Letter to City Council

December 3, 2007

Mayor Tom Potter

Commissioner Dan Saltzman

Commissioner Randy Leonard

Commissioner Erik Sten

Commissioner Sam Adams

Dear Mayor Potter and Members of the Portland City Council,

I am writing on behalf of the Audubon Society of Portland to reiterate our longstanding concern about the future of West Hayden Island. Audubon considers the 826-acres of wildlife habitat located on West Hayden Island to be the most valuable unprotected wildlife area left in Portland. Our position at this time, consistent with a unanimous vote of the Audubon Board of Directors in April 1999, is that this parcel should be protected in its entirety. While Audubon has agreed to participate in an “environmental mediation” facilitated by the City of Portland over the future of West Hayden Island, those discussions have yet to have begun. We do not want our longstanding willingness to engage in this conversation to be misconstrued as in any way an endorsement of either annexation or rezoning to allow for marine industrial development on the island. We view this mediation as an opportunity to clarify issues and look for common ground, but we also recognize that much difficult work lies ahead.    

We have attempted to engage the Port of Portland in mediated discussions about the future of West Hayden Island ever since the parcel was placed in Marine Industrial Reserve in 2000. We have repeatedly stated that these discussions would be most productive if conducted free from the pressures of impending annexation, zoning or development decisions. Unfortunately the Port has rejected these overtures until recent weeks following the announcement at City Club on October 26, 2007 by Port of Portland Director, Bill Wyatt, that the Port would in fact be seeking annexation and rezoning of West Hayden Island. While we are prepared to sit down with the Port to explore whether consensus can be achieved, we are deeply concerned that current events threaten to overrun this process before meaningful discussions can occur and longstanding issues can be explored.

Specifically we are concerned about both public statements and behind the scenes lobbying by the Port that suggest that these discussions may be viewed as nothing more than a formality preceding annexation. We are concerned that assumptions are being made in the East Hayden Island planning process that presuppose major marine industrial development on West Hayden Island. Finally we are concerned about recent discussions regarding building a Columbia River Crossing related auxiliary bridge to West Hayden Island and using West Hayden Island as a staging area for Columbia River Crossing construction activities.  We respectfully urge City Council to delay any decisions that presuppose marine industrial development on West Hayden Island until the results of  this process, described by the Portland Planning Bureau as an “environmental mediation,” can be completed.  

We enter these discussions with the Port with the expectation that the full range of issues and alternatives associated with West Hayden Island will be open for discussion and exploration including economic need, environmental impacts, alternative site development opportunities, and potential impacts on the local community. We would note that all of the major issues raised by Audubon and others in the community in 2000 when the Port last attempted to have the City annex West Hayden Island remain as unresolved today as they were eight years ago when the Port formally recognized the legitimacy of these community concerns and suspended its efforts. It is notable that when the Port terminated the 1999-2000 West Hayden Island Planning Process, project manager Paul Shirey was quoted in the Oregon Business Journal (September 22, 2000) stating,

Following completion of the advisory committee, we were realizing people still had a lot of issues.  We were asking ourselves how those issues would be dealt with through the city process….Why clutter up the city process with all these issues? We said, “Gee, if we’ve got all these federal uses that are confusing the city decision-makers, why not resolve them…and then go ahead with the zoning request.”

It is also worth noting that the Business Journal of Portland Editorial Board, a frequent critic of the Port’s West Hayden Island development plans, responded to the decision to terminate the proposed 2000 annexation by writing:

The Port should be commended for reconsidering the West Hayden Island terminals project. We are not convinced that the plan to develop the island acreage shouldn’t be permanently scrapped. But by putting it on the shelf for awhile, it can be given further study from a cost-benefit and environmental standpoints.

In a second editorial dated March 26, 2000, the Business Journal admonished the Port of Portland for its failure to explore collaborative options with the Port of Vancouver to avoid developing West Hayden Island, an idea that Audubon continues to believe has received insufficient attention during the intervening years. The Journal wrote:

…When it comes to preserving the natural habitat on West Hayden Island, the Port apparently can’t see across the river…The Port of Portland seems surprised by the idea that perhaps the two ports could work together, avoiding the cost of constructing duplicative facilities, and at the same time preserving West Hayden Island habitat…Hey fellas, why not make a phone call. The savings could be huge.

Audubon Society of Portland enters these new environmental mediations with the Port of Portland seeking to protect all or a significant portion of West Hayden Island. We believe that the highest and best use of this parcel is to permanently protect it either as a publicly managed natural area or as a mitigation bank for the Port and other businesses along the Columbia and Willamette Corridors. Audubon Society of Portland and a coalition of conservation and community groups offered to enter into negotiations to purchase West Hayden Island from the Port in 2005 and were turned down.

We believe that annexation, zoning and development on West Hayden Island should only be considered if the Port can demonstrate 1) a specific economic need, 2) that all opportunities for redevelopment of existing Port terminals and collaboration with the Port of Vancouver have been fully exhausted 3) that development can be conducted in a manner that substantively protects natural resource values on the island, 4) that the Port can identify local mitigation opportunities for any natural resource values that would be lost in the process of development, and 5) that the plan includes specific provisions to address local livability issues including public access to nature, transportation impacts, noise and pollution impacts, and property value impacts. To date none of these issues has been addressed.

West Hayden Island is a special place. Its 826 acres of undeveloped habitat are part of a much large network of natural areas that includes Smith and Bybee Lakes, Sauvie Island, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, Kelley Point Park and Vancouver Lake Lowlands. It sits at the intersection of two major wildlife corridors and is utilized by wildlife moving north-south between Smith and Bybee Lakes and Ridgefield and east-west between Sauvie Island and the Sandy River. At least 39 acres of protected wetlands currently exist on the island. The island also includes one of the largest intact stands of cottonwood-ash bottomland forest left on the Lower Columbia. Cottonwood-ash forest was once the dominant habitat type along the Lower Columbia, but today West Hayden Island represents approximately 4% of all that remains between Astoria and the Bonneville Dam.

At least eighty-one bird species, nine mammal species, four amphibian species and nine Lepidoptera (butterfly and moth) species have been observed on the island. Among these are several species of concern including bald eagles, pileated woodpeckers, bank swallows, willow flycatchers and western painted turtles.  Federally listed Chinook, chum and sockeye salmon and steelhead trout all utilize the aquatic environment surrounding the island.  Salmonids are also known to use at least one of the island’s wetlands. West Hayden Island would be considered a valuable natural resource no matter where it was located. That it functions as part of a network of natural areas allowing the movement of wildlife on a landscape that is otherwise highly urbanized makes it all the more valuable. Allowing for development or further degradation of West Hayden Island would eliminate a resource of regional significance and undermine the integrity of the entire natural area complex of which it is part.

We are pleased that the Port has agreed to enter into discussions with the community regarding West Hayden Island. We write to you now to ensure that this process is more than a formality and that issues that have been lingering for nearly a decade receive a full and substantive hearing. Given that several planning processes with significant implications for West Hayden Island are already underway, as well as the increased focus by both the City and the Port on the annexation process, we did not want our participation in this environmental mediation process to be construed as either implicit or explicit endorsement of marine industrial development on West Hayden Island. We view this process as resuming the dialogue that was suspended in 2000 when the Port recognized that the environmental, economic and livability concerns raised by Audubon and others merited further exploration and resolution.

Sincerely

Bob Sallinger

Conservation Director

Audubon Society of Portland