| Greg King Comments on Redwood Marine Terminal Business Plan |
To the Commissioners of the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation, and Conservation District:
My name is Greg King, I am executive director of the Northcoast Environmental Center. The NEC, our 6,000 members and the eight member groups which sit on our Board of Directors — including North Group Sierra Club, Redwood Region Audubon Society, Humboldt Baykeeper, California Native Plant Society and the Environmental Protection Information Center — are greatly concerned about your proposed Redwood Marine Terminal Business Plan. The reasons for this concern are many faceted and include a virtual omission of anything in the Plan having to do with Conservation or Recreation.
As crafted, the business plan would turn over to an outside investment company the economic and environmental fate of our beautiful and biologically important Humboldt Bay. It would allow Goldman Sachs and its far-flung investors usurp and possibly destroy our diverse regional economy that depends on an unspoiled bay. The plan would privatize a public asset in a fiscally irresponsible and imprudent use of taxpayers’ money, and it could bankrupt the Harbor District, which instead should be running well and increasingly in the black.
I read with interest the letter from Goldman Sachs Vice President Jeffrey Holt, dated May 9, 2008, to David Hull at the Harbor District. Jeffrey is effusive with possibility for our Bay. He says, “interest in port terminal facilities has never been greater. … There is a strong need for additional freight handling capacity for goods coming from the Pacific Rim. … We … are confident that there will be significant interest from potential concessionaires to invest the required capital and to more fully develop a third California freight and rail gateway into the Central Valley and beyond. … Humboldt is a natural gateway for such exports, as well as an attractive additional source for container capacity. Making the improvements to the port and rail assets will potentially bring thousands of jobs to the region. …”
Not to mention an appearance by Elvis.
I’ll leave it to those who posses more financial expertise than I to illustrate why these claims should be viewed as a panacea at best, and an outright con at worst. What I have come to emphasize is what the Harbor District, and all of Humboldt County, would be giving up in exchange for this magical new economy of delivering mostly useless goods from the Far East to mostly withering U.S. markets.
Humboldt Bay is a resplendent ecosystem, a nursery and home for several endangered salmonids and other species, and for hundreds of species of birds. The Harbor District’s own web site confirms this, celebrating a “kaleidoscope of wildlife offering residents and visitors alike a unique encounter with nature's most precious creatures. … Thousands of acres around Humboldt Bay foster rich habitats for a variety of other animals including the marsh shrew, coast mole, river otter, gray fox and black tailed deer.” The web site also reminds us that “a careful balance is required for the Humboldt Bay Harbor District to promote commerce, fisheries, navigation and recreational uses of the bay and protect Humboldt Bay's vast natural resources.”
This is an important reminder, one that at least three of the Harbor Commissioners, in their support of the Redwood Marine Terminal Business Plan and their adoption, in February, of the associated Feasibility Study, have apparently forgotten. The Business Plan promises to infect the Bay with a ceaseless plume of carcinogenic diesel exhaust from massive container ships that have no place in our Bay. This development alone would so transform the look, sounds, feel and smell of Humboldt Bay and its environment that tourism around the Bay is almost certain to drop off, and small businesses looking to locate, or stay, in the region will likely look elsewhere. Connect the environmental, social and economic devastation that would be brought by such inappropriate port development to an associated half-mile long, diesel-spewing train every two hours, 24/7, from Samoa through Arcata and Eureka, and you will have created social and environmental wreckage of spectacular proportions.
The Northcoast Environmental Center will be following this plan closely. Our members love the Bay and insist that we work to protect it. More than 90 percent of the Bay’s salt marshes have already been filled or otherwise destroyed to accommodate human needs. In addition, the bay is home to at least 95 invasive, non-native species. According to a 2002 study published by Humboldt State University and the California Department of Fish and Game, many if not most of these invasive species arrived to Humboldt Bay due to maritime shipping activity. The Harbor District is to be commended for developing a ballast water exchange program to prevent invasive species from entering Humboldt Bay, but the 2002 study emphasizes that “A number of fouling organisms are known to settle and grow on boat hulls below the water line or other submerged surfaces of … vessels as they move from one port to another along the coast.”
The risk of oil and fuel spills will increase exponentially with this plan, threatening the Bay’s already delicate ecology, as well as our important oyster industry. Likewise, reopening the rail corridor would be so catastrophic, and would be so vigorously opposed by local as well as state and national conservation organizations, and possibly by public agencies, that this element alone could destroy the plan altogether. Meanwhile, executives at Goldman Sachs will find the soles of their loafers worn thin by so many lucrative trips to the bank, which begs the question: Who will be liable when bilked investors sue for damages?
Finally, I ask the Harbor Commissioners to consider one other ramification of joining so enthusiastically the ever problematic global market: the potential of Goldman Sachs nullifying any federal, state, and/or local environmental protections that might be applied in the future to harbor operations by appealing such regulations to the World Trade Organization's dispute panel. Goldman Sachs is chartered as a multinational corporation and would therefore have standing to claim through one of their offshore subsidiaries that such protections represent trade barriers affecting their global competitiveness in violation of the granted treaty rights.
The NEC greatly appreciates the work of all the Harbor Commissioners to develop projects that will benefit Humboldt Bay, its ecology and the people who love it and depend on it. We feel the current Marine Terminal Business Plan is misguided and, ultimately, destructive. We implore you to discard this plan, regroup, and utilize the strong minds and clear visions of our community members, and other coastal communities around the nation, to develop a business plan that will protect the important Humboldt Bay ecology and further solidify and expand our unique regional economy.
Greg King
Executive Director
Northcoast Environmental Center
June 26, 2008
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Updated Wednesday, November 12, 2008 |
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