PORT ANGELES — The Port of Port Angeles has been seeking opportunities to enhance its timber, general cargo and loading capacity by investing in equipment and infrastructure improvements.
How to improve and upgrade Terminals 1 and 3 was the focus of Chris Hartman’s presentation to commissioners at their Tuesday meeting.
The port and commissioners favored an approach of successive phases of upgrades.
“We are moving forward with a design phase for what we need to do to support the operations we’re envisioning here at the port,” Executive Director Paul Jarkiewicz said.
The port needs to make sure it has the revenue to support the phases, he said, but if it does nothing, it won’t boost revenue.
“If we don’t start moving ahead, we’ll be stuck with what we have,” Jarkiewicz said. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting another five years because you won’t have more revenue being generated at the terminal at some point.”
The first step in the phased plan does not include improvements to Terminal 1, but that could be addressed in a future phase, said Hartman, the port’s director of engineering.
Surveys of the terminal’s 100-year-old wood piles show they are in good condition.
“These are old-growth logs coated in creosote and well-preserved,” he said. “But the maintenance required will only go up.”
Terminal 3’s wood trestle and wood dock, on the other hand, are an “Achilles’ heel,” Jarkiewicz said.
Along with being cramped, their weight-bearing capacity limits the kinds of activity the terminal can handle.
Commissioners approved an agreement for $116,00 in Clallam County Opportunity Fund Board funds for a feasibility study and design, engineering and permitting for a publicly owned wood kiln.
“This project seeks to solve the problem of there not being enough local kiln capacity for the larger established firms but also the smaller timber firms that exist in Clallam and Jefferson counties,” said Katharine Frazier, the port’s grants and government affairs manager.
Commissioners Connie Beauvais and Steve Burke voted for the measure. Commissioner Colleen McAleer abstained due to her role as executive director of the Clallam Economic Development Council, which facilitated the grant.
Tetra Tech was selected to lead remedial design for the Western Port Angeles Harbor Cleanup group, said Jesse Waknitz, the port’s environmental manager. The port and group’s other potentially liable parties (PLPs) — the city of Port Angeles, Georgia-Pacific, Merrill & Ring and Nippon Paper Industries and Owens Corning — will work together to determine a scope of work and fee. The contract must be approved by all six PLPs.
The PLPs are signatories to a consent degree that requires them to follow a state Department of Ecology plan to clean up contaminated sediment left by decades of industrial activity in the harbor.
Commissioners unanimously approved letters of support for Osprey Logistics, Bellingham Cold Storage and Waste Connections grant applications with the United States Marine Highway Program. The port is the designated sponsor of the Marine Highway Route M-5.
They also unanimously approved a letter of support for the Makah Tribe’s application for Clallam County Opportunity Funds for cargo-handling equipment to support a barge facility that is in the planning stage.
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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com.
