Sounds like a good plan.Build it!

Is Homer building eagle condos, now?

I'm throwing my vote away this time around, because there's no way it goes to I Lean, to Charlie, or to JefferScam. It's either Scott or possibly Max.

"“City Council challenged us to design a modern marine terminal with a smaller footprint – this proves yes, we can do that,” "

Wonder how we had to pay them for this challenge??

A couple years ago, as part of qualifying for a merit badge, I brought two carloads of Scouts to watch a city council hearing. I made sure to select an agenda item so they could see some poor soul be crushed by the city.

The citizen lived on about an acre in the Vermont Hills and wanted to divide his lot to build a little cottage. He spent about $13,000 jumping through hoops including getting written approvals from 100% of his neighbors within a certain radius.

The fatal flaw? About a block away, a curb drain emptied into a pipe. We saw the photos. The pipe emptied onto the shmuck's property and together with seepage the storm water traveled in an open ditch which continued off the property.

As I recall, one council member was absent, another had his laptop open and was sending emails. Commissioner Leonard looked bored until time to vote no. He made a speech that little ditches have big consequences -- the ditch eventually joined Fanno Creek, which flowed into the Tualatin, which merged with the Willamette, and into the mighty Columbia and on to the Pacific.

The homeowner never had a chance. He was a decent guy who had an extra tenth of an acre with a 50 year old chicken coop and he had a better way to use it. Contrast that to a terminal covering 300 acres actually IN the Columbia whose purpose is to send send Wyoming coal to the biggest polluter on the planet. Well, maybe we will get a good deal when the Chinese press the fly ash into sheetrock and sell it back to us.

It is heartbreaking to realize that little scenario has been repeated hundreds of times during Commissioner Leonard's tenure. Those Scouts won't forget.

There are millions of acres in Oregon for the birds and bees. There are limited areas for deep water port expansion to accommodate growth of one of the largest economic engines of our region, the Port of Portlsnd.

For full disclosure, I sit on the west Hayden island committee.

The environmentalists are proposing that Oregon outsource good paying industrial jobs to Vancouver or worse yet, completely out of our region. How does exporting jobs out of Portland help Oregon when all tax revenue would go to Olympia or other states? WHI is one of the few locations that provides deep water for ships, access to rail and is in close proximity to existing infrastructure investments and homes for workers.

As I see it, the social pollution of relentless human poverty and Portland’s continued unemployment above the national average for the past 20 years is far more frightening than the environmental “what ifs” that preservationists use to strangle our economy.

I believe we can achieve a balance of uses on West Hayden Island for job creation and it can be done in such a way as to minimize impact to residents and the environment. Sensible sustainability, social equity and job creation do not have to be mutually exclusive.

BMO

Isn't "I believe we can achieve a balance of uses on West Hayden Island for job creation and it can be done in such a way as to minimize impact to residents and the environment. Sensible sustainability, social equity and job creation do not have to be mutually exclusive," posted by BMO the same statement made by all the developers around here when they want to shove sometime up our butts?

The process is that it will be "balanced" for this proposal. Then next year, a new proposal will surface to apply for the pieces that are missing from this proposal - with a hired gun declaring that the site has already been impacted, the wildlife has abondoned the area, and yes, we can just go ahead and do the rest of what was proposed without further impact.

All well and good, if that's your definition of balance.

We all love bald eagles, until they get in the way of making some serious cash.

This sounds like the further selling off of America. Here we demonize coal (mostly funded by the oil companies via donations to environmental groups), but on the other hand, more than happy to sell it to the Chinese.

John Rettig, your thoughts were similar to mine - analogous to the over-budget techniques of PDX - "but we've already used the 300 acres, and we just need a few more."