Opinion - Top opinion

POSTED: Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

NOAA should not be allowed to ignore environmental rules

The Bellingham Herald reported recently on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's response to the Port of Bellingham's legal protest regarding the selection of Newport, Ore., for the homeport for NOAA's Pacific Research fleet.

The port commission filed a protest because we believe some very critical errors were made in NOAA's site selection process and we believe those errors denied our community a fair opportunity to compete for this economic development project. Not surprisingly, NOAA's legal team wrote a response to the General Accounting Office, which is considering our bid award protest. The response criticized the Port of Bellingham and supported NOAA's Newport decision.

The NOAA response avoided the real issues but highlighted the fact that NOAA's actions, outside the formal bid process, in effect sought about a $20 million local taxpayer subsidy from each community that provided a bid for the new NOAA facility. The Port of Bellingham Commission unanimously declined to provide a Whatcom County taxpayer subsidy to NOAA. We believe that a local taxpayer subsidy to the federal government is just plain wrong.

When the port took a detailed look at the NOAA requirements for warehouses, offices and piers it became clear that the cost to any community would be about $40 million, which translates into about $4 million per year in annual lease payments. Bellingham had a slight advantage because we already had a pier. NOAA pressed hard to get the communities to reduce the cost to $2.66 million per year, which would have required a $20 million local taxpayer subsidy. We decided that it was not fair to ask our taxpayers to foot this bill. The state of Oregon saw it differently and stepped in by pulling $19.5 million from the state of Oregon's lottery revenue fund to lower Newport's lease proposal.

Now to the real issue: Newport still has a problem with their proposed site. The new pier structure had to be built in a flood plain and in the habitat of the green sturgeon, a recently identified endangered species.

In NOAA's rush to take the Oregon subsidy, they ignored a long-standing federal rule written to protect the environmentally sensitive flood plains that prohibits federal facilities in the flood plain unless NOAA found, after analysis and public comment, that there was "no practical alternative" (like Bellingham).

NOAA said that since the top of the pier was above the high water mark it didn't need to do the analysis or take public comment. That's like saying I can build a five story building in a flood plain if I agree to only live on the top floors.

The port commission made its decision to appeal the NOAA site selection after careful consultation with legal experts as well as with elected officials at the city, county, state and federal level. All agreed that it was in the best interest of our community to ask the GAO to rule that NOAA should not be allowed to ignore federal environmental rules.

We believe Whatcom County deserved the opportunity to have a fair consideration of our local proposal and we believe Newport needed to be held to the same standards as the other proposals. The promise of state money should not trump what is right.

Jim Jorgensen is one of three commissioners for the Port of Bellingham.