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Monday, October 9, 2006
Some businesses find flouting environmental laws is cost-effective
State's Hydraulic Code often fails in protecting Puget Sound
FREELAND, Whidbey Island -- The 360-foot-long paddlewheel steamboat was late for delivery. The Nichols Brothers customer was losing millions. With no legal way to launch the steamer into shallow Holmes Harbor, Matt Nichols directed his boatyard workers to do exactly what the government told him not to do: install an unpermitted boat ramp.
A federal official scolded Nichols for building the ramp, but decided to allow its use to avoid "the substantial economic consequences of delaying this launch."
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 | Paul Joseph Brown / P-I | |
| In 2003, Nichols Brothers illegally built a ramp to launch boats into Holmes Harbor on Whidbey Island. A federal official scolded Nichols, but let the firm use the ramp. | ||
Then boatyard employees botched the June 2003 launch of the $45 million Empress of the North, sending it careening down the ramp at warp speed. Stuck in the mud, it had to be pulled free by tugboats whose propeller wash gouged out more than 65,000 square feet of eelgrass, an area considerably bigger than a football field -- critical shelter for tiny fish that sustain the Puget Sound food chain.
Over the years, the boatyard also has put up temporary buildings without the required permits, installed an unapproved septic system and been cited for, among other things, filling in wetlands and ripping up tidelands without a permit.
The saga of Nichols Brothers shows how environmental agencies are hamstrung by businesses that repeatedly fail to follow the rules. Critics say it's a flagrant example of how the state's Hydraulic Code -- a set of rules meant to safeguard shorelines -- frequently doesn't protect the Sound.
"I think they have a motto that is: 'Catch me if you can,' " said Christine Goodwin, president of Friends of Holmes Harbor, a group that monitors the health of the harbor. "They do what they need to do to build that boat."
Responds Bryan Nichols, Matt's son and president of the company: "I really hope I can prove her wrong. I guess we'll have to keep a clean record from here on."
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His father, chief executive officer and board chairman of the company, said the boatyard has actually helped restore Holmes Harbor since the business opened in 1964. The sawmill that formerly occupied the site left the area littered with logs and sawdust that his family cleaned up, he said.
The company also has spent $2 million to comply with rules requiring a system to catch and cleanse water running off the boatyard, the company said.
It paid $97,000 in fines for launching the Empress. Nichols Brothers twice replanted the destroyed eelgrass and hopes the latest plantings will survive and spread. The company also has promised to do additional restoration to compensate for the harm caused, and awaits government instruction on how to proceed.
"We've always prided ourselves on doing what is the correct and right thing to do," Matt Nichols said.
Responds neighbor and critic Jay Hale: "His environmental work that he's done and that he brags about is almost 100 percent in response to being fined or told he had to do it."
After the illegal launching system was discovered in 2003, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife ordered Nichols Brothers to install by the end of 2007 a proper launch that won't endanger eelgrass or the salmon and other creatures that live there, and won't block sand from being transported naturally along the shoreline.
The company has dismantled the rail system erected for the Empress of the North. But the new launch won't be finished by the deadline.
Still, the company probably won't get in trouble.
"My feeling is if they're showing significant progress toward an alternate plan, I don't see how I could shut them down, keep them from launching boats. I'm not that kind of person," said Doug Thompson, the Fish and Wildlife habitat biologist for the area.
Ecology spokesman Larry Altose also credited Nichols Brothers for making progress, saying the company "is really coming close to turning an important corner."
But homeowners in the otherwise-residential neighborhood object to what was once a mom-and-pop boatyard that now builds ships weighing millions of pounds in a site zoned "light industrial."
Matt Nichols charges that the critics just want him to go out of business. He asserts that the company is "abiding by all the laws."
Nichols has its supporters. One of its strongest and most influential is Mike Shelton. Before his election as a county commissioner, he was Nichols' general manager -- the one who received a 1991 citation for unauthorized filling of a wetland.
Shelton is one of three county commissioners -- all strong Nichols supporters -- who are responsible for enforcing building codes as well as laws protecting shorelines and wetlands.
"When 250 of your constituents get a family-living-wage job in an industry in a county that has precious little employment, at least at the family-wage rate, yeah, I'm a big supporter," Shelton said.
