The Scrap Heap - The Real Message

Yes, the last of the ABC scrap metal dump has been scraped up and loaded into the Ken Haru with a cadential roaring and clattering that dominated the soundscape of an otherwise beautiful weekend. The effects of ABC were so objectionable and invasive that even those who had been engaged in opposing it were ultimately mystified about how such a thing could have appeared  on the Bellingham waterfront.

Since there was no proper paper trail of ABC's approval to commence operations at the Port, nor any opportunity for citizen input into the Port’s decision to sign an extended contract with this questionable industrial entity, it is impossible to assign responsibility for the multiple evasions that were needed to set ABC in motion. Where was the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) checklist that should have predicted the inevitable air and water pollution resulting from the open storage of stupendous amounts of rusted scrap adjacent to a federal waterway? Where was the license application for scrap metal dealers that is mandatory in Washington state? Where was the record of any discussion of how this operation, which brought with it the repellent view of several mountains of rusted scrap, might fit into the new Urban Village zoning at the Log Pond site? There is no paper trail.

The Port has always presented itself as the protector of the waterfront environment, both air and aquatic. Eventually,  it became clear that ABC was polluting the ground water and was being unresponsive to Department of Ecology citations for their abysmal husbandry of the work environment. Yet there was no move by the Port to send ABC packing.

By that time, citizens had been bombarding the Port commissioners with empirical evidence about the environmental hazards of unsorted scrap metal stored on bare ground. Repeated attempts to get the attention of Blake Lyon, the Planning Director for the Port Planned Action Ordinance, (the statutes under which ABC was likely operating at the Port) were rudely rebuffed. In fact, Lyon repeatedly endorsed the erroneous zoning category which exempted them from SEPA scrutiny. Cargo, it seemed, was cargo, whether boulders, scrap metal, or plutonium.

But the growing empirical evidence mined from the Bellingham Municipal Code, the Washington Administrative Code, and exhaustive Environmental Protection Agency studies of pollution associated with scrap metal recycling, could no longer be ignored by the Port. Evidence was being brought into the public square, especially from studies conducted at California ports with scrap recycling, that concerned Bellingham citizens, both private and those organized under savethewaterfront.org. The Port began to look for a way to rectify their error in judgment, without admitting they had erred. And in the end, ABC gave them an opportunity to terminate the contract.

But to reinforce the contention that we’ve not seen the last of such misbehavior from the Port, please remember that they could only send ABC packing after they’d invented a false narrative about the termination of their contract. According to their story, which may unfortunately become the official history,  an ABC ship arrived unscheduled and was forced to dock without proper permission. This egregious offense, which might have otherwise been overlooked, in this instance caused outrage at the Port, and in a flash, ABC was gone. With a little massage of the events, the Port could pretend that it had long been aware of the potential of ABC to be an environmental hazard. 

But the real message is, if citizens had not been aggressively outraged and proactive, we’d still be hearing the lunatic “music” of scrap-loading on every formerly quiet weekend. If we had not loudly opposed, we would still be trying to avoid the sight of mountains of defunct rusted machine parts perfectly situated in our View Corridors, like a raised middle finger to our Waterfront Plan.