Yes, the last of the ABC scrap metal dump has been scraped up and loaded into the Ken Haru with a cadential roaring and clattering that dominated the soundscape of an otherwise beautiful weekend. The effect was so toxic that even as the Ken Haru headed out to sea, those of us who had been engaged early on in pointing out the folly of having imported to our waterfront a known noisy and hazardous polluting operation were ultimately mystified about how this could have happened.

 Since there was no proper paper trail that should have preceeded final permission for ABC to commence operations at the Port and no opportunity for citizen input into the Port’s decision to sign an extended contract with this questionable industrial entity, it is impossible to assign responsibility for the multiple evasions that were necessary to set ABC in motion. Where was the SEPA checklist that should have portended the inevitable air and water pollution resulting from open storage of stupendous amounts of rusted scrap adjacent to a federal waterway? Where was any application for licensure mandatory in Washington State for scrap metal dealers? Where was the record of any discussion of how this operation might fit into the new Urban Village zoning at the Log Pond site where we’ve been treated to the repellent view of several enormous mountains of rusted scrap?

 To reinforce John’s surmise that we’ve not seen the last of such misbehavior from the Port, consider that they could only send ABC packing after they’d invented a False Narrative about the termination of their contract. According to this story, which I fear will become the official history, the Port has always taken on the role of the protector of the waterfront environment, air and aquatic. And wnen it became clear that ABC was polluting the ground water and was unresponsive to DOE citations for abysmal husbandry of their work environment, even then there was no move to send them off.

 By that time we had been bombarding the Commissioners with empirical evidence about the environmental hazards of unsorted scrap metal stored on bare ground. Repeated attempts to get the attention of Blake Lyon the Planning Director for the Port Planned Action Ordinance, the statutes under which ABC was likely operating at the Port were rudely rebuffed. He repeatedly endorsed their erroneous zoning categorization which exempted them from SEPA scrutiny. Cargo it seemed was cargo whether boulders, scrap metal or plutonium.

 But I think that the growing empirical evidence mined from the BMC, the WAC and from exhaustive studies of pollution associated with scrap metal recycling especially in California ports that we concerned Bellingham citizens both private and organized under savethewaterfront.org brought into the public square could no longer be ignored by the Port. And they began to look for a way to rectify their error in judgment without admitting that they erred.

 And in the end ABC gave them a perfect opportunity to terminate the contract with a comical episode of trying to dock a loaded barge at the Port without proper permission. And in an instant they were gone. With a bit of massage of the events, the Port could pretend that it had always been aware of the potential for ABC being an environmental hazard. And but for that, the univited berthing request might have been overlooked etc etc.

 The real message is that had we citizens not been aggressively outraged and proactive, we’d still be hearing the lunatic “music” of scrap loading on every formerly quiet weekend and trying to avoid the sight of mountains of rusted defunct machine parts perfectly situated in our View Corridors like a raised middle finger to our Waterfront Plan.

 DN