The Humboldt Bay Stewards symposium on the Redwood Marine Terminal ended up being a full-house affair at the Wharfinger tonight.

John Shaefer checks out the scale of a Port of Oakland Crane compared with the Carson Mansion.

As the only representative on the panel presenting the benefits of the Redwood Marine Terminal project, David Hull, Executive Director of the Bay District bore the brunt of the onslaught of concerns about the type of port development the district is proposing. He described the project and the rationale behind it.

Dave Hull presents the Bay District's perspective.

The arguments against (or concerns about) the rail-dependent marine terminal were for the most part familiar: corporate takeover of the port could involve loss of democratic control of our bay, port development impacts including dredging, introduction of invasive species in ballast water, risk of oil spills, security cordons that restrict access, geological and engineering challenges of restoring the railroad, and lack of competitiveness of a container port in such a remote location, to name a few.

Shannon Tracey of Democracy Unlimited presented on issues of corporate control usurping democratic control of the bay.

The first point of interest was a soothing poem that Jerry Martien read with the help of Josh (didn’t catch his last name) about the relationship of the bay to its watershed and to the ocean, and the ebb and flow of the tides mingling the natural history and human history of the bay.

Jerry Martien reads his poetry.

Then it was on to questions. The interesting points there related to the train. When asked what level of train traffic Old Town, Eureka could handle without adverse impacts, Cindy Trobitz Thomas, Director of Redevelopment and Housing with the Eureka Redevelopment Agency said “It’s kind of hard to know. Whatever plans that go through there, we would have some input.” She believed Eureka would have influence over how many trains and at what time of day they run. With Novato fighting for influence over those same issues with the NCRA in Novato, it may be hard to have the trains run at the perfect time in every town.

When the panel was asked how many trains would go through Old Town, no one knew for sure. “This is one of the problems with not having environmental review that covers the entire corridor,” said Patty Clary of Californians for Alternatives to Toxics.

Patty Clary presented on the geologic, engineering, bureaucratic and soil contamination challenges of rebuilding the railroad.

Clary's flow chart of NCRA's bureaucratic entanglements.

Pete Nichols of Humboldt Baykeeper brought up a number he had heard bandied about earlier in the process, that there would have to be a train running down 1^st Street 12 minutes of every hour to move enough freight to pay for the investment in the project. This would involve closing access to the building we were in (Wharfinger) from the rest of the city quite a bit of the time, since you have to cross the railroad to get there. “It would be great to have someone here from the NCRA to answer that question.”

Hull contested those estimates and said he had heard 3 trains per day each way, which is what the NCRA told SMART before they changed their numbers and inadvertently forced SMART to rewrite their EIR, back before Novato got fed up and sued the NCRA (this is becoming a long story).

Patty Clary had already laid out why the railroad could not feasibly be rebuilt, but when the big issue of concern to us came up, the Humboldt Bay Trail, Aldaron Laird tied things together bluntly: “Port development combined with the rail development is holding the bay trail hostage. If we can’t move forward with that issue, it’s unfortunate because it’s a good opportunity.” He was referring to the perhaps not well enough publicized fact that the Coastal Conservancy is waiting in the wings with $10 million, enough to build a rail-to-trail, while the NCRA will only allow for a rail-with-trail (at six times the cost), even as it refuses to make any statement about its plans for using the railroad on Humboldt Bay.

David Hull tried to counter with “There is really nothing stopping the bay trail except some government to get the money to do the project. It’s just a matter of getting those people together into some force to get the money and get it done.” This may be a legitimate argument with regard to maintenance, which is why we need to move to create some sort of open space district to maintain regional trails, but asking anyone to pay six times as much to build the trail in such a way as to make room for railroad plans that can’t be discussed openly, that’s a problem.

I guess we’ll see where the NCRA stands on all this tomorrow, if they’ll say anything.