By Whitney Pipkin, Skagit Valley Herald, Mount Vernon, Wash.
Businesses along the Swinomish Channel didn't wonder in the past whether the man-made waterway connecting Skagit and Padilla bays would be dredged every two or three years. It just was.
Scooping piles of sand and silt out of the century-old channel was a regularly funded project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But that funding dried up for smaller channels -- those less than 14 feet deep with less than 10 million tons of cargo passing through each year -- in the mid-1990s.
Since then, the Port of Skagit and others have had to lobby for federal earmarks every three years to pay for the necessary dredging.
It won't be known until later this year whether a request for $850,000 for dredging in 2011 will be met, but a Senate subcommittee made strides toward it last week.
Kristin Meira, who's been lobbying for the funding with the nonprofit Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, said the Senate Energy & Water Subcommittee included $600,000 for dredging the Swinomish Channel in its preliminary budget. Even if that funding gets through the full Senate, it must be reconciled later this year with whatever comes out of the House's budget. For now, the House is calling for only $62,000 for dredging.
That amount would only pay for a survey or two to tell boaters where high spots are in the channel, said Patsy Martin, executive director for the Port of Skagit.
Monte Hughes, captain of a 100-foot whale-watching boat that operates out of La Conner in the spring, can say from memory where not to steer a boat along the channel. He's watched the channel fill in since the last time it was dredged in September 2008. With a 5-foot-draft, his boat now has just inches to spare at some spots.
"If it doesn't change, I don't know if we can come back next year," said Hughes, who also operates the Mystic Sea Charters out of Anacortes in the summer.
A rights issue
As officials wait on the funding verdict for 2011, other supporters of the Swinomish Channel are working toward a long-term solution.
Jeff Warnke, a lobbyist for the Upper Skagit Tribe, is flying to Washington. D.C.. today to start conversations about a more consistent funding source. Besides the economic aspect -- more than 500 jobs are linked to the channel -- Warnke's argument that access to the channel is a treaty-rights issue packs a little more punch.
"In order to exercise some of the fish and treaty rights promised in the original treaty, there really needs to be a (more consistent) form of government funding," Warnke said.
Both the Upper Skagit and Swinomish tribes use the Swinomish Channel to access their fishing grounds at the north and south ends of the channel. Subsistent and commercial fishing is a right outlined in the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott.
The Swinomish Tribe has additional interest in keeping the channel dredged, with plans to build a 1,200-slip marina along the waterway contingent upon the existing waterway remaining open.
Meira said there are still "no promises" for future funding in a system that makes budget decisions one year at a time. She said requesting the funding every three years for now gets "more dredging for the dollar," compared with deploying a crew every year just to hit the high spots.
Economic tides
If the 10-mile-long channel goes without dredging, it would be "impassable to virtually all vessels" by 2015 in the north end and by 2019 in the south end, a sedimentation study from 2004-2008 found.
The economic consequences run even deeper for the 25 marine-related businesses in La Conner that rely on the channel. Businesses that use the channel already have had to adjust as it fills in with sediment over time.
"When you don't have enough water to go, you just don't do it," said Jim Dunlap, owner of Dunlap Towing Co. in La Conner. "Indirectly it does affect business because you have to depart when you have water, and maybe you should be leaving a couple hours earlier."
The company's 75-foot tug boats -- often dragging large loads of lumber -- need up to 12 feet of water to get in and out of the channel. That can be a struggle in the summer months with multiple low tides during the day.
Though their boats don't run as deep, out-of-town sailboaters can innocently run aground on shifting shoals as well. The changes are not always reflected on paper depth charts. The pleasure boaters are a key source of income to the Port of Skagit, which leases more than 1,200 moorage slips at the La Conner Marina.
For now, the Port of Anacortes has plans -- and funding -- to dredge a northern section of the channel that it last maintained in 2007. Sand taken from the channel will be used to cap contamination at the former Scott Paper mill site in Anacortes.
The port will spend $600,000 to dredge and move sediment in the coming days as part of the $28 million clean-up project.
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