More headlines and info from Whidbey Island.
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Part One:
Over some 90 years, Granny has dodged bullets, escaped captors' nets. Can she survive the contamination of her home -- and her body?
Part Two:
A young Granny grows from infant to mature female in a sea increasingly dirtied with human waste and poisoned with chemicals. To humans, she's a monster, a curse -- and, soon enough, a swimming target.
Part Three:
Granny has escaped the bullets of fishermen and the military, but she and her family aren't so lucky when the nets of fortune-hunters close around them.
Part Four:
Granny escapes the nets of captors, but she can't escape a world in change. Her seas grow noisy, crowded with boats -- and young relatives are dying.
Part Five:
Granny must adapt to a world that's noisy and crowded, an underwater New York City where orca mothers pass along human poisons to "crack babies." The world up top is as strange. The same humans who once feared her now revere her.
Part Six:
Granny is tough. She has dodged nets and bullets. She has swum in our garbage and pollutants for nine decades and survived. What she can't survive is a sea without prey.
All about orcas
A primer.
Part One:
Marine life is disappearing from Puget Sound, and fast
The causes are many: Politicians' broken promises, industries' resistance and the inability to convince people to live and work more gently on the shores of the Sound.
Although some species thrive, the feast is actually a famine
Shrimp and spot prawn appear to be thriving -- which may represent a serious imbalance in the Puget Sound ecosystem.
Some businesses find flouting laws is cost-effective
Environmental agencies are hamstrung by businesses that repeatedly fail to follow the rules.
In the battle between fish and farmers, orcas are the losers
The Skagit River is the classic example of how much people resist changes that are necessary to rescue the sound's sea life.
Part Two:
A rising tide of chemicals and sewage
Despite years of cleanups, bans on certain chemicals and increasingly stringent regulations, pollution in Puget Sound remains pervasive. Fish are bathing in microscopic bits of plastic, toxic chemicals, pharmaceuticals and caffeine.
The message in the (plastic) bottle is dire
A lot of the plastics -- bottles, bags, toys, packaging, etc. -- that we use are winding up in marine waters. It's a newly emerging threat to sea life as the items break down and make their way into the food chain.
Septic tanks suspected in threat to nation's manila clam harvest
Leaky septic systems are oozing sewage into marine waters and making shellfish unsafe for eating. But in many cases health inspectors can't get onto private property to pinpoint the culprits.
Part Three:
Toxic stormwater is one of the Sound's biggest threats
For years, government officials and scientists have known that polluted stormwater poses one of the greatest threats to the Sound. And they know how to fix it. But so far, no one has had the political nerve or money to match the threat.
Low-impact methods have high impact on ecosystems
Grassy ditches, rain barrels and green roofs are all innovations to close the tap on stormwater and can help save salmon and orcas.
Part Four:
Major oil spill presents greatest short-term threat to orcas' survival
Government scientists say a major oil spill is the biggest extinction threat for Puget Sound orcas over the next half-century. Even smaller spills irritate orcas' eyes and skin, and contaminate their prey.
An ounce of prevention won't clean up even a gallon of oil, activist warns
A gadfly has a warning about the preparedness for cleaning up a massive oil spill in Puget Sound.
Part Five:
Slaughtered orcas' DNA a chance to save the species
Odds are good that your grandkids -- or maybe even your kids -- could see the Sound's orca population shrink perilously low in their lifetime. The government has launched protections to save the orcas, declaring most of the Sound protected.
Saving Puget Sound could cost $12 billion
The cost of saving Puget Sound could exceed $12 billion and will require a holistic strategy that tackles the problems plaguing the entire marine ecosystem, according to an all-star advisory panel appointed by the governor.
Part Six:
Puget Sound is in trouble, but many still don't get it
The Sound is still in trouble and people still aren't getting it. Restoration advocates agree that getting the public onboard is key for raising needed funding and stanching the flow from the "death by a thousand cuts" sickening the Sound.
What the readers are saying ...
"The Sound of Broken Promises" readers were troubled to learn about the plight of Puget Sound and conflicted over who's to blame and what to do next, according to the dozens of comments logged on the P-I Web site.
Track the latest environmental news on Lisa Stiffler and Robert McClure's Dateline Earth.
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