Port Gamble dock still in a tug-of-war

Development of a permanent marina in Port Gamble Bay continues as a tug-of-war of appeals and approvals between state and county entities.

On June 3, the Department of Ecology appealed Olympic Property Group’s 160-foot marina, approved unanimously with conditions by Kitsap County Commissioners in April.

Just after the county’s approval, Washington State Department of Transportation decided against utilizing OPG’s offer to use the dock temporarily as a passenger-only ferry dock to route Jefferson County commuters during the six-week Hood Canal Bridge closure in 2009. The decision was made out of environmental concern for the bay.

“Because the width of the proposed dock exceeded limits in the county’s Shoreline Master Program – the framework for shoreline permits – the county should have requested a variance from Ecology,” said Larry Altose in a news release from the Department of Ecology.

However, the county doesn’t agree with requesting a variance in this case, said Lisa Lewis, shoreline administrator and lead planner on dock project for Kitsap County Department of Community Development.

“The width of the dock was thoroughly reviewed. The code says the width of a pier or dock is not to exceed eight feet or it shall be limited to the minimum necessary. Based on substantial documentation by the applicant’s engineers, the applicant successfully argued that 12 feet was the minimum necessary,” she said.

At the time of the application, the dock was going to be used temporarily by the WSDOT as the passenger-only dock during the bridge closure. Now that WSDOT has pulled out, things could change during the appeal process.

The hearing has yet to be scheduled, but the county’s legal staff has recommended it take place February 2009.

Lewis said to date there are three appeals on the dock being reviewed. Appellants are the DOE, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe and Olympic Property Group (appealing the dock width).

Counties unite for ferry service to Seattle

The Port of Kingston seeks money from the sale of the Chinook and Snohomish ferries to develop its own passenger-only ferry service to Seattle.

Sales of the two foot ferries, currently moored at Bainbridge Island, are pending to an Australian broker looking to sell the boats to the Trinidad government off the coast of Venezuela, said Joy Goldenberg, communications manager for Washington State Ferries.

“They are flying in next week to see if the boats meet their needs,” she said.

The boats received no bids from previous listings on eBay.

If the deal closes, funding from the boats will be placed into a King County grant account to develop passenger-only ferry services.

An Engrossed Second Substitute Senate Bill 5862, approved April 16, 2007, extended the King County ferryboat grant program to include a passenger-only ferry route from Kingston to Seattle, said Mike Bookey, manager of the Port of Kingston.

If the money is awarded to Kingston, it would add to a previous grant, awarded last August but which the port has yet to receive.

The Port of Kingston was awarded $3.5 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration to restart passenger-only services to Seattle, Bookey said.

According to the Port of Kingston’s business plan, the passenger-only ferry service would run Mondays through Fridays, once in the morning and once at night during commute hours.

Port Commissioner Pete DeBoer said the projected cost to ride the ferry is $13.70, roughly the cost of the ferry from Kingston to Edmonds plus a Sounder commuter train ticket from Edmonds to Seattle, but the foot ferry will save commute time.

The Port of Kingston has also teamed with Port Townsend’s grassroots Web site petition, www.seattle2pt.com, for a Port Townsend-to-Seattle route.

Tim Caldwell, president of the Port Townsend Chamber of Commerce, said sub-leasing boats from the Port of Kingston is a long-term project that would be permanent.

Scottish smoking pipe relic found at Norwegian Point

Finding a small, ceramic smoking pipe in the middle of a site trafficked by vandals is never a good sign. But if it dates back to the 19th century, it is cause for the Smithsonian Institute to celebrate.

The area surrounding Hansville’s Norwegian Point Park’s dilapidated flat-top buildings – once the target of vandalism – has been registered as historically significant all because of a little, white clay tobacco pipe, which now has a Smithsonian number attached.

The pipe is believed have been made by the Glasgow, Scotland firm of William White, said Glenn Hartmann, president and principal investigator for Cultural Resource Consultants, Inc., a private archaeological firm who handled a study of the site for Kitsap County, which owns the park and is creating a master plan to develop it.

Similar pipes were found in areas such as Fort Vancouver and are associated with the Hudson’s Bay Company, one of the oldest commercial trading companies in the world, which controlled much of the North American fur trade in the 1800s.

Because the pipe is marked with the city Glasgow instead of the country Scotland, the pipe dates back prior to 1891 when the U.S. mandated imported goods needed to be marked by their country of origin.

“We’ve bracketed it between the 1870s to 1891,” Hartmann said. “If we were going to guess, this could have been a fisherman’s camp,” he said. “But we didn’t find enough to tell a story.”

Hartmann said no Native American artifacts were found at the site.

The historic find will not halt any development of Norwegian Point Park, he said. The Kitsap County Parks Advisory Board voted unanimously in favor of moving ahead with the park’s passive projects at its meeting June 18 in the Greater Hansville Community Center.

Project updates are available at www.kitsapgov.com/parks.