LETTER TO THE EDITOR

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Friday Harbor terminal work planned

2nd Ferry Slip

Dear Editor,

posted 01/24/05
Here is a strategy I hope everyone can support. Our common goal is to have an emergency back-up to our single ferry landing. Right now if our ferry dock became disabled we would have no way to get major quantities of goods on and off the island. Even when the Orcas Island ferry dock was knocked out of service a few years ago they had their County barge landing to get goods on and off. Although it was still a $5 million loss for merchants and a huge inconvenience for everyone else, it would be even worse here because we don't have a barge landing and won't until the County establishes one somewhere on this island. They're working on it so we need to buy time until this happens.

The temporary 2nd slip now in use is a potential emergency back-up that will last three years according to WSF engineers. We need to fight to keep that temporary slip in place for that time in case of an emergency and to buy us three years for the County to act. The issue is the permits the project received from the State, especially the Departments of Ecology and Fisheries require the dismantling of the 2nd dock as soon as the main dock is ready. It will not be easy to get waivers but we have nothing to lose by asking.

The issue of a permanent 2nd slip is much more problematic. The temporary slip would not be allowed permanently unless it was rebuilt to the same specifications our main dock is now being changed to. This would be very expensive to WSF. They've already proclaimed that they won't even consider that possibility until some landside improvements are made to facilitate off-loading of cars and walk-ons. Friday Harbor is currently a bottleneck resulting in frequent summer delays on our system. An inter-modal committee is being set up to study this but the challenge is daunting.

Asking to keep the temporary 2nd slip in place for three years is a reasonable request. It won't cause any great expense to WSF and the disturbance to ecology and fisheries is minimal. However, even if we generate great grass root support for this, who is going to represent our interest and work toward this goal? The Friday Harbor Town Councilmembers are behind this but we're very part-time. The County Commissioners are much better situated to do this, something that is important to everyone on San Juan Island. Let them know how you feel about this.

Howie Rosenfeld
Friday Harbor Town Councilmember

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