In a unanimous vote at a two-minute meeting Monday, the Whatcom County Council ended more than five years of sometimes-contentious discussion on the future of oil-related industries at Cherry Point.
“It was kind of anticlimactic,” Councilman Tyler Byrd told The Bellingham Herald.
Monday’s meeting was a special session to consider revoking a May 18 measure imposing a six-month ban on filing, accepting or processing new applications for most new or expanded facilities for shipping unrefined fossil fuels that won’t be processed or used at Cherry Point.
It took 2 minutes and 1 second for the council to call the roll, consider a motion, vote and adjourn the meeting.
There was no discussion, and no other items were on the agenda.
Since September 2016, the County Council has enacted 11 consecutive such temporary bans while the county’s Comprehensive Plan was being written to limit expansion of the two oil refineries in the industrial zone west of Ferndale, adding tougher environmental and development rules for the region.
But the most recent temporary ban was no longer needed because the new Comprehensive Plan amendments were approved July 27, prohibiting new refineries and substantial expansion of the existing ones, and also defining a wide range of new businesses and industry in the 7,000-acre zone.
It was a divisive process that often pitted the oil industry and other business interests against the environmental movement.
But talks took a key step forward in August 2020 after the appointed county Planning Commission approved the Cherry Point amendments and a “stakeholder group” of business and environmental interests began meeting to build a consensus over its final wording.
“While each of our organizations may not fully agree with or support individual policies contained in the proposal, or believe all the policies go far enough or necessarily support their use in other situations or jurisdictions, we collectively saw the need to come together in a space where people with policy and technical expertise from a variety of stakeholder groups and perspectives could ensure that these policies were drafted in a way that supported the broad policy goals outlined by the County Council, but did not create any unintended impacts to the existing Cherry Point businesses. After the extensive hard work of the County Council and Planning Commission, this group joined together to discuss policy changes,” the stakeholder group said in a joint statement dated July 27.
It was signed by representatives of environmental groups, trade unions, Phillips 66, BP America, RE Sources for Sustainable Communities and the Pipeline Safety Trust.
“We met for months, listened hard to each other’s concerns and ideas, and produced the recommendations to the County Council most of which were incorporated into the final ordinance,” the statement said. “Policy discussions today have the potential to turn combative and unproductive, like the overall Cherry Point discussions were in the beginning, but through an effort of collective respect and understanding of differing viewpoints we believe the proposal in front of the County Council provides a solution that we all now support as an important step in the right direction.”
