Week of Sept. 11, 2024: Pity for the Port, Goldeneye battery farm and Boeing missteps

Editor,

Talk about piling on. Your vitriolic anti-Port editorial (CDN, Aug. 16, 2024) stimulated a bandwagon of critical comments. Granted, the port has done a poor job of defending its record, but c’mon.

Let’s start with Harcourt. A past commission saddled the current commissioners with a bad deal that failed to protect the public interest. Lesson learned. On to ABC Recycling. Current port commissioners signed a lease agreement that brought a new business and living-wage jobs to the Shipping Terminal. When ABC polluted Bellingham Bay, the commissioners promptly terminated the tightly-written lease that did protect the public interest.

What about the port’s actions to increase public enjoyment of Bellingham Bay’s waterfront? Consider the improved beaches and parks, the Dockside Market, the new spectacular venue that is Fishermen’s Pavilion, Bellingham SeaFeast, the pump track and Container Village? What about the multi-million-dollar cleanups of legacy industrial pollution, as documented by CDN? These are all port projects.

I’ve been a Port of Bellingham tenant for four decades, active in port politics, and at times a thorn in their side. I’ve seen port commissions come and go. This group of commissioners is the best in my memory. Representing all points on the political spectrum except the extremes, these commissioners — Ken Bell, Bobby Briscoe and Michael Shepard — work together respectfully, with little pay, and now amid undeserved public scorn. Some of their big-picture discussions could serve as a model to correct the buffoonery seen at higher levels of government. They deserve our thanks.

Jim Kyle

Deming

Editor,

Past port commissioners promised to provide dry stack storage for boats like La Conner and Anacortes. They also promised to remedy the poisoned GP waste lagoon and turn it into much-needed bigger boat moorage, both of which would be money makers for the port and Whatcom County taxpayers. Nothing done.

The two old GP brick buildings at Waypoint Park are an eyesore. They’ll never be developed into anything. The cost to retrofit them to today’s codes is prohibiting. Tear them down now. The port needs to imagine the waterfront as an inviting place for tourists, out-of-town boaters and the public to recreate and enjoy Bellingham. We need more biz in pleasure and commercial-boat-related activities at the waterfront. We definitely don’t need polluting scrap metal or big ship-loading facilities with all the increased truck traffic that would cause. Marine service trades will create more jobs. Please, commissioners, do the right thing for this time for Bellingham.

Bob Worley

Bellingham

Editor,

“Afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted.” I don’t know who said that, but the latest CDN managed both. The Opinion piece called out the corporate greed that led to fatal tragedies (“A few dogged journalists still tell the truth about Boeing; will it matter?” CDN, Sept. 5, 2024). While reporter Annie Todd told of a heart-rending tragedy, in which an Alaska fishing accident led to a devastating loss for a Whatcom County family (CDN, Sept. 7, 2024).

There is no one to blame for the fishing tragedy — only the unforgiving water. But for those who lost loved ones on malfunctioning Boeing aircraft, editor Ron Judd’s column made it quite clear there are villains. Seasoned Seattle Times journalist Dominic Gates has long been documenting the unraveling of safety and good engineering in Boeing management, triggered by a merger with rival McDonnell Douglas and adoption of the profit-above-all-else mindset as espoused in the corporate philosophy of former GE Capital exec Jack Welch. Thanks to the continuing coverage by Mr. Gates and colleagues at the Times, readers have been able to follow the continuing mismanagement at Boeing, leading to supply-chain hangups, union busting and the catastrophic crashes of two 737 Max jetliners — along with the recent near-disaster of the door-panel blowout.

I miss Ron’s humor column “the Wrap,” once a feature in the Sunday Seattle Times. But he and his team have now brought big-city muckraking (and humor, where it can still be found) and professional reporting to an appreciative readership in Bellingham and rural Whatcom County. Filling a void brought about by corporate greed and mismanagement, leading to the evisceration of a local paper called the Herald (formerly of Bellingham).

