Powder River Basin Coal Assessment

A major geologic feature in Wyoming and Montana has in recent years become well known by a significant number of Washington State folks - the Powder River Basin. The Powder River is located within this geologic basin, but the Powder River Basin as a geologic feature covers an even larger area.

 

 

Northeast Wyoming geologic basins (USGS)

 

This down warp (basin) has preserved a vast amount of coal. The USGS recently released an updated assessment of the coal reserves in the basin. This update has been greatly enhanced by the vast amount of drilling for gas in the basin (another vast resource in the basin) that has provided lots of data on the coal seams. The assessment can be found at usgs.gov/publication/fs20123143 or a summary  usgs.gov/newsroom/article. Its worth reading to gain an understanding of what geologists mean by the term reserves. The USGS routinely does reserve assessments and in the case of the Powder River Basin its a big deal because most of the coal in the Powder River Basin is owned by us. Its our coal and understanding what our reserves are is important. There is also an interesting dynamic between oil and gas resources and coal resources embedded within the assessment.

Kennewick on the High Seas

Monday this week brought some blustery weather at times. Bellingham as well as other places got buffeted a bit in the wee morning hours, but all was calm as I headed down Whidbey Island, and the ferry ride across to Port Townsend was a very smooth sail. I had a very short pre construction meeting at a project site and then a short chat about another project and then back on the Kennewick for the trip back to Whidbey.

Just before pulling out a navy ship heading for Indian Island passed by. Indian Island is a munition depot center indian-island-jefferson-county and indian-island-us-supreme-court-case.

Navy ship on its way to Indian Island

 

 In addition, I had a nice view back to the Olympics and the rain shadow with blue sky.

Olympics and the blue hole

But as we got into the more open water of Admiralty Inlet westerly swells driven by the surge of west wind down the Strait of Juan de Fuca had just arrived. This made the ride interesting.

View from the third deck level

 

This is the only the second time I have been on a ferry where a wave surged up onto the car deck. On this trip it happened dozens of times. The captain ordered no one was allowed on the outside decks and told everyone to stay in their seats. There was a reported case of sea sickness on the bridge much to the crew's delight. We sailed very far south to avoid the worst of the waves. At one point we reversed course and turned the boat around so that the lighter end of the ship was leading into the waves. It was announced that if that did not work we would head to a different port. All of these later events were a first for me despite the many ferry trips I make.

The Kennewick pulled through. It was designed for this more open water run. The completion of the crossing made for a more efficient day as I had a visit to make to Coupeville and Oak Harbor. I took a little side trip to see the waves along Ebbys Landing.

 

The waves are reminder that fetch (the distance of open water) is a major factor in erosion of shorelines and at least in part explains the treeless slopes on significant portions of the northwest shore of Whidbey Island.

 

My Path to Geology

 

 

Me at Anza Borrego, California

 

I have been scanning old family photographs and during this exercise it became very evident that my father was very much into geology. Nearly all of our family vacations involved a trip to some geologic wonderland. Within the mix of photographs there would be pictures of rocks or unique landforms. A get away trip he took with my mother to Sun River in central Oregon consisted of trips to lava fields, cinder cones and Newberry Crater (Oregon's other Crater Lake). True romance.

 

I remember when the picture above was taken; I really really wanted to hike down into the landscape below and explore the whole thing. "Just for little bit? Please." This urge happened throughout our family trips. I always wanted to take whatever trail we parked by and if there was not trail I was sure a route could be found to see more stuff. My parents as well as my siblings learned to keep a sharp eye on me.

 

A slot canyon off of Mulley Twist

 

I started out in college as an engineering major. The first summer right before heading back to classes after summer work my buddy Tim and I drove to Salt Lake where we joined Mike for a September trip to the Deep Creek Range in northeast Nevada. However, flash floods and closed roads caused a change of plans and we ended up in southern Utah.

 

I have always linked that Utah trip to why I became a geologist, but I was already well on my way from all those previous trips. It wasn't until that trip to Utah that it became a conscience idea. Tim, Mike and I all had been engineering students. I had already switched majors to atmospheric science. By mid winter all three of us were geology majors. All three of us graduated with geology degrees, but by various quirks of restlessness, circumstance, finances and romance we graduated from different universities. 

 

 

The old wagon, 5 to 6 kids, mom, dad and one future geologist

ASB to Marina and State Toxics Account

This post falls into the long, wonky and local (Bellingham) category. It also has a bit of an opionion to it and I close with an editorial note. For an overview of the site in question see Aerial view.

