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COMMENTARY BY GREG HERTEL |
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Permits!
Two things happened recently that are emblematic of our times. The first was the hundreds of trucks full of gravel doing a slow conga line up Spring St. and the other was the court decision against the County regarding the proposed Solid Waste site. Both of these are the result of permit problems and both are going to cost far more to remedy than the simple price of the construction to provide facilities. Both involve controversial uses and even though both have been stopped it’s my guess that a barge landing to accommodate bulk cargo and a solid waste site for San Juan Island will eventually be built on the original sites that were chosen. So why the delay? The barge landing and the solid waste site are both needed and necessary public facilities so how did we get to this point in time where delays and costs increase to no ones benefit. It was patently obvious to anyone trying to use Spring St. when the trucks were rolling that there had to be a better way, a better use of time, workers, and money to move gravel to the island. Costs of concrete will be higher in the future for all and so will the cost to build roads for the County if it has to resort to this type of transport method. All this when a site to unload the gravel sits unused. A site that could work without the shuttle barges and where gravel could even be stockpiled until needed so that a few loads a day could roll instead of all of the gravel in a 48-hour period. The Trash to Treasures site is another example of a needed project being put on hold until more money is spent on studies and permits. Ultimately though, I’ll lay odds that both get built but for a lot more money than the original proposals. So who’s to blame? It’s not the citizens who have exercised their rights in the courts and various governmental agencies to protest these decisions. It’s not some boogeyman bureaucrat sitting in the Dept. of Delay and Confusion. Instead, the culprit is … us! The public! We demanded safeguards on permitting for development. We demanded that the environment be protected at al costs. We demanded that we all individually had a right not just to our say but to get our way. And we also demanded that we have our services and cheap roads too. Let me give you another example of how the system currently works and then offer a few suggestions about how we might correct the worst of the flaws in our present system. About 10 years ago I was teaching a middle science class and I was also an elected Port Commissioner. After school one of my students came in to talk to me about some dock issues that had affected her family. Robin came over to my desk and said, "Mr. Hertel, when are you going to fix W dock? My Dad’s wheelchair broke through and almost went into the water!" Needless to say, that got my attention. I knew that her Dad had been using the chair due to a broken leg but I’d assumed that the dock in question was OK. W dock was off the beaten path, in shallow water and the home to a small group of live aboards and local boats. Not as heavily used as the main guest floats, it was scheduled for future maintenance, but some fast spreading rot caught the Port staff and myself by surprise. I told Robin that I would look into the problem immediately and fix it. A survey of the dock quickly proved that a thorough rebuild, not just patching would be needed. It was also felt that moving one end about 6 feet closer to deeper water would benefit the boaters using W dock too. This would mean pulling and resetting about 4 pilings. This project was given top priority. Over five years later, Robin finally helped cut the ribbon on the rebuilt dock! The actual time to do the work was around 1 month. Why the delay? Why the increased cost? In a single word: permits! Permits from the following agencies (not necessarily in this order): the Town of Friday Harbor, The Army Corps of Engineers, US Fish and Wildlife, EPA, State Dept. of Fisheries, State Dept. of Ecology, and State Dept. of Natural Resources. Every one had waiting periods and citizen trip wires to delay and challenge the project. Every one of them had to be done one at a time to get to the next step. This is called "Serial Permitting." The Port spent almost as much on managing this project as the actual construction cost. And this was a project that had no real opposition! Now engineering firms are hiring whole departments to handle permit issues. Construction costs are 25 to 50% more just due to the time and energy spent on permitting. Are these docks and roads any better for the environment than docks and roads in the pre-permit days? Probably not. Could all of the money wasted on petitioning the various agencies be better spent in helping the environment? Undoubtedly! Before the Columbia River salmon was listed as endangered over 1.5 billion dollars were spent on studies and not one dollar was spent on habitat restoration. Even more will be spent on permits for construction in the affected areas but again, very little spent on actual habitat. Wouldn’t it be nice if even half of that money spent on studies were spent purchasing riverbanks and streamside developments so that today’s fish could see positive changes in their environment? There is a better way to do this. Instead of the time and money spent on serial permitting, they could all be processed at once. Parallel permitting! This reduces the cost and time spent overseeing a project. The different permits could also be consolidated with the most logical agency taking the lead in allowing or modifying the permit. Finally, clearer guidelines could be established and if they were met then no challenges would be allowed. If only half the money now spent on permits and studies were instead spent on actual clean-up, purchase of habitat, rehabilitation of shorelines, repair of failed drain fields, better storm water systems, and better sewage treatment, the environment would be in far better shape than it is now under the current system. I have a dream, nightmare really, about waking up in the distant future and finding that the United States isn’t around. It’s ended sometime in the past and wanting to understand why the US faded away, I look in a history book and read this:
--Greg Hertel |
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