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A different kind of Port Townsend

Port Townsend

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We first visited Port Townsend about four years ago, and on riding up from the south it first had the appearance of a working port town, with an industrial sector and even substantial boat storage and repair businesses. Then proceeded north, into the heart of town, and saw something else.

There we saw what friends had touted for some time, one of the best small0city tourist destinations in the Northwest. Port Townsend once had ambitions to be a large city indeed – it once put in a serious bid for Washington’s state capitol – and you can see that in the downtown business district, where you find one of the best collections of grand old buildings in any city (even many much larger) in the region. Not to mention the restaurants, bed and breakfasts, galleries and other artsy places you’d expect. It’s not all regentrified yet, but the developers there are on their way.

Politically, you can see in the combination of industrial and resort/tourist the kind of voting base that gives Democrats a strong edge, and they do; this is one of Washington’s most Democratic smaller cities.

So what happens now, socially and politically, as that tourist and resort side increasingly looks askance at the industrial/port side of town, the side that was Port Townsend’s reason for existence through most of its history?

A useful piece today in the Seattle Times gets into some of this. It starts with suggestions (and notes there apparently isn’t any solid evidence) that vapors from the big Port Townsend Paper mill, the largest single employer in town, may have made some people physically ill. From there, you get the clear question: Even if that allegation isn’t true, how well does the odor and general environment of the plant mesh with the town as it is seeking to reinvent itself?

Thr regulatory environment has become complex: “Even complaining about the mill is complicated. Some complaints are directed to the mill, while others are recorded by a hotline in Ecology’s Olympia office. Those complaints show that Port Townsend Paper ranks second — with 38 complaints since 2001 — among the 11 pulp and paper mills regulated by the state. The complaints are vivid, with people describing smells that made them vomit, turn to inhalers and pull their children indoors.”

There’s already some discord in town, hearings and discussions, and as the Times notes, “But the mere fact that the mill’s environmental cost is being debated — in local coffee shops and in the local newspaper — reflects a new day for an old mill town.”

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