Representatives from many groups including the Suquamish Tribe, U.S. Navy, Kitsap County, Washington Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (WASLA), Kitsap Trees and Shoreline Association (KiTSA), Puget Sound Restoration Fund, Washington State Departments of Transportation, Ecology, and Fish & Wildlife, Pacific Northwest National Marine Science Laboratory, Coastal Geologic Services, West Sound Bicycling Club, and other experts, came together on April 25 to develop conceptual trail plans for pedestrians and bicycle riders while restoring a degraded shoreline along Sinclair Inlet between Gorst and the Missouri Gate in Bremerton.
The all-volunteer event was held in conjunction with National Landscape Architecture Month and Kitsap Earth Day.
The teams, hosted by KiTSA and led by Bryan Bowden of the National Park Service Rivers & Trails Conservation Assistance (RTCA) Program, worked feverishly throughout the two day event and developed several conceptual plans through drawings and analysis of existing conditions. This was the ninth charette-style planning session that WASLA landscape architects have done with the RTCA Program.
Several brilliant and fairly detailed concepts came out of the planning session, including a suggestion for two separate pathways, an overpass that could be built over the highway, and three potential areas that would have the highest and best use for restoration, recreation opportunities, and stormwater strategies along the two-mile corridor that includes the Navy’s railroad tracks, state highway, and critical shoreline.
Bowden will now compile these into a report form and hopes to put the draft report out in the next month or two for public review before comments and additional input will be rehashed into the final product that can then be published and distributed in the fall. That report will be the basis for adoption, future fundraising, and design engineering to bring the preferred concepts to reality.
For more information and updates check the KiTSA website at: www.kitsa.net.
The Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe (PGST) were selected to receive $400,000 — 50 percent of Washington State’s brownfields general program funds — in the latest round of federal aid made available by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s national “Brownfields” redevelopment initiative.
“This Brownfields funding, bolstered by funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, will help make more redevelopment a reality in Washington,” said Michelle Pirzadeh, acting EPA Regional Administrator in Seattle, Washington. “We’re excited to join with our tribal, public and private partners to revitalize blighted properties, create more green jobs and protect public health in Washington.”
The EPA Brownfields grants will complement two additional grants, assisted by the services of Grant-Solutions, the PGST Natural Resources Department and Foundation received that will work together to provide environmental assessment, data collection and sharing, public participation and education and include the following:
Brownfields community-wide hazardous substances and petroleum grant funds will be used to perform Phase I and Phase II environmental assessments at sites with potential contamination, conduct community involvement activities, and possibly a human health risk assessment. Brownfield assessments will characterize and document environmental contamination, which is a necessary step in the community’s sustainable economic development.
The PGST Natural Resources Department will lead the evaluation of Tribal properties for potential environmental hazards to determine if any need to be cleaned-up before they can be developed, or if they might need to be left undeveloped so as not to expose people to any danger. The subsequent clean-up and restoration of these sites will improve commercial and recreational shellfish harvest for Tribal citizens and encourage economic vitality.
Port Gamble Bay, the site of an historic sawmill and forest products manufacturing operation, is a small bay in northern Hood Canal contaminated with a variety of hazardous substances resulting from the historic Pope & Talbot mill operations in Port Gamble that lasted approximately 150 years. The site has been identified as a priority cleanup site for Puget Sound by the Governor’s Puget Sound Initiative. Contamination is related to sawmill operations, wood products manufacturing, and log chipping, rafting, and storage.
Port Gamble Bay, on the Hood Canal, provides the Tribe with treaty fishing resources such as clams and oysters, herring, salmon, and geoduck clams, while the waters provide swimming and canoeing opportunities. This is central to the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s way of life from historic, cultural, and natural resource perspectives, including economic, ceremonial and subsistence harvesting of fish and shellfish. Any activities affecting the health of the marine ecosystem in Port Gamble Bay therefore affect the health and well-being of tribal members who receive from it physical and cultural sustenance. The Brownfields Program will empower the Tribe to improve the environment, restore its homelands, provide housing for its members, and develop business opportunities in a diversified sustainable manner.
Brownfields are sites where expansion, redevelopment, or reuse may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant. The Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act of 2002 grant recipients are selected through a national competition. The Brownfields Program encourages development of America’s estimated 450,000 abandoned and contaminated waste sites. For more information, the Brownfields program website is located at www.epa.gov/brownfields.
