NOAA's move to Newport hits a legal snag
Port of Bellingham attorneys have discovered a federal restriction, dating back to Jimmy Carter times, banning the location of new federal buildings on wetlands and flood plains. Guess what Newport sits on?
Early in his term as President, Jimmy Carter cracked down on agencies planning to locate new federal buildings on wetlands and flood plains. Executive Order 11988, which Carter issued on May 24, 1977, made it all but impossible to site federal facilities on lands subject to flooding. The idea was to "avoid direct or indirect support of floodplain development wherever there is a practicable alternative."
Guess what? Newport, Oregon is in the 100-year flood plain, a problem the procurement team who chose Newport as the new site of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Center, seems not to have taken seriously.
Just before a late afternoon deadline Thursday, the Port of Bellingham filed a formal appeal of NOAA's choice of Newport, based largely on the flood plain restrictions of the 1977 Executive Order. The appeal goes to the US Government Accountability Office, which oversees the process of buying and building government property. The action by the Bellingham commissioners is a 180-degree turn from their decision of a few days earlier, when they voted not to appeal the NOAA move, after being briefed by NOAA officials on the outcome of the competition between Bellingham, Seattle, Port Angeles, and Newport.
At that meeting (August 19) Bellingham Port attorney Frank Chmelik told the Commissioners that while NOAA might have miscalculated some of the technical factors in choosing Newport, those factors weren't likely to lead to overturn the agency's decision. But the flood plain restriction is of a different nature. This could be a game-changer, Chmelik believes. "With the new information we have found, " Chmelik told the commissioners, "I believe that if this issue prevails the Port will have the opportunity to actually get NOAA."
The flood plain issue was hiding in plain sight, but neither NOAA's procurement team nor Bellingham's suitors had made much of it. The federal agency's own environmental assessment points it out: "Site Alternatives 2 and Four" &mdash that's Port Angeles and Newport &mdash "appear to be within a base flood plain. The lessor must ensure compliance with the requirements of the SFO (Solicitation For Offers) and be consistent with Executive Order 11988." That's President Carter's set of administrative hoops all federal agencies have to jump through, meant to discourage them from locating in flood plains. The Port of Bellingham's Washington DC attorneys say they don't see any evidence of NOAA considering those requirements before naming Newport as its new home.
The Bellingham site, on the other hand, has no such problem. The NEPA assessment says, "...the proposed alternative [Bellingham] would have negligible effects on floodplains and flooding characteristics within the site vicinity." And in the next paragraph "...the site is not within an identified floodplain."
A news release from the Port of Bellingham says that if NOAA approved a site that did not meet its stated criteria, "the federal agency would have to either remove Newport from consideration and choose another site, or would have to change its Solicitation for Offers and allow new bids to be submitted."
The NOAA Marine center has been located on Seattle's Lake Union for nearly 50 years. The Seattle lease expires in 2011, and NOAA pondered offers from Seattle, Port Angeles, Newport, and Bellingham before announcing its choice of Newport.
At stake is a prestigious 20-year contract that brings with it a fleet of research ships and some 175 jobs. At stake for Bellingham is a good deal more: the port and city have been counting on NOAA as the anchor tenant for a huge and costly waterfront redevelopment project where the 137-acre Georgia Pacific Pulp and Paper Mill used to be.
Bellingham port officials were told a few days ago that they had come very close to winning the NOAA decision. The two sites were virtually tied on technical factors such as geography, weather, and "quality of life" (school excellence, housing costs, entertainment and restaurant availability among other things). But Newport and the state of Oregon offered to help defray the cost of moving the NOAA center from Seattle. Bellingham declined to subsidize the move. Bellingham Port officials conjectured that the money offer outweighed the other factors. Now, with the flood plain issue to be considered, the move to Newport would appear a lot more expensive than it seemed a week ago.
