The tour started on a partly cloudy morning at Kvichak Marine where we walked through the yard and visited one of the new Dutch Pilot boats being built on the Ship Canal.
From there we boarded a Western Towboat tug captained by Western Towboat president Ric Shrewsbury for a one-hour tour of the ship canal where we pointed out the many family-owned, environmentally responsible businesses that line the cut.
Ric deposited us at Fishermen’s Terminal where Port of Seattle CEO Tay Yoshitani and terminal manager Kenny Lyles joined us for a dock walk along the newly refurbished piers. Local seiner Paul Matson joined us to talk to the mayor about the dynamic small boat fleet that calls Seattle home.
From Fishermen’s Terminal we boarded a Port of Seattle van and shot along the viaduct to Todd Shipyards where John Lockwood and his team presented the mayor with a professional and comprehensive overview of Todd’s role in the maritime industry, and its importance to the local economy.
From there we boarded a Harley Marine Services tug for a tour of the Duwamish and its large marine industrial land users. We were joined by labor and management representatives who pressed home the theme of collaboration and family wage jobs.
Our intent was to impress upon Mayor McGinn the dynamic nature of our community, our environmentally responsible work practices, our multi-generational stability …and the collaborative nature with which management and labor work toward common goals. We achieved all of that thanks to the collaborative work that each of you contributed to the project.
The mayor offered these takeaways to me on the bus ride back downtown after the tour:
- He acknowledged the importance of the maritime and commercial fishing industries to the economic and cultural fabric of the city, and the interdependence of the two industrial neighborhoods that together make up that community.
- He understands and appreciates that storm water runoff treatment responsibility is falling unfairly on the owners and users of marine industrial lands.
- He acknowledged that the Seattle City Light rate increases will be an enormous burden and promised to consider its impacts in establishing rate policy
- He appreciated the sometimes misguided application of mitigation funds to ‘salmon protection’ sites that might better be used elsewhere.
- He appreciated the importance of maintaining industrial street ends as industrial street ends.
However, there were two issues on which he was intransigent that disappointed me.
- Mayor McGinn continues to support the proposed Burke Gilman trail alignment along Seaview. Our arguments about the disastrous potential impacts didn’t seem to resonate.
- The mayor seemed unmoved at the importance of the Alaska Way Viaduct to the maritime industrial community. (even though it took us only ten minutes to get from Fishermen’s Terminal to Todd Shipyards.) He studiously avoided discussion of alternative freight routes should the viaduct come down.
These two issues will be the focus of the Seattle Marine Business Coalition’s advocacy efforts for 2010
Peter Philips
President
Seattle Marine Business Coalition
