It’s too late to relocate the sewage treatment plant planned for downtown Oak Harbor.
Doing so at this point would be prohibitively expensive. The city already purchased a $2.6 million Whidbey Island Bank building in order to build the plant in the back parking lot. Millions of dollars have been spent on site-specific design, geotechnical and archaeological work.
And the city is on a timeline to get the project completed or face the possibility of a state-imposed building moratorium or an environmental catastrophe due to the current inadequate facilities.
In the end, the city will have a state-of-the-art facility that doesn’t smell bad or detract from the enjoyment of either Windjammer Park or Pioneer Way.
But that doesn’t mean the many people who are calling for city officials to consider another site for the project are uneducated, politically motivated or wrongheaded, as some City Council members have implied.
In fact, people in the Oak Harbor community know a lot about the project, while there are naturally misunderstandings. There is a keen interest, especially given that it’s being built on the edge and will protrude into the prized waterfront park.
Recent increases in the estimated cost of the project, with one contractor projecting $116 million in construction costs alone, have spurred a movement aimed at putting the project on hold so that an alternative site can be considered.
Oak Harbor Mayor Scott Dudley is leading the charge, but many folks are following his lead. Island County Commissioner Jill Johnson confronted council members Tuesday night, saying in no uncertain terms that she believes they picked the wrong site.
Oak Harbor people, she said, are primarily concerned about preserving Windjammer Park, not about saving money. An early public workshop bore this out. Among the considerations for the project identified by the public, “low cost” was deemed the least important of six factors. Preserving and protecting public amenities was a more prominent consideration.
The council members promised there will be no net loss of park space, but there’s some debate about what that means. It looks like the plant will intrude into the park — which is very unfortunate — but the impact can be mitigated by adding onto the park elsewhere.
Interestingly, Johnson suggested that the council may see the project as a vehicle for improving the park. If so, she said, the council members haven’t done a good job of sharing this vision.
Unfortunately, there really is no vision to share, though City Administrator Larry Cort is spearheading a master plan for the area, which will someday create that vision.
The council would undoubtedly love to improve the park. Such ideas as an amphitheater, a splash park, a pavilion and a community meeting room have been discussed as possible amenities built in concert with the plant.
But as Councilwoman Tara Hizon pointed out, all of these things are just ideas at this point.
The fact is that the city is in cost-cutting mode because of the escalating costs. It seems very unlikely such amenities will be funded as part of the project.
Which will make a lot of people unhappy. Many people understandably feel that the promise of such improvements were used to sell the sewage treatment project to the public.
Nevertheless, the community can and should decide, in a separate discussion, to invest in improving a park that is so central to the community’s identity.
It just won’t be funded from the sewage fund.
