Georgetown hopes Pearl Jam can stop garbage plan

Pearl Jam's new headquarters and rehearsal space in Georgetown could be bulldozed if a city proposal to build a new garbage facility is approved by the Seattle City Council. Georgetown residents, who say they don't want to be dumped on, wish the popular Seattle band would help them fight the plan.


		Karen Ducey / P-I
	People dump garbage at the South Park transfer station Monday. City planners want to build a new garbage transfer station in Georgetown, and expand the South Park site to better serve self-haulers.

"Eddie Vedder's for the little guy, and Pearl Jam would have a lot of clout," said John Bennett. The Georgetown property owner opposes Seattle Public Utilities' plan to build a new transfer station on the outskirts of the city's oldest neighborhood that would be big enough to handle most of the garbage collected in Seattle.

"The tough thing is, they're out on tour for a year."

Band members could not be reached for comment, and neither the band's management nor its publicists returned phone calls.

But city officials, already faced with concerns from Georgetown residents, questions about trash-seeking sea gulls at nearby Boeing Field and antiquated garbage facilities, say tough choices are needed to address the city's endless stream of garbage.


		Dan DeLong / P-I
	This warehouse at 1900 S. Corgiat Drive, the headquarters for the rock band Pearl Jam, would be demolished under the plan.

Pearl Jam's warehouse is not the only industrial building that would have to be demolished to make way for a new $70 million transfer station deemed critical for the city's master plan to reduce garbage and garbage disposal costs. The so-called Corgiat site, a long, narrow band of 16 acres along South Corgiat Drive, was named last month as the preferred site out of 1,000 considered because it is industrially zoned and strategically wedged between railroad tracks and Interstate 5.

The "intermodal" facility would allow more efficient transfer of trash from garbage trucks to train cars, which would haul the stuff to a giant landfill in Arlington, Ore.

"We can't build around that (Pearl Jam warehouse); we need that parcel," said Henry Friedman, project manager for Seattle Public Utilities. "They'll have to be moved, but we're working with all the property owners to see what the relocation options are."

Two other sites that are contenders for the new transfer station -- on Harbor Island and on South Edmunds Street near Airport Way South -- have environmental or other drawbacks the Corgiat site doesn't have, officials said.

The proposed transfer station is part of a $160 million, three-part plan that has not yet been approved or funded by the Seattle City Council. The proposal also calls for rebuilding and expanding the city's two aging transfer stations in Wallingford (at a cost of $40 million) and South Park (for $50 million).

Those two sites, which now handle all of the city's collected garbage, would shift focus to serve self-haulers, an ever-growing group in Seattle. Thousands of weekend warriors remodeling their homes and landscaping their yards -- as well as the contractors they hire -- are generating increasing amounts of construction debris and yard waste.

By upgrading the Wallingford and South Park sites, lines could get shorter for self-haulers and more material could be sorted and recycled. This approach, combined with a new transfer station, would reduce the amount of landfill-bound garbage, decrease disposal and transportation costs and ultimately keep garbage rates down, officials say.

Tim Croll, director of solid waste for Seattle Public Utilities, said the utility would need authorization from the City Council to condemn or buy property.

Pearl Jam relocated to Georgetown about six months ago after spending more than a decade based at a South Lake Union warehouse. If the band is lying low on the issue, the sheer volume of daily garbage speaks to the need to do something, many say. The question is what -- and where.

Robert Burke, airport director of the King County International Airport, known as Boeing Field, said the airport has written to utility officials with concerns that a trash facility may attract more sea gulls.

"Sea gulls like trash, and they can cause you a lot of grief if they hit an airplane," Burke said. "It's a real problem for pilots."

Utility officials said the transfer station would be enclosed. Burke said that "could make a difference," since a new self-contained garbage facility at Paine Field in Everett has helped control the bird problem.

Sea gulls or no, Georgetown residents and business owners are fighting the transfer station proposal with letters to City Hall and through their own Web site. They fear air pollution, odors, noise and hundreds of garbage truck runs rolling through their neighborhood most days of the week.

Officials say no garbage trucks will go through residential areas, there will be no adverse environmental impacts and traffic in the area will actually be reduced because existing industrial businesses will be displaced.


		Karen Ducey / P-I
	The possible future site of a new garbage transfer station in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood.

A Seattle Public Utilities traffic study estimates that 200 garbage truck trips a day will be made on existing arterial roads in Georgetown, such as South Bailey Street. An estimated 717 trips would be made in and out of the Corgiat site, with the majority coming into Georgetown via I-5 on- and offramps but likely not crossing town.

Many residents, citing years of hard work rebuilding local parks, reclaiming historical buildings and making their neighborhood more livable, say the proposal forces them backward.

"We're telling (Seattle Public Utilities) there is no acceptable route to us for garbage trucks," said Robin Tomazic, a real estate agent and chairwoman of the Georgetown Community Council. "All the information we have says this isn't a good choice for the city, or for Georgetown."

Bennett, the Georgetown property owner, wants the city to think outside the Dumpster -- and consider doing away with landfill dependency.

"The real reason this shouldn't be here is because the whole idea of building more facilities so we can fill more landfills is archaic," Bennett said. "We don't need bigger holes, bigger trucks and bigger trains to haul it away; we need to get to the point where we're recycling more and not producing so much."

The utility says decreasing landfill-bound garbage is exactly what the proposal aims to do.

City Councilman Richard Conlin, chairman of the Council's Environment, Emergency Management and Utilities Committee, said while he supports that aim, he still has questions, some of which he sent in a letter to Seattle Public Utilities this week.

"SPU says this would enhance goals; I have mixed feelings," Conlin said. "If you had more space, you could design a more effective way to promote heavier recycling -- I don't fundamentally disagree. But having an intermodal and two stations focused on recycling may not be the most effective. It's the model, not just the site, that I'm questioning."

Conlin said he was aware of Pearl Jam's property.

"It's an interesting twist, certainly," he said. "What it says to me is that somebody is willing to invest in this area; that it's a property that's active, not vacant, and I don't want to give up valuable urban land without looking at it carefully."

For Seattle Public Utilities, there is an increasing sense of urgency. Officials, who hope to meet with City Council members soon, say capital funding approval is needed before garbage hauler contracts come up for renewal next year.

In addition to the contracts, which Conlin agreed are a concern, the city's current garbage transfer stations, built in the mid-1960s, are inefficient, smelly, noisy, unsafe, not environmentally friendly and unable to meet the city's ramped-up recycling goals, Friedman and Croll said. The utility is particularly worried about what would happen if the Big One hit.

"The current stations are not built to withstand a big earthquake," Friedman said. "They would go out of service, and that's a big concern of ours."

Said Croll: "We really think this is the best site. If this is not approved, the city will need to rethink its recycling goals."