A couple of weeks ago I noted that in conversations I have had with several supposedly in-the-know folks (elected policy makers that I would prefer not to name at this point) indicated that the former Georgia-Pacific wastewater treatment lagoon (ASB) on the shores of Bellingham Bay was not going to be converted into a marina asb-to-marina-look-past-personalities. I have since indirectly been told that the marina from the ASB is 50 years in the future" or "way off in the future".

Contrary to those statements, Washington State Department of Ecology has a public release this past month (Publication Number 13-09-121) stating "Phase two construction is scheduled for 2016". Phase two is excavating out the ASB and converting it to a marina. Somebody is wrong. Or perhaps plans published by Ecology do not mean anything.

What does appear to be accurate is that the Port of Bellingham will be proceeding with a cleanup of a portion of the Whatcom Waterway this year. The schedule is to hire a contractor in June and begin cleanup in July. This is phase one of the cleanup of the waterway. Completing phase one as currently planned is premised on a plan that includes converting the ASB into a marina.

The phase one cleanup will involve dredging sediments contaminated with dioxins/furans along with a touch of mercury and other stuff from the shipping terminal and from the very upper tidal estuary. There will also be some shoreline work stabilizing slopes and bulkheads. The dredged sediment will be disposed of at a yet to be named landfill site designed to handle just such material. The estimate is that 159,000 cubic yards of sediment will be dredged. Additional areas of contaminated sediment in the waterway will be covered with clean sediment.  The cost estimate for this phase one portion of the cleanup is estimated to be $25 million.

The original Port of Bellingham plans for the sediment in phase one developed by the Port back in 2007 called for open water disposal. That is the sediment was to be dredged onto a barge and taken to a location that was less environmentally sensitive and dumped back into the water. However, that will no longer be allowed due to a change in open water disposal regulations regarding dioxins/furans. Regulations that were actively being reviewed back in 2007.

Before the original Port plans were developed, Georgia-Pacific had planned to dredge the sediments in question along with a lot more sediment in the Whatcom Waterway and dispose of the sediment in an upland site located immediately adjacent to the Whatcom Waterway. This upland site was the GP wastewater treatment lagoon (aerated stabilization basin or ASB). Ecology approved this plan as the preferred alternative for cleaning up the contaminated sediments in Bellingham Bay and the Whatcom Waterway. The estimated cost for removing essentially all of the tainted sediment: $23 million.

This approved preferred cleanup was killed cleanup-death-of-alernative-J. The Port of Bellingham wanted to convert the ASB into a marina instead. Years of negotiation and analysis leading to the Alternative J approach came to an abrupt end. The GP cleanup plan for the waterway and the bay can be viewed as more protective versus the Port's plan that involves less dredging and a reliance on capping the tainted sediments in place. The GP Alternative J plan was also a lot less expensive. As noted the entire waterway and bay cleanup under Alternative J was estimated to be $23 million; whereas the Ports' phase one cleanup alone exceeds that cost.

The reason the Port's cleanup plan for the waterway and bay are so expensive relative to the original more protective cleanup plan is that Port wants to convert the ASB into marina. The Port already successfully got congress to remove a portion of the waterway as a federal channel in order to avid the need for dredging (by the way this was a reversal of the Port's previous position of the early 2000s when the Port insisted that GP dredge the waterway to federal channel depth). It makes no sense to claim that the ASB will not be made converted into a marina yet continue with plans and cleanups all driven by the assumption that it will be.

As it stands all plans and documents on the Bellingham Bay waterfront still include converting the ASB into a marina. The behind the scenes statements by elected officials that there are no plans to build the marina in the ASB or that it simply does not pencil out are at odds with the current cleanup approach that is very nearly about to be implemented.

There is however a broader state-wide issue at play here. How is the Port paying for this much more expensive cleanup approach? First the Port does have a chunk of money via an insurance fund associated with the site having been contaminated by GP. That pays for half the costs of the the phase one cleanup. The second half is covered by the State Toxics Control Account. These funds are generated by a tax on petroleum products. The idea is to have a fund to help cleanup and prevent pollution. The Whatcom Waterway and Bellingham Bay cleanup approach and the use of this fund raises questions about how these funds are prioritized. And it puts Ecology staff charged with managing these funds in a tough spot particularly when political pressures are brought to bare (a future post).

