Cherry Point — A Coal Port?

Editor’s Note: This article appeared in the August 1993 issue of Whatcom Watch.

Bellingham got its start as a coal mining and timber town. Coal came from underground mines and some of the heart of present Bellingham overlies abandoned coal mine shafts. Underground coal could not compete with cheaper, easier-to-handle crude oil. Except for a tank containing coal tar residues from the coal gasification plant at Boulevard Park, almost no relics of Bellingham’s coal era survive aside from rumors that the city once again will be a coal port. That is not realistic because the draft of ships exceeds Bellingham’s shallow bay.

Cherry Point, where there is deeper water offshore, is a much better option. It is rumored that if it does ship coal, the coal would originate in Montana, travel by rail through Canada, reenter the United States at Sumas, and thence go by rail to Cherry Point where it will be shipped to Japan. Coal trains will not rumble through Bellingham, but there could be an increase in the number of trains carrying cleaner cargo to cherry Point.

Plans to build a deep water pier at Cherry Point have two principal players: Joe Scheckter, a Canadian who says he wants a pier for bulk cargo; and Roger Sahlin, a Bellingham native who owns a great deal of real estate and is better known in some circles as the man who also wants to develop housing at Governor’s Point. He is general manager of Bellingham Stevedore Company and may have additional interests in the same pier or a second one.

We have no hard facts on plans for a Cherry Point coal port, but the proposal for a rail line from Cherry Point to Sumas is circumstantial evidence of practicality. Joe Scheckter says that goods from Japan—be they Toyotas, TVs or you name it finished products—entering this country at Cherry Point and shipped by rail through Canada would reach Boston and the eastern seaboard two days faster than if shipped by rail all the way through the United States. Mr. Scheckter is pushing for the Canadian rail link that could carry coal.

Other players in the line include the Bellingham-based Fourth Corner Economic Development Group and the Bellingham Port Authority. There is a specific provision in the Fourth Corner Economic Development Plan of 1993 for a $100,000 contribution from the Port Authority to do a cross-country rail study. Surprisingly, there is no specific provision for that contribution in the Port Authority budget, but at a Port meeting Bill Hager of the Port Authority confirmed that the Port is helping to fund the project. Although the project is still in an early planning stage, no doubt the Port’s power of condemnation, which the Fourth Corner group lacks, is an important part of unstated long-range planning.

If these plans come to fruition, what of our future? Do we cheer? The Cherry Point pier and rail link are of more than local economic and environmental significance. We have a growing national debt already over $16,000 per man, woman, and child in the country, and it is unmanageable because of little will to control it. Some of our most important exports are jobs and capital. Strangely, there is a public unawareness that much of the capital exported comes from ordinary citizens of modest means who invest in international mutual funds. The increased efficiency in import of finished products and the export of raw materials is one more symptom of a great nation accelerating down the road to Third World status.