Chuck Taylor
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Fred Hill Materials, a Poulsbo-based gravel company, wants to bring the mountain to Mohammed. The company proposes to expand a modest mining operation to meet demand for gravel that is fueled by the explosive pace of West Coast development. Fred Hill wants to construct a four-mile conveyor belt connecting a sprawling gravel mine inland to a 1,100-foot, nine-story-high pier and 900-foot moorage dock. The shipping facility would be on the west shore of the canal, five miles south of the Highway 104 Hood Canal Bridge.
When fully operational, the "pit to pier" operation would mine, transport, and ship an estimated 60,000 tons of gravel 24 hours a day, loading into barges and ships bound for domestic and foreign ports. Each vessel would have to negotiate a dicey passage under or through the opening of the floating Hood Canal Bridge. Cost of the project is estimated at $15 million.
A family-owned company, Fred Hill Materials likes to think big. With construction of the Trident Submarine Base at Bangor in the 1970s and 1980s, the company expanded its truck fleet from seven to 80. Government contracts for an aircraft carrier dock at Bremerton and a replacement Hood Canal Bridge have bolstered its fortunes. Now the company wants to break out of the local market and go coastal, possibly global.
It's off to a good start. Fred Hill just negotiated the initial leg of a projected three- to five-year permitting process. In a decision finalized July 7, in spite of vigorous local opposition, Jefferson County's three commissioners unanimously approved a zoning change that allows the company to mine 690 acres of private forest. In their rush to accommodate the development, the commissioners claimed the mining rezone was unrelated to the pit-to-pier project. Opponents promise the decision will weigh heavily this fall when two of the three Republican commissioners stand for re-election.
With a score of state and federal permits still needed, it won't all be smooth sailing for the would-be gravel giant. The company has allocated $3 million to see the project through its permitting phase. But several recent developments suggest rough seas ahead. This past winter, the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe, whose Point No Point treaty area includes upper Hood Canal, announced its opposition to the project. Its fellow treaty signer, the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe, followed suit.
More worrisome to the company, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks of Bremerton, the powerful ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, made it known that he thinks the project is just too big. In May, he wrote the Jefferson County commissioners opposing the zoning change, stating that the project would unalterably change the character of Hood Canal. He promised his constituents, "I will do what I can to oppose it." Add these influential voices to the activist members of the Hood Canal Coalition, a group formed in 2002 to fight the development, and Fred Hill's seas assume tsunami proportions.
The tribes' concerns center around treaty rights. Tribal members question the appropriateness of industrial-scale development on one of the most biologically productive and undisturbed corners of Puget Sound. Says Ron Charles, chairman of the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe: "The effects of Fred Hill's project on Hood Canal's fragile ecology would jeopardize the tribe's treaty-reserved hunting and fishing rights. The impacts from the project are simply too great."
Charles points not only to the pier and loading facility but to the upland mining operation in the Thorndike Creek watershed. Mining activity will remove material down to within 10 feet of the aquifer. "This is a groundwater-fed system and one of the most pristine salmon streams left in Puget Sound," Charles says. "To the tribe, the mining expansion is as much a concern as the shoreline development."
Biologists have identified the proposed pier site as important habitat for forage fish, the small sand lance and surf smelt that feed salmon. Adjacent eelgrass beds are nurseries for young salmon, and nearby shellfish beds and crabbing grounds are critical resources for the tribe. Hood Canal produces some $7 million in commercial shellfish annually, and 80 percent to 90 percent of tribal households rely on shellfish and salmon for subsistence or part of their livelihoods. Potential harm caused by invasive species introduced by ship ballast water or from hulls could be devastating.
Washington has designated Hood Canal a "shoreline of statewide significance." Given the worsening water quality in the southern canal, tribal people are particularly sensitive to new developments that might further degrade Hood Canal's overall health, Charles says. "These are all valid concerns," admits Dan Baskins, pit-to-pier project manager for Fred Hill Materials, "but mitigation will cover them."
Baskins ticks off the safety measures that would be in place to ensure that no harm would come to the canal or its resources: There would be no fueling at the dock; a tender tug and boom would contain any incidental spills. U.S.–flagged container ships would not be available for a decade, and tugs don't use ballast water, so invasive species don't pose an immediate threat. Tugs themselves are extremely safe. "They're the vessels that rescue other boats that get into trouble," he notes. "And if we spill sand and gravel, it would be beneficial. It's the same stuff that's needed to restore Puget Sound beaches."