Turning the ASB into a marina will be very costly because before sea water will be allowed to flow into the ASB, the entire basin will need to be excavated with significant portions landfilled. Early cost estimates are on the order of $75 million based on previous Port documents and subtracting out the phase one cleanup part.

Editorial Note:

The planning for a major redevelopment on the Bellingham waterfront is complex. It also generates lots of passion and alas arguments. I have never felt any particular passion about any of the various ideas: saving or not saving historic old buildings, street layouts, where the rail tracks are located, even the zoning does not get me excited one way or the other. A new marina seems to be a reasonable idea for a waterfront and in fact may be far better than some other ideas that have been suggested for the waterfront.

One might presume that I am opposed to the construction of an additional marina on the Bellingham Bay waterfront. I have no objection to a new marina. But I will say that I do object to the use of the State Toxics Account to partially fund the marina construction. I view the scheme as deviating greatly from the purpose of that fund and I am already not comfortable with the willingness to fund a much more costly cleanup approach that has been driven by the conversion of the ASB into a marina.

Geomorphic Sheep

I had a project out in the San Juan Islands this week. This time a visit to Decataur Island. I had a legitimate reason to head up a very scenic slope to determine a land form, but regardless would have headed up this slope anyway in a quest to check out some bedrock I was interested in. While heading up the slope, I noted a series of curved large divots in the slope.

 

 

Some of the divots appeared fresh with exposed soil and others were shallow and vegetated. The area has free ranging sheep and I assumed they were the result of sheep acting as a geomorphic force. The day was on the chilly side - low 40s with wind and spitting rain. Felt like I was in my ancient tribal homeland. The purpose of the divots then became obvious.

The still wet umbilical cord and very unsteady legs suggests this wee one is only a day or two old. Made me recall reading All Creatures Great and Small and how sheep have a habit of lambing in cold wet very early spring weather.

Its Called Irondale for a Reason

Irondale is an unincorporated hamlet of old homes in Jefferson County on the northeast side of the Olympic Peninsula about 15 miles or so south of Port Townsend. Aerial View The name is not a fanciful reminder of some far away town. Irondale was one of the earliest, if not the first, heavy industrial sites in Washington State. The iron and later steel mill operated at the site from 1881 to 1919.

I was aware that there had once been an iron works somewhere along the coast here. But it was not until I headed down the beach from the county park at the end of Moore Street that I learned of the scale of the operation. I was utilizing the beach to access a steep bluff slope further south when I came across the former kilns.  

Line of kilns on beach south of Moore Street

The kilns were supported by wood planks still in reasonable condition after 100 years

There is a bit of blackened sand and gravel from the operations

Down drift from the kilns are scattered brick and limestone fragments

The limestone was used to purify the molten iron

Initially the iron ore source was from bog iron in the bog lands of the nearby Chimicum Valley. The Chimicum Valley is a former glacial outwash channel. The valley was likely a sub glacial ice channel that then acted as drainage pathway as the glacial ice receded out of Puget Sound and meltwater drained around the end of the glacial ice towards the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The low spots later filled with peat bogs and bog iron formed in the bogs.

Fuel for the kilns was thousands of cords of wood derived from the nearby forests. Limestone came from quarries on San Juan Island and perhaps a few smaller quarries on Orcas Island. Later ore came from British Columbia and one old photo of the loading dock indicated a ship with ore from China.

Charcoal kilns, Irondale (Library of Congress)

Besides the kilns on the beach, the concrete foundation remains of the steel mill are located above the low slope above the beach.

Foundation of steel rollers, Irondale Mill

 Former mill site

An environmental cleanup was completed at the site within the past year. I have not spent the time digging into the details of the cleanup. But suspect that it was mostly an effort to stabilize the high metal content soils associated with the mill works with some of heavier metals and other contaminated soils removed from the shore area.

As can be seen in the pictures above, the kiln areas are eroding. I have been to the shoreline reach to the south of this site several times before over the past 10 plus years. On previous visits I had always been able to reach the beach via scrambles down the bluff. Not this last time as the toe of the bluff slope over its entire length had been eroded with several base of bluff failures appearing to have been very recent. The erosion made for a bit of a hike and a bit of coastal history.

Hood Canal Elk: No Charge for Mowing and Weeding

I am not expert on the various elk herds on the Olympic Peninsula. Last summer I cam across a herd in Brinnon. This group may be the same, but if so they have drifted several valleys and ridges south so I suspect it may be a separate group. We have had a mild winter in the low lands and this group is keeping the lawn trimmed and were not bothered at my stopping along Highway 101.