Ideas floated for waterfront development

Residents were invited to attend a Waterfront Development Meeting in the JA Wendt multipurpose room on Saturday, May 18 for presentations and discussion of the development of the waterfront in Cathlamet. Representatives of Maul, Foster & Alongi architectural firm and Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife were there to present ideas for the future waterfront and placement of net pens in the Cathlamet Channel, after an update from the project manager of the sewage treatment plant.

About 40 residents of Wahkiakum County attended the meeting.

“I want to stress two things. First, this is the first conversation, nothing has been decided or will be decided for some time. New ideas, crazy ideas even, are welcome…Second, the town has invested heavily in the new sewage plant. The price tag is roughly nine million dollars. Whatever comes next we need to keep the financial needs of the town firmly in focus, as well as our own economic development objectives. I think those include improvement of the livability of our own community for those who make this their home. Support for our commercial fishing industry, which faces tough and some would say unfair regulatory changes under the Kitzhaber plan. Lastly tourism is important as an economic driver. Our goal is to meet all of these needs,” said Mayor George Wehrfritz.

Ken Alexander, project manager for the sewage treatment plant and engineer with Gray & Osborne, spoke on the progress of the wastewater treatment plant. The new facility is expected to become operational in July or August of this year, with the removal of bio-solids and decommissioning of the current lagoon in the spring of 2014. There will be a new pump station constructed to move waste up the hill.

“Not all the basins are the same depth. There are still sheet piles in there that will have to be contended with if you are going to be digging down there. In 2008 we did two different things. We were doing the geotechnical work for the new influent pump station down by the treatment plant. We were also asked by the town to evaluate the depth of the bedrock in the remainder of the area. Both the studies were done by HWA Geosciences under contract to Gray and Osborne…The areas where they found some erosion are basically along the exterior of the dike that faces the river and also on the interior of the various cells. There is some erosion and also evidence of animals burrowing in there. Bottom line is that they determined that existing dikes are stable. They are stable long term but there is some erosion that has to be considered,” said Alexander. Also, “The depth of the bedrock seems to increase east to west.”

John Nelson of Maul, Foster & Alongi took the floor to present a potential concept for the waterfront area and to discuss other possible improvements, “if the wastewater treatment area should in the future be salvaged and be available for another use.”

“Cathlamet is unusual in the regional context on the Columbia River because it is one of very few communities that is not separated by the highway from the river,” said Nelson. He spoke of Cathlamet’s assets, including the historical buildings, “charming architecture”, access to the river and it’s pedestrian scale. He mentioned its weaknesses, its indistinct and unsafe entrances to town, unclear links to the marina and the town dock, lighting, and our under-utilized waterfront.

He suggested more access for pedestrians, adding mooring spaces, making our town more visitor friendly, providing more facilities for visitors. The potential for a Festival Street was discussed, as well as an active waterfront. Preservation of the wetland, the possibility of a working waterfront, moving current industry away from the waterfront to open it up for green space, walking trails, an ampitheater, and a green area were all ideas put before the audience. Nelson emphasized, “This is all conceptual.”

They touched on the changing needs in connectivity and in road use. “When the waterfront is redeveloped…these streets will get more traffic. We are having conversations now with Transportation Improvement Board to discuss these lower town roads, so we can go and do to them what we did to 3rd street going to the marina with the lights and the sidewalks. In addition to this development, we’re building a huge new ferry. You can conceivably see people coming across the river from Oregon on the ferry with trailers. How do you get to the marina with a trailer? You have to make some tricky turns…so we’ve got a connectivity problem coming from Puget Island to the marina and we’re going to have them look at all that and hopefully allow us to upgrade the status of those lower roads which puts us in a more advantageous funding category for redoing all the lower town streets,” said Mayor Wehrfritz.

Cindy LeFleur and Aaron Roberts of Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife presented their proposal for placing the net pens for the Cathlamet Channel at the town dock. At 140 feet long and 50 feet wide, there will be a walkway around them.

“We have no funding for this project from the state. We do currently have the net pens, we have the fish. That is as far as we can go. When we saw the city dock, we realized this was an easy fix for us in terms of cost to try to put the net pens in there,” said LeFleur.

“The city loses its dock. I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” said Wally Wright.

“That’s for the council to decide,” LeFleur replied.

“Just to bring everybody up to speed, I think what we’re trying to do is react in a positive way to do something to support the industry in the face of the Kitzhaber plan being implemented. When we had the discussions that fish and wildlife came and looked at the sewage ponds and concluded that the run operation out of them as they exist because you’ve got to pump all the water and getting the fish out into the river that there are huge expenses that would be prohibitive. We shifted to talking about the town dock as a Phase One. Now when the marina, if there is an expansion of the marina, and there is a cut made and you’ve got moorage basin you could very easily tuck fish pens into the moorage basin and use the expanded marina as Phase Two,” interjected the Mayor.

“The net pens will be there from October to March, so you’re only talking about six months,” said Roberts. The reason the town dock is a good place is because of accessibility. It’s a good, logical spot, easy for us.”

Finally, Seth Otto from Maul, Foster & Alongi discussed avenues for funding.

The development of the waterfront area remains in the conceptual stage. This was the first in a series of meetings to discuss all these issues.