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Aug 28, 12:07 a.m. inappropriate
Would that there were a similar order regarding floodplains for King County government buildings — http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009748050_webflood26m.html
Posted Fri, Aug 28, 9:02 a.m. inappropriate
NOAA contains a branch called "NOAA Fisheries," which theoretically implements ESA mandates to protect salmonid habitat. Protecting and, where possible, restoring wetlands, rivers and floodplains is thought to benefit salmonid habitat. In typical "right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing" fashion, the oceanic research branch of NOAA has decided to relocate NOAA's research vessel operations to a new facility built on wetlands within a floodplain, thereby defying federal mandates to protect these sensitive areas.
Maybe NOAA thinks--what's the big deal? The entire OSU Marine Science Center is built on sand dunes, so why can't we park ourselves on wetlands within a floodplain? Or maybe their attitude is "do as we say, not as we do."
When Jane Lubchenko became the new Under Secretary of Commerce and Administrator of NOAA I had high hopes she would empower her staff to actually enforce the ESA and stop the rampant and ongoing loss of habitat for ESA listed species, including salmon. So far, nothing seems to have changed, and floodplains are still getting trashed right and left.
Extensive flood damage is likely to occur in the Green River valley during the next three to five winters due to the need to repair Howard Hanson Dam, which has developed sinkholes that prevent storage of more than a very modest amount of floodwater. Ironically, flood damage over a in lower Green River valley over the next few years will probably instigate demands to build even more massive levees, thereby enabling buildout on the last remnants of the lower Green River floodplain.
In a more rational world where nature is respected and the services it provides highly valued, the zone of most severe flood damage within close proximity to the river channel could be restored by levee setback projects to create not only greater flood conveyance and storage, but also better fish habitat. Habitat restoration ffforts along the Green have been thwarted lately by the Corps' insistence that woody vegetation be removed from the levees and these facilities be covered either with bare rock or grass. An example of what this looks like can be seen just upstream from the S. 180th Street. It isn't pretty.
The local jurisdictions are in a currently in a frenzy to cut down every last tree and as much of the other woody vegetation on these levees as possible before the flood season begins in November. Otherwise, the Corps will withhold funding to repair of what is likely to be monumental flood damages to these facilities. It is ironic that the impending flood damages not only to the levees, but to homes, businesses and other public infrastructure will no be due not to levee maintenance deficiencies by local jurisdictions (a major factor cited by Corps to explain failure of the New Orleans levees in the Katrina disaster), but rather due the Corps' decision to build Howard Hanson Dam on a 10,000 year old landslide. The sinkhole problem now affecting dam also occurred shortly after the dam was completed in 1962. Following the big flood this past January, sinkholes reoccurred in exactly the same part of the dam where they formed in 1962--in the part of the dam built over the landslide.
Cities all over the world are seeking ways to protect and plant trees not only to sequester CO2, but also to combat the urban "heat island" effect. Unfortunately, along thousands of miles of federal levees, many of which--including those along lower Green River--are located in cities, ALL trees must be cut down to satisfy the Corps' maintenance standards. In the same way NOAA is poised to trash a floodplain area and wetlands in Newport, it hasn't raised even a faint peep of protest about exposure of countless miles of riverine habitat nationwide to the full heat of the sun as a result of the Corps' levee maintenance standards. When the Corps rocked two miles of the lower Green River levees last summer, NOAA Fisheries didn't even issue a Biological Opinion. Presumably, the Corps though the impacts of vegetation removal were not likely to affect ESA-listed salmon habitat. EPA is also responsible for enforcing the Clean Water Act, which sets forth water temperature standards, and it looked the other way as well. The Puget Sound Partnership so so busy shoveling money at salmon recovery projects, it many not have noticed that many miles of prime salmon habitat in the Puget Sound basin are being unravelled by the Corps' perverse mandate to damage salmon habitat mandate. This is really quite sad, because summer water temperatures in rivers in California and the Pacific Northwest that are inhabited by ESA listed salmon are rising to the point where they are delaying upstream migration and even fish outright.
