay, and that place brings in so much money to this community. That bay is what defines this place and makes it desirable.”

Can you imagine Bellingham without the bay, she asked?

This academic quarter, Armstrong is part of Huxley College’s new introductory core class that asks students to decide how policy makers should address bay contamination.

Armstrong, who is well aware of the economic importance of maintaining a healthy bay, said an economic waterfront is vital to the community.

The bay–which has been a major force driving the local economy here for the last one hundred years–is also home to a legacy of industrial, commercial, and residential contaminants. Most notorious are the mercury-laden sediments adjacent to Georgia-Pacific.

In 1996, state and federal agencies selected the Bellingham Bay Demonstration Pilot Project as a model to showcase a cooperative approach to urban bay cleanup. The Pilot Project, which is funded by the Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology), is co-managed by Ecology and the Port of Bellingham.

Professor Lynn Robbins is currently teaching one section of the new core class, which has replaced the college’s old four core classes.

“I know it gives students a feeling that they’re right at the edge of something important that’s happening,” Robbins said. “And they are.”

But if you asked the students themselves, they would say they’re more than at the edge–rather, they’re right in the thick of it.

As an academic exercise, the students in the new core class must put themselves in the shoes of Ecology decision-makers and defend a cleanup alternative for the disposal of the contaminated sediments in the Whatcom Waterway adjacent to Georgia-Pacific. The students work in diverse groups of environmental policy, education, geography, planning, and science majors to simulate the atmosphere of real interdisciplinary problem solving.

Like other current students who had not finished all of the old core classes by this fall, Armstrong had the option of taking the new core course.

But unlike Armstrong, many new students at Huxley College are also new to Bellingham. They are unfamiliar with the city, its history, and the bay sediment contamination problems.

So in this new immersion class, these students find themselves swimming in a sea of complex decision-making issues concerning a real-life environmental problem that they must address.

In the class, students must direct their recommendations to the Bellingham Bay Demonstration Pilot Work Group, which the Pilot Project established. The work group is a multi-stakeholder assemblage of agencies, tribes, local government, and businesses who, like the students themselves, must work together to address bay cleanup options.

Emma Spenner Norman, the new core class coordinator, said Huxley’s students felt the original four core classes were repetitive and disjointed.

“In their course evaluations, students said that their time would be better spent at Huxley if the core classes were more condensed,” Norman said. “So that’s where the idea came from to condense the key themes of the original four core classes down into one class.”

Faculty members have embodied the key themes of environmental history, ethics, science, and policy in the single new core course.

Professor Wayne Landis, who is currently teaching a section of the new core class this fall, said the Pilot Project for the bay hinges on consensus among stakeholders rather than adversarial court proceedings. A consensus-based approach, he said, is more conducive to meeting the core course objective of enabling students to work together and develop and implement interdisciplinary solutions to environmental problems.

“The point is not about assigning blame concerning who contaminated the bay, because it already happened,” Landis said. “And it’s not just contamination. The habitat has been dramatically altered by the economics of the last hundred years in Bellingham.”

He said decision-makers must work together to manage the bay and restore its economic and ecological functions for another hundred years.

“At Huxley, we’re training people to do this sort of thing all over the world,” Landis said. “So we’re using Bellingham Bay as a case study for other examples all throughout the world. You can’t pick a more central theme, and this is one of the only programs I know that takes this approach.”

Last fall, Huxley offered its first version of the new core class, Norman said.

“And then last spring Gigi Berardi and Scott Brennan put tons of energy into creating a model class,” Norman said. “They were the first ones to pick Bellingham Bay as the theme, and we’ll be using that throughout the academic year as well.”

Berardi said that while selecting a place-based case study like this where students play the role of local community members and decision-makers was important, choosing a home-place-based case study has proven vital.

“The first time the class was offered last fall, it was also place-based, but focused on Commencement Bay,” Berardi said. “That class paved the way, but it had a lot of challenges to it. But last spring Scott Brennan and I found out that the case study had to be home-place-based, where the students live. It had to be where the students could go and see it.”

Instead of playing the role of Ecology decision-makers, students in the class last spring played the role of Robyn du Pré, the North Sound Baykeeper for the local environmental organization RE Sources. Since the inception of the Pilot Project, du Pré has worked to increase both public involvement in and awareness about bay contamination issues and cleanup options.

In July 1999, Ecology published a draft environmental impact statement that defined six alternatives for the cleanup and disposal of the contaminated sediments in the bay. Acting as though they were the North Sound Baykeeper faced with the September 20, 1999 deadline for submitting public comments on the DEIS, the students worked together to prepare comments and recommendations for submittal.

Like in the class last spring, all sections of the core class this fall are exposed to guest speakers and as much literature as they can handle.

Robbins said the class has had speakers from the Port of Bellingham, Georgia-Pacific, Lummi Nation, the Whatcom Museum, and RE Sources.

“The students are getting a look at this topic in a way that most people can’t,” Robbins said. “And another important part of this class is that it is interdisciplinary. We have science faculty mingling with non-science faculty teaching the class and sharing the same goals for the students. And it has been an educational experience for the faculty as well.”

