Last night, Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission took up the matter of West Hayden Island—and Mayor Sam Adams’ near-deadline-busting plan to annex the gorgeous and rare natural refuge and hand over nearly half of it to the Port of Portland for a deepwater shipping terminal that’s years away and that the region may not even need.

The commission is the last step before the Portland City Council, down to its last few meetings of Adams’ tenure, takes up the plan. Brian Libby, Portland Architecture critic, was among the dozens of people sitting through the hours of testimony and he’s posted an account of what’s at stake, and what went down, over on his blog.

It’s a must-read. In short, as we wrote in a cover story this summer, and despite some last-second wheeling and dealing by the mayor in the name of easing environmental calamity, it’s still not clear that A) this is a good idea or that B) we’re spending enough time to honestly figure that out.

Whenever someone testified in favor of industrial annexation, he or she came from an organization that would directly benefit from the environmental usurpation. A union representative whose colleagues would be hired for the construction on West Hayden spoke of “family-wage jobs,” implying that trying to save endangered species directly resulted in his babies going unfed. A series of business and port alliance representatives, neckties removed from their black suits, sung the praises of industrial development and finished their remarks to the sound of silence from the packed audience or some poor unironic single clap. Whenever a homeowner about to be displaced or choked by diesel fumes pleaded with the council for mercy, or an environmental group leader pleaded for the accelerated timetable to be slowed down, a chorus of applause rang out from the commission chamber and its filled overflow-room.

The annexation of West Hayden Island would be troubling enough in its own right, but now Mayor Sam Adams is attempting to skip the unfolding process and bring about a City Council vote by the end of the year. Even those at last night’s hearing tentatively willing to support the annexation admitted they felt blindsided and disappointed by the mayor’s effort to seal the deal before he leaves office at year’s end. Most of the community groups at the hearing, such as a group of Native American tribes with ancestral connections to the Columbia and to West Hayden, told the Planning and Sustainability Commission they had never been brought to the negotiating table until the deal was already done.

Adams argues that the process of annexing West Hayden has taken some thirty years, and that he’s merely taking the needle off a skipping record. But the thirty years of gridlock on this issue ought to tell us something.

Denis C. Theriault is the Portland Mercury's News Editor. He writes stories about City Hall and the Portland Police Bureau, focusing on issues like homelessness, police oversight, insider politics, and...

9 replies on “West Hayden Island Hearing “Practically a Caricature of Self-serving Moneyed Interests Pitted Against Community Members Fighting Only for Values and Their Homes””

  2. “gorgeous and rare natural refuge”

    It is totally rare except for the rest of the Columbia River Gorge that stretches for hundreds of miles.

  3. I saw Brian Libby’s opinion attached and I immediately glossed over. Isn’t there a decrepit building falling down somewhere in need of $40 million dollars of the public’s money to keep it just barely ok for the next 10 years he can devote his attention to?

  4. Blabby, location matters a whole lot. If you have wide industrialized swathes with no respite for nature, it does not matter if there’s more somewhere else. The resiliency depends on distributed patches.

  6. ..I was there at the mtg.. and have been on the Island..it’s importance comes from location..confluence of rivers..pacific flyway and the FACT that mitigation guarantees an initial further loss to critters on the edge and would be hard to do for a WHOLE parcel this big..fragmented habitats, 50 acres here another 50 there etc. don’t work..the whole is greater than the sum of the parts..stating that the whole gorge is the same..shows you need an edjucation..think your neighbors house is the same as yours..try walking in at 3 AM..

  7. Those that think there was 40 or 30 years of gridlock are completely wrong. PGE worked out a deal for development, mitigation and a method for further development. The Port bought part of the Island walked away from PGE’S plan and just began to fill the Island with dredged spoils without a permit. Then in 1997 the Port started to develop a plan, the same non inclusive process, with a committee of Hayden Island neighbors. When the plan was coming together, the Port didn’t like the plan and ended the 5 year process in January of 2000 the Port walked away that plan. This process was begun with a hand picked and Port approved committee. The discussion was limited to that committee. Thursday was the first time people oytside that group could contribute. Mikey Jones

  9. My days working on freight mobility policy and economics in this part of the world are over a dozen years in my past, but the core freight mobility issue then remains the core issue now – rail capacity/efficiency.

    The freight bottlenecks in the NW aren’t marine facilities, it is lack of rail capacity and the dramatic pinch points in the regional freight rail system.

    With regard to marine facilities, existing Port of Portland terminals, with planned improvements, can handle more than double today’s cargo volume and still not be at capacity (Source: Port of Portland 2020 Marine Terminal Master Plan). And if we build a “deep water port” at Hayden Island, a large portion of boat traffic still will not be able use it because the Columbia simply isn’t deep enough. This is why most of the container ship market will remain out of Portland’s reach. (Source: Columbia River Channel Coalition).

    It really boggles my mind that WHI may be handed to the Port to create a “solution” for a problem (marine capacity) that simply doesn’t exist.

    The press has been all over this issue as a “jobs vs. environment” passion play. However, the simple truth about the “jobs versus environment” at West Hayden Island is that the “jobs” case for developing a marine port has been surprisingly weak from day one. And it hasn’t gained any strength during the supposed decades of process.

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