Birch Bay chamber praises county’s tenacity at berm groundbreaking ceremony

Construction is still a couple of months away, but the Birch Bay Chamber of Commerce held a groundbreaking ceremony for the Birch Bay berm project on September 6.

Members of the Birch Bay Chamber of Commerce, Whatcom County public works officials and county executive Jack Louws poured sand on the beach in front of an audience that included many who have worked on or advocated for the project.

Officially called the Birch Bay Drive and Pedestrian Facility Project, the Whatcom County project will add 212,000 tons of sand and gravel to 1.6 miles along Birch Bay Drive to “renaturalize” the beach and protect the road from storm surges. It also includes bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure along the road.

Hydrologist Wolf Bauer recommended the beach restoration project in 1975 as a way to replace ineffective seawalls along Birch Bay Drive. Birch Bay has been vulnerable to flooding since the early 1950s, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers removed between 200,000 and 300,000 cubic yards of sediment to build the Blaine Air Force Station.

Louws made the project a priority when he took office in 2012. He wanted the berm and a new county jail to be his legacy, Louws told the crowd at the groundbreaking ceremony.

The berm became a priority because it benefits the environment, recreationists and should provide an economic boost to the region, Louws said

“I always like to invest people’s dollars in projects that have a shelf life of more than a year,” he said. “This is going to have a positive impact on Birch Bay for generations, I believe.”

Roland Middleton, county public works special project manager who has worked on the project for decades, said Louws’ support for the project helped it continue at several crossroads.

“I see my role more as an encourager than anything else,” Louws said. “On something this complicated there always ends up being times when you question whether you give up or keep going and we’ve always had the opportunity to think about it in a different way and find a way to keep going. It’s definitely the biggest public works project Whatcom County has undertaken and one of the more complex.”

Just getting to this point required almost a dozen individual permits from state, local and federal agencies, nearly 100 permanent easements and temporary construction easements from property owners, and coordination with several tribes with a stake in Birch Bay.

That all required not only consistent effort from the county, but long-term support from the community, said Joe Rutan, Whatcom County engineer. Kathy Berg and Doralee Booth with the Birch Bay Chamber have attended county meetings and talked the project up to county staff and elected officials since its inception, he said.

“Kathy and I have talked about this project for at least 20 years, and we kept saying we’re not going to live to see this, but here we are,” Booth said at the ceremony.

Booth acknowledged that she still hasn’t quite lived to see the project built. The groundbreaking coincided not with the beginning of construction, but with the project going out to bid. Construction won’t start before November.

Whatcom County will advertise the project for most of September, open bids in late October and potentially award a contract by November 2019, according to its website. Once a contract is awarded, the county will announce a detailed construction schedule.

The county has agreed not to work on the project during the summer, and it’s also constrained by salmon rearing and herring spawning seasons. It can work in the water without disturbing those fish until February 15. Berm construction will likely take place over the course of two winters.

The county now estimates that the project will cost about $14 million. Of that, about $9.4 million is coming from Whatcom County’s road budget. The rest is funded through grants including Federal Highways Administration funds and county Real Estate Excise Tax funds and Economic Development Investment Program funds.

Learn more and sign up for updates on the project on the county’s website: bit.ly/2lMP3Gw.