Professor Gene Myers, who taught the original core course last fall, is once again teaching a section of the course. He said that as an education process, it helps that the class is hands-on as well as interdisciplinary.

“Since it helps the students a lot to have this place they can go and see, we take them there in our field trips,” Myers said. “They’ve done water sampling and sampling of organisms there, and they’ve been on a tour.”

He said that by studying so many facets of the bay, the students are getting professional practice in environmental work.

“The reason we think that’s important enough to be the core of Huxley’s students’ education that they take at the beginning of their time here is because they’re going to get a lot of facts and concepts and techniques and methods and knowledge and so forth. We’re hoping that in this course, they’ll see how things fit together,” he said.

Hillary Jones Williamson, an environmental policy major and new Huxley student, said she is frustrated with the non-traditional structure of the class at times, though sometimes she has felt left to her own devices with little direction she said.

“I think the problem-solving and teamwork skills we will have learned just getting through the class will stay with most of us through our Huxley as well as professional careers,” Williamson said.

She said she will most likely look back on her experience in the class as a positive one.

“The core class has students from several diverse Huxley majors, and a case study like Bellingham Bay allows for students with different interests and insights to work together to solve a real life problem,” Williamson said. “I think having such a diverse group of students working together helps us better understand how all these aspects of study work together. No one is really separate from another.”

She said meeting and listening to the guest speakers has been an exciting and beneficial part of the class.

Armstrong said she agreed that community involvement in the class has been valuable.

“The lecture by Chip Hilarides from G-P today was great,” she said. “I really felt that during his presentation, the vibe of the class changed to one of less animosity and more interest. Towards the end, kids were really excited because they had looked at all of these different options discussed. They saw that G-P was really considering the environmental part of it, the fact that they did the log pond capping.”

Hilarides, Georgia-Pacific’s field services manager, has presented several guest lectures to the core classes highlighting G-P’s perspective on bay cleanup and remediation efforts the company has already completed. He said that most of the Whatcom Waterway’s mercury contamination can be attributed to G-P’s chlor-alkali operations that occurred between 1965 to 1971.

“I think you’ll find that we all want a clean environment,” Hilarides said. “What often happens in how we meet those goals is where the controversy comes up. From G-P’s perspective, these projects go a lot better if you can form cooperative partnerships.”

After the closure of its pulp mill operations,

G-P debuted its preferred cleanup plan, which is to place the dredged sediments from the Whatcom Waterway into G-P’s former wastewater treatment system, the Aeration Stabilization Basin, commonly known as the lagoon.

“We’re going the extra step and have been very proactive, but the community tends to get a more one-sided view of things” he said. “So it’s important to come to the university like this to tell people what we are doing.”

Armstrong said she agreed that community awareness of bay contamination and cleanup issues is important because it’s where we live.

“That mercury contamination isn’t a hundred miles out to sea,” she said. “It’s right there at the waterfront. People need to be aware of what’s in their community.”

She also said that researching the bay as a case study in environmental problem solving has been helpful because the subject matter is tangible.

“This class is great because it’s not just memorizing stuff,” she said. “We have something we have to apply all that we’ve learned to.”

While Armstrong thinks the class and its innovative approach is a great idea, she is well aware that it’s a work in progress. Sometimes, she said, the class can be overwhelming and frustrating even though she’s already taken many Huxley classes.

“There’s a lot to cover and so much background information that we need to know that it’s just been a whirlwind,” she said. “Sometimes the new students just look like deer in headlights.”

But she said it is exciting to be thrown right in the mix of complex problem solving.

“A lot of the research is getting into the environmental impact statements that were done for each different course of action put out by the Pilot (Work Group),” Armstrong said. “I love that I can call Ecology and ask them to send me documents and they do it.”

And like the actual decision-makers, the students in this dynamic new core class must remain open to change as new challenges present themselves.

On October 25, Ecology issued a memo to the Work Group stating the agency’s decision to move forward with plans to use G-P’s Aerated Stabilization Basin as a contaminated sediment disposal facility for material dredged from the Whatcom Waterway and other sites in the bay.

Mike Stoner, Port of Bellingham’s director of environmental programs, said that the port and city recently executed an agreement to organize a Land Use Planning Task Force. This citizen committee will focus on waterfront master planning and interact with and receive recommendations from the Work Group.

What we’re trying to do is make sure bay cleanup is well-integrated with land use planning,” Stoner said. “(The Task Force) will take a look at these issues and provide recommendations to the Port and City Council. We hope Ecology continues to take into account land use, planning and citizen involvement, and we want to make sure we make the right decision for the long term.”

How will these new developments affect next quarter’s core class at Huxley and students’ recommendations on bay cleanup? No one knows for sure yet.

But as a lesson in complex, real-world environmental problem-solving – and keeping one’s head above water – the core class itself must learn to go with the flow.

For more information on the Bellingham Bay Demonstration Pilot Project, please visit http://www.whatcomwatch.org/php/WW_open.php?id=125. To learn more about Western’s Huxley College of the Environment, visit http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~huxley and for more information about Huxley’s new core class, visit http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~huxley/corecourse/index.htm.