The Tacoma Narrows Airport on Point Fosdick is now undergoing major expansion.  Where this development will lead is known only to the developers.  But this project belies decades ecological and political mistakes that are leading the Gig Harbor Peninsula and Puget Sound to an environmental tipping point.  Furthermore, “the airport for Tacoma,” on the south-west corner of The Peninsula is linked to an adjacent park by a woodland and wetland wildlife sanctuary flanking Puget Sound—one of the vanishing treasures in Pierce County.  This forest refuge is now also threatened with chain saws and bulldozers.

Young families with children and their dogs play on the beach of Narrows Park almost every day.  But they, and all of us, may be facing a similar fate.  We are developing ourselves into an unsustainable future.  We have been playing “Russian Roulette” with our farm and forest and fresh water resources—from county planners to the Washington Department of Ecology, who have oversubscribed water use permits.

When the city of Tacoma acquired the land surrounding the airport in the late 1950’s, the entire Gig Harbor Peninsula was largely forested and filled with a diversity of life including deer, fox, coyotes, owls, pilliated woodpeckers, red tail hawk, bald eagles and black bears have lived here since long before European explorers first saw it.  When the airport opened in 1963 Puget Sound was still a healthy biological resource.  Salmon were plentiful.  The killer whales were feared more than great white sharks and shot by fishermen.

In the early 1990’s, clear-cut developments were beginning to leap-frog each other on The Peninsula.  Caren Biskey was a principle of The Peninsula Neighborhood Association.  She researched the available data on the Gig Harbor Basin’s dynamic, multivalent yet “sole source” aquifers.  The PNA pleaded in hearing after hearing for restraint in approving future clear-cutting developments.  We were ignored. 

Tacoma’s original Gig Harbor land acquisition for the airport included a wetland pond that is below and adjacent to the airport entrance road.  This is a major source of fresh water that drains north through the surface and the near surface forest of unincorporated Pierce County into Narrows Park, down Doc Weathers Creek and into The Narrows.  These headland waters also drain through sub-surface horizons east onto the sandy, gravelly beach.  These forested freshwater wetlands become “destination waters” that flow into Puget Sound; ideal habitat for transiting, juvenile salmon.  This meets the 4d rule of the Endangered Species Act that apply to Chinook Salmon and our now revered yet mortally contaminated, southern resident killer whales that appear to be leaving us behind, possibly forever.

These surviving woods and wetlands with a Pierce County regulated flood hazard stream, this Limited Impact Development site, this Rural Resource Zone, is for sale.  A development for this property has been proposed: “Eagles Ridge.”  The access road has been engineered to cut directly across the “storm water” stream, adjoining Tacoma’s headwater pond.  The most concentrated plat for building will cut out the forest adjacent to the Saratoga second addition clear-cut and eliminate many of the eagle’s surviving roosting trees on the cliff above the beach.  A representative of the developer, SoundBuilt, has said that he “does not care...”; apparently, neither did those responsible for the Saratoga second addition who ignored the needed buffer zone and clear-cut nearly to the edge of the Saratoga’s cliff.  An edge to edge landslide has subsequently fallen onto the beach adjacent to “Eagles Ridge” and Narrows Park—with “destination waters” flowing beneath them.

The City of Tacoma owns a wetland pond that is below and adjacent to the airport entrance road.  There is a major source of fresh water that drains through the surface and the near surface forest of unincorporated Pierce County into Narrows Park, down Doc Weathers Creek and into The Narrows.  This pond also drains through sub-surface horizons, the soils and water beneath the surface.  These sub-surface layers of soil and water are not a solid, inanimate mass, but are a multi-leveled region containing multitudes of organic matter - they have their own dynamic constitution, and they are alive in every sense of the word.  The pond continues to drain under the Saratoga clear-cut landslide onto the sandy, gravelly beach—formerly ideal habitat for transiting, juvenile salmon. (Is this no longer the case?  If not, what happened?)  These forested freshwater wetlands become “destination waters” that flow into Puget Sound, meeting the 4(d) rule of the Endangered Species Act that apply to Chinook Salmon and our now revered yet mortally contaminated, southern resident killer whales that appear to be leaving us behind, possibly forever.  The 4(d) rule applies blanket restrictions against killing or injuring threatened fish, which include impacts to fish habitats that impair breeding, spawning, rearing, migrating, feeding or sheltering, and the Puget Sound are is not in compliance.

The Gig Harbor Peninsula is under another insidious threat; gone but not entirely forgotten is the Tacoma Smelter that has long been known to have polluted the land and the waters of Puget Sound.  But an academic and political orthodoxy still shares the assumption that the smelter’s “Plume Footprint” blew north-easterly.  The prevailing “wind rose” remains out of the south-west.  But apparently, up until the plant closed in 1986, a highly toxic cocktail of arsenic, lead, mercury, zinc, cadmium and other trace elements were discharged out of ASARCO’s stack above Old Tacoma when the wind-rose shifted to the north-east.  The plant consequently dumped it’s profligate brew south-west from Point Evans to Point Fosdick, and beyond.  Children on Point Fosdick would sense a metallic taste in their mouths and were pulled inside.  The grass beneath them turned a greenish-gray.

Recently the Washington Department Of Ecology has acknowledged that soils near the current Tacoma Narrows Airport expansion have been tested and contain 100 parts per million of arsenic, five times the state limit of 20 PPM, but have seen no reason for further testing.  Even more recently, supervisors on the airport development site on July 7th, seven weeks after work began May 19th, claimed that “a foot and a half of the topsoil has been removed and buried”  But the land has been dramatically altered and not wetted down.  Where did all that contaminated topsoil go?  Was it sealed and buried on site?  Where were all the loaders, the dump trucks?  Where was the notification to the thousands of local residents who drive by on Stone Road every day, and local residents with children downwind who are subject to arsenic in the air?  A traffic “flagger” at the construction site had no idea that the airport property was contaminated with arsenic, but Labor & Industry standards require notification of workers.  Although the Tacoma airport is reportedly in need of northern runway runoff extension, the airport has been a financial albatross for Tacoma since it opened in 1963.  It has been an issue for decades.  Is the current “runway runoff” expansion a “slippery slope,” a prelude to heavy cargo jetliners over Gig Harbor and the new golf course in University Place?

What do we tell the families on the beach of Narrows Park?  How do we tell them that below the rocks underneath their feet not so long ago were crawling with crabs.  The Puget Sound in front of them was “swimming” with cod, salmon and porpoises, but it is now probably dying along with the killer whales?

The world surrounding young families and their children at Narrows Park still appears to be alive and well.  But for how long?  The Saratoga and Tacoma Narrows Airport developments have encroached to the limits of the forested sanctuary adjacent to Narrows Park and the headwater wetlands still owned by Tacoma.  The plan for Eagles Ridge will probably cut the heart out of this earth that has been left relatively unspoiled.  This classic upland forested wetland wildlife sanctuary, with Doc and Lucile Weathers’ house at the foot of Narrows Park, has been described as “a wonderful site for a ground station” by UPS biology Professor Betsey Kirkpatrick.  Ironically, as the value of this surviving local treasure increases, so does it’s vulnerability to carelessness and greed. 

The forest sanctuary next to Narrows Park must be permanently protected as an extension of the park.  Voice your support for permanent preservation of this natural resource to:

• the County Executive, John Ladenburg,
• the candidates for the County Executive's seat, Calvin Goings, Pat McCarthy and Shawn Bunney,
• Terry Lee, the County Council's representative from Gig Harbor and the chairman of the County Council,
• Ryan Mello at the Cascade Land Conservancy