I wonder which will happen first: ESA-listed salmon go extinct, or the feds get their act together to protect and recover these fish populations. Right now it's a horse race and the odds don't favor the fish.
Posted Fri, Aug 28, 10:11 a.m. inappropriate
I hope Bellingham is successful in its protest. Newport is a very poor choice for a number of reasons, the most important of which is its small size. How can a town of 10,000 people possibly support/staff four ships (most of the 175 jobs) when a city like greater Seattle with its population of nearly 3 million can't? Ship vacancies have been 10-15% for the last few years. Some but not many of the current employees on the ships will be willing to relocate. Most of the jobs require sea going experience and the willingness to be at sea for 8-9 months a year and only inport for the rainier-than-Seattle winter months. Who wants that - not many, even in this current recession?
Newport's small size can't provide the dockside repair services or drydock facilities necessary to support the four ships which will require expensive transits to Seattle or Portland or the importing of such services from elsewhere. Anyone that has sailed off the Washington/Oregon coast can attest that such a transit in the winter months is anything but "smooth sailing" and leaving/entering Newport harbor in winter can be extremely dangerous, even for large vessels.
NOAA science would suffer from such a move as well with the vast majority of the people using the ships being based in NOAA's land facilities in Seattle. Face to face meetings would be less frequent and require more travel (at greater expense).
Some have argued that the ships would have quicker access to the ocean from Newport but since most of their activities take place in Alaska, they would actually be further from their work areas than Seattle or Bellingham.
It is doubtful that the NOAA procurement bureaucrats took any of the above into account. They don't go to sea and they only wanted to consider generic criteria such as housing affordability, schools, etc. rather than practical details in an evaluation of the sites. Of course the promised $30 million from Oregon didn't hurt either.
Although I think the ships should stay in Seattle because of its infrastructure support, Bellingham is a far better alternative than Newport. If the decision to relocate to Newport is not changed, the ultimate loser will be the taxpayer and ultimately Newport itself. There is little doubt that unless extraordinary measures are taken, this relocation will fail within 5 years and Newport will be left with a $30 million white elephant!
Posted Fri, Aug 28, 11:03 a.m. inappropriate
Good luck to Seattle or Bellingham in trying to reverse this decision which, quite obviously, was taken outside such considerations as public law.
Perhaps Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, who has NOAA within his jurisdiction, should take a second look after not having taken a very thorough first look. Seems to me that Newport would not rank first in some of the criteria cited for the decision, even though NOAA said it did.
Perhaps it was just the money (Oregon's promised subsidy).
Posted Fri, Aug 28, 4 p.m. inappropriate
Thanks for being the Committee chair overseeing this Maria Cantwell!
Posted Thu, Sep 24, 11:18 a.m. inappropriate
There are a few misconceptions voiced here.
First, the site is not a wetland or dunes. The whole "peninsula" jutting into the bay housing the Marine Science Center (OSU, 3 NOAA buildings, EPA, USF&W;, ORDF&W;) is old fill. (And the oceanic research branch of NOAA does not control the ship base, that's the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations.)
Second, the FEMA flood maps show that portion of the fill to be a zone between 100 and 500 year flood chance. So it is not in the 100 year floodplain. A new NOAA building is right across the street from the site - and is lower in elevation, and interestingly, not in a flood plain at all oddly enough. The river is very small in any case, much smaller than the river in Bellingham.
Third, staffing the ships may not be an issue, as the ship personnel don't earn much and urban Seattle is pretty expensive - most can't live in the city. They might like Newport more, with it's active waterfront (hey, why do fishermen live in Newport and transit up to Alaska to fish, instead of moving to Seattle or Bellingham?)
Fourth, where is the data on "vast majority of the people using the ships being based in NOAA's land facilities in Seattle"? They come from research centers and universities all over the globe, and most port calls are not in Seattle as it is, so people and gear already have to be sent to meet the ships.
Fifth, "most of their activities take place in Alaska" - well, it's just not true. Ka'imimoana, no, McArthur II, no, Rainier, some, Miller Freeman, some.