April 2011
Port Notes
Port Politics: Moorage Rates Reduced for Commercial Fishers
by David Camp
David Camp is a CPA in private practice by trade and a sailor by inclination. He writes a monthly installment of Port Notes for Whatcom Watch.
Port Notes is a collection of port-related thoughts, facts, ideas and random complaints from your faithful Port of Bellingham reporter. The opinions in this column do not necessarily reflect those of Whatcom Watch.
If you have a chance, take a walk down to Zuanich Point Park and look at the memorial to local fishermen who braved the wild sea and died in her embrace. We can forget in our fancified world of espresso and Wi-Fi and “keeping us safe” that fishing is dangerous work, often not well-paid, and subject to the whims (pacific and violent) of Neptune. Arrayed around the memorial are working boats being prepared for the spring fishery, weblockers full of nets and gear, and people working as they have in this place for thousands of years to feed and prosper their people.
In the frantic fake money real estate bubble that has now burst, fishing and fishermen were given short shrift by the ‘powers that be’ in favor of real estate development, as the golden fleecing inflicted upon us by the high priests of Mammon proceeded. The effects of this bubble are still unwinding, and government is finally figuring out that a healthy economy is based on actual work by actual workers producing real things for real people, not building latter-day pyramids for retired people to store their stuff while they wait to die.1
Healthy Fishing Industry
The fishing fleet is one very healthy component of the local economy, employing more than 5,000 local people.2 A fishing boat based in Bellingham generates several times the local economic benefit that a pleasure boat generates. Chandlers, boatfitters, welders, engine rebuilders, marine supply even grocery stores — all benefit from the spending of fishers, as well as processors and packers, truckers and distributors. Plus, they feed people with fish from a well-managed and regulated sustainable fishery.
It is to the credit of the port that they recognized and acted upon the legitimate concerns of the fishing community, and negotiated with their union to bring moorage rates into line with competitors. I’ve been attending Port Commission meetings for a couple of years now, and the turnout by the fishing community at the Feb. 15 and March 1 port meetings was the largest attendance I’ve seen at a commission meeting. It was a moving display of democracy in action.3
We heard a very refreshing tone from the Port Commissioners: “We’re open for business,” stated Commissioner Mike MacAuley, who also noted he hoped the port would gain more of the $6 billion west coast fishery’s business. To this end, the port will send a delegation that includes fishermen to the Pacific Marine Expo, and Commissioners hope that local fishermen will represent the port positively in the broader community.
As the port struggles with the effects of the recession on its tenants, with increased vacancy rates, tenant retrenchments and adjustments of commercial rents downward, it is working harder to attract new businesses that create work for the community.
New Relationships
The port is working with the city of Bellingham and Sustainable Connections to develop new ideas for sustainable uses for the G-P property and the marine terminal. Per Mike Stoner, Director of Environmental Programs for the port, the idea is to look at options for putting the ground to work on shorter time horizons than the overall re-development.
Some of the potential projects being considered are:
• Generating hydro-electric power from the water supply line from Lake Whatcom to the G-P site, currently unused;
• Capturing waste heat from the PSE gas-fired co-generation plant for district heating or other uses;
• Capturing usable heat from the sewage line that runs through the port using technology already in use in Vancouver, B.C.
The hydro-electric plant would reduce the flow from the north end of Lake Whatcom into Whatcom Creek, which is problematic considering the heavy use of that end of the lake and the anoxic dead zone that develops there in the summer. Reducing the flow would probably increase the size of the dead zone, but the idea of turning sewage into a heat source, scavenging Btu from the waste stream, is interesting. It’s not exactly a marketing man’s dream (Powered by Poo! Or, Warmed with Waste!), but interesting nonetheless. §
Footnotes:
1. Sort of a democratized version of the pharaoh’s projects, only the glorious sponsors get to live in their mausoleums with their favorite stuff on hand, since it will all be reincarnated via relatives and Goodwill rather than carried into the afterlife where pie in the sky awaits.
2. According to local fisherman, organizer, writer, and bon-vivant Doug Karlberg, this is the same number of people employed in the fishing industry locally one hundred years ago.
3. This was the first time I had heard applause at a Port Commission meeting as the assembled fishing community approved the commissioners’ action to reduce moorage rates.
