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Group gets ready for next big issue
By Jack
Kintner
The
Birch Bay Steering Committee refined their land use and
transportation drafts at their regular meeting held November
28 at Birch Bay Leisure Park, leaving the governance issue
for January.
“We need to get these parts done before getting into
the next big issue, and governance will be a big one,”
said steering committee vice chair Kathy Berg.
Chair Meg Grable opened the meeting by reading a letter
from Michael Abendhoff, manager of government and public
affairs for BP’s Cherry Point Refinery, in which he
outlined the refinery’s opposition to the steering
committee’s current draft of its land use plan as a
violation of an “understanding” agreed upon when
the refinery was built in 1971.
The letter detailed how BP’s “vision for the future”
is that other industrial companies will occupy the land
west of their property, the last available parcel adjacent
to a deep-water port in the area. “The current land
use draft plan is a step backward, and does not recognize
the need for industrial growth zones in Whatcom County.
We would not support the plan in its current form,”
Abendhoff wrote.
The land use draft designates the land west of the refinery,
mostly owned by the Trillium Corporation and intended for
residential development, as divided between single-family
low density residential and private recreational open space,
except for a strip of land bordering the west side of the
refinery that is marked industrial. Grable read the letter
as informational.
One change that has taken place since the last meeting is
a road closure near the west end of Birch-Bay-Lynden Road.
Drivers intending to go north on Birch Bay Drive have frequently
taken Morgan Drive as a short cut, turning left on Cottonwood,
but a traffic barrier now closes off the upper end of Cottonwood
Drive. “This has changed traffic flow enough that counts
will have to be repeated,” said consultant Mart Kask.
He emphasized that, in his opinion, this does not change
the fact that the best way to eliminate traffic on Birch
Bay Drive is to push Lincoln Road through all the way from
Shintaffer Road to the freeway, which requires a bridge
across California Creek and a freeway interchange.
“It’s expensive, but we should ride that horse
‘til it dies if we want to get the cars off Birch Bay
Drive, one of the basic goals of this committee,” Kask
said.
Bill Grant, among others, expressed skepticism that it would
be worth doing, wondering if the expense and time couldn’t
be better spent on another part of the plan and focus traffic
coming from the east onto a four-lane Birch Bay-Lynden Road.
Goals and policy statements took up the rest of the meeting,
where the consultants received committee guidance to further
refine their vision statements that describe what Birch
Bay will hopefully become in 20 years. The general vision
statements were left intact, but several specific goals
were suggested to be added to the list, among them one by
Mike Ross of the Terrell Creek neighborhood who pushed for
a specific item preserving the land around the mouth of
Terrell Creek as it flows behind the beach and then turns
left into the bay.
“Some say that it stinks, it’s half salt water
and nothing lives there,” he said, “but it’s
an estuary, one of the most important parts of the whole
Terrell Creek ecosystem. This plan designates the little
strip of land between the beach and the creek as available
for condos, but that’s a terrible idea.”
When asked by Milliken if he didn’t just want to say
something about preservation in general that would include
sites such as this, Ross responded, “No, make that
a specific goal. We don’t want to see it end up under
a long culvert.”
The committee meets next on Wednesday evening, December
12, and will consider this issue as it looks at critical
areas and shorelines, parks, recreational and open space
and housing. On Saturday, December 15 there will be an all-day
community presentation on the committee’s drafts of
plans thus far, beginning at 10 a.m. at Birch Bay Leisure
Park..
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