Demolition starts on Bellingham waterfront

The bark and chipper building on Bellingham’s waterfront is starting to disappear bit by bit.

The pieces won’t exactly vanish, but crews from Rhine Demolition of Tacoma have started to tear into the building, and will continue to chip away at it in coming days, according to a Thursday, Oct. 15 tweet by the Port of Bellingham.

Most of the building, which was used to strip logs of bark and turn them into chips as part of Georgia Pacific Corp.’s pulp mill operations, will be recycled.

The digester building, where the wood chips were turned into pulp, will also be removed starting next month, after crews finish removing asbestos from inside. It is the tallest building left on the waterfront.

This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 5:16 PM with the headline "Demolition starts on Bellingham waterfront."