HomeMy WebLinkAbout041015 Powell, Niles - Pre-scoping - VII, VIII
From:Joanna Sanders
To:Judy Surber
Cc:Amber Long
Subject:FW: Comments From the Web
Date:Friday, April 10, 2015 11:42:31 AM
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebComments@cityofpt.us \[mailto:WebComments@cityofpt.us\]
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2015 10:31 AM
To: WebComments
Subject: Comments From the Web
MessageType = Suggestion
Subject = City
SubjectOther = Economic Revitalization
Comments and Questions = I received the newsletter accompanying my March water bill and was struck by two
things in it. One was the appeal to residents to conserve water and the other was the report that we are not meeting
some of the goals of the citys Comprehensive Plan. As I understand it, the Plans central goal is preserving the
character and quality of our citys culture and attractions, while diversifying and enhancing our local economy, by
creating superior jobs and higher wages. Achieving this goal, which, as the newsletter acknowledges, is more
urgent all the time, depends greatly on our ability to raise the standard of living and quality of life for those who
already live here, as well as on drawing visitors and new residents to our town to invest in property, create new
businesses and purchase local goods and services. This, in turn, depends on our ability to create Port Townsend as
a place which provides great opportunities for young families. While we live in a very beautiful place and are
doing a lot of things right, (fabulous schools, sustainable and embedded local food producers, arts and attractions, et
cetera) as the newsletter also observes, in spite of those assets, opportunities appear to be decreasing or contracting.
Excuses aside, this tells us that what we are doing is not working as well as we would like. Certainly there are
outside factors involved, but the question is: is there anything we here can do which will work? The juxtaposition
of the two aforementioned concerns in the newsletter led me to think about some difficult but important steps we
could take if we are serious about these goals.
As many of us who pay even casual attention to these issues are aware, the mill uses roughly 90% of the water
drawn from our reservoirs each year, while every other person and business in town, combined, uses the balance.
So it caught my attention that the approximately 9,000 residents of Port Townsend are being asked to conserve
water while the mill uses nine times as much of it as all the rest of us combined. The mill may offer opportunity to
a number of local residents and direct benefits to the county and city in the form of taxes and money spent here, but
it does not even approach the status of an economic lynchpin, employing and sustaining twenty or more percent of
our residents. Instead, it is more like an anchor which provides us with a degree of stability, but ultimately restricts
our movement and freedom and keeps us stuck where we are. We hesitate to cut this anchor loose, but the ambition
and optimism of our Comprehensive Plan contradict such timidity, because, more than anything else, we need to
demonstrate that Port Townsend is a place that puts the quality of its residents lives first.
In contrast, the mill is everything our goals are not. While we seek innovation and change, the mill represents
stagnation, literally and figuratively. While we need to double down on our beauty and our uniqueness, the mill
makes us a typical American city, manipulated by corporate interests and burdened by pollution. While we want
young, intelligent, educated, economically creative residents, the mill is hostile to exactly those people, because
they worry appropriately about the mills impacts and feel unnerved by long-time residents silent acquiescence
or defensive equivocations. The mill is something we have been; like an empty, unrewarding relationship, it offers
predictable returns and keeps us from feeling uncertain and unstable. But while we allow it to dominate our vision,
while we take its existence and our fealty to it for granted, while we avoid any discussion of its fundamental
legitimacy, we cannot advance and realize our potential to become the kind place that visitors instantly recognize as
the heart and soul of America: free, clean, financially solvent, and self-determining.
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The mill does provide jobs, and without those jobs and the revenue they bring, we would all experience at least
temporary hardship. But there is already an even bigger threat than that hardship, and the shield created by having
jobs at a serial polluter will not hold it at bay. We are already facing the slow deterioration of our quality of life,
just as an individual in a constraining and one-sided relationship does, and clinging more tightly to our crumbling,
outdated support system will not miraculously produce different results. If we want to be free, we have to break
free. If we want to change our possibilities, we have to change our understanding of what is possible.
Surely the logic is easy, even if the mechanics are not. No one will care about our community for us. No one will
help us protect it or grow it, and no one can get it back if we lose it. Our air, water, health and economy are only
valuable to us if we preserve them. If we lose these resources, which we are on the cusp of doing, people will go to
some other community to spend their money. Our local businesses are only the baseline of independence, diversity
and stability that we want them to be if we take action to protect them. Few of us believe that Lindsay Goldberg
LLC, which is based in another state and which owns Crown Paper Group, which owns Port Townsend Holdings
Company, which owns the Port Townsend Paper Company, really cares about anything that happens here. The mill
is not a local business. It is a small part of a large, multi-level corporation, an inanimate legal construct, the sole
purposes of which are to make money for its executives and stockholders and to protect those same people from
liability for actions taken by that corporation. Most of us are likewise aware that the mill has fought every attempt
by state and local officials, as well as by the local community, to have the mill address the damage that it is doing to
our health, air, land and water. As a consequence of its success at this, we in this community are picking up the tab
for the damage the mill is doing. For example, the property taxes collected here are less because property values
are lowered in areas where the mill plume travels regularly; and some people choose not to live or even visit here
because fumes from the mill regularly blanket our town, which lowers property values and lessens the money spent
in local businesses; and that mill plume, as well as the processing water discharges into the bay and the waste
deposited into the landfill are all toxic, which creates health problems for some and thus increases health care costs
and decreases quality of life for all of us, not to mention damages our sensitive marine ecosystem, which feeds and
finances us all; and now we are talking about increasing the holding capacity of our local reservoirs to lessen the
chance of running out of water in lean times. All of these things cost us money, directly or indirectly, lots of
money. If we actually identified and added up all of the externalized (but very real) costs, a tiny fraction of which
are mentioned above, we would find that the mill is a net loss to this community, the jobs it creates
notwithstanding. Long term, we are literally selling our health, environment and resources, not to mention the goals
of our comprehensive plan, to the mill for those jobs. That is a terrible bargain.
One might think that it would be prudent to have new jobs before we let go of the ones at the mill, but the kind of
businesses we want wont invest here until the mill is gone. We dont realize that the mill is the most powerful
force holding us back. We are asking people to visit here, invest here and live here, but the ones we want wont
come, because our actions say that this is a place where corporate profits trump the health and welfare of its citizens
and their environment. This is what is keeping Port Townsend stagnant. Even if a person cant pinpoint the
cause, they know this, they feel the discouraging energy of it. It becomes very quickly obvious, even to a visitor,
that the mill corporation manipulates this town by holding us hostage with those jobs. That is why we must get rid
of the mill first before we can attract more businesses which are truly an asset to this community. Once we have
demonstrated by our actions that we value our community and our environment over corporate profits, the people
we want will come, in droves.
Email Address = 4meagain99@gmail.com
Provided Name = Niles Powell
Phone Number = 360-379-1282
Fax =
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