Paul Kenna

Bellingham

Editor,

I’m a retired Boeing executive. I left the company after 35 years in 1997 at the outset of the process attempting to mash together the two disparate corporate cultures of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas.  Thus began the litany of executive misadventures resulting ultimately decades later in today’s corporate failures. The tragedies of the two 737 MAX crashes with 346 deaths, the near disaster of the failed fuselage door plug, ongoing investigations into absent quality and safety processes, FAA lack of control, whistleblower reports, and damage suits all add up to major management failures in a critical American corporation.

Media coverage of this evolving news by The Seattle Times has been exhaustive and comprehensive and continues to follow revelations of new allegations and issues as they come to light. This is important and responsible journalism. Unfortunately, the intensity of this coverage seems to have overcome some element of objective news coverage. Repetitious rehash of the entire sad story from its beginning with each new news item begins to appear as “piling on.” We expect the media to report the news, but we don’t need a complete retelling of the whole sad affair with each new report. Last week’s CDN editorial reaffirmed the Seattle Times commitment to accurate news reporting (good), but also repeated the tragic news history once again from the beginning (unnecessary).  

The media attention to timely, accurate, objective reporting is applauded; the incessant repeat of corporate failures and conjectures about what else may be wrong fails the test of responsible reporting.  I would value and appreciate more focus on objective journalism and less on selling newspapers.

Paul Beckman

Ravensdale

Editor,

As an attendee to the standing-room-only Sedro-Woolley City Council Work Session on Sept. 4, I appreciated the tough questions from the mayor and city council members to get the truth on the Goldeneye Battery Storage (BESS) project. The mayor and city council members also stressed their support in saving agriculture lands and their value in keeping the county a working agricultural county.  I was equally pleased with all public comments in support of preserving and saving our agricultural valley.

BESS presenters could not or would not give answers to many of the council’s questions that would put our agricultural valley farmlands in jeopardy along with Hansen Creek, Skagit River, residents of Sedro-Woolley and surrounding county citizens.

Skagit County Comp Plan, Polices and Codes have stopped urban sprawl into agriculture lands, but nothing stops federal, state, big corporations and nonprofits from converting farmlands to non-agriculture uses like wildlife habitat or for importing non-native diseased elk into Skagit County which has resulted in more than $10 million in damages to farmers. Fish and Wildlife has allowed these hoof rot diseased elk to spread disease to our livestock and destroy private property, forcing five crop farmers out of east county, eliminating organic and fresh market product production while refusing to pay farmers for damages caused by elk. Why is this same underhanded tactic of ignoring local, state and county policy codes being proposed for this battery storage project as it seems Gov. Inslee and AG Ferguson intend to override Skagit County Codes? Will county citizens be forced to accept the risks of this BESS project like farmers are being forced to feed and accept damages by the state’s elk? 

To save agriculture, county citizens must continue to be more vocal against all intrusions and takeovers of our non-replaceable farmlands.

Aileen Good

Sedro-Woolley

Editor,

By depriving state and local governments of funds needed for roads, bridges, libraries, schools, housing and health care over the past 40 years, the federal government has turned our country into a society of beggars. Locally, that translates into the Whatcom County Library System taking money from the Cherry Point oil refineries that corrupt local elections and promote bigotry. 

The $2 trillion Bush and Obama lavished on Wall Street investment banks during the 2009-2010 bank bailouts could have covered medical and dental care for all Americans, as well as housing subsidies so that no one is homeless. It’s a matter of priorities. Unfortunately, Wall Street owns Congress, so the theft of our public resources by private equity investors is likely to continue.

This is what fascism looks like.

Jay Taber

Blaine

Letters to the Editor are published online Wednesdays; a selection is published in print Fridays. Send to letters@cascadiadaily.com by 10 a.m. Tuesdays. Rules: Maximum 250 words, be civil, have a point and make it clearly. Preference is given to letters about local subjects. CDN reserves the right to reject letters or edit for length, clarity, grammar and style, or removal of personal attacks or offensive content. Letters must include an address/phone number to verify the writer's identity (not for publication).