PORT ANGELES — The Olympic Mountain People have collected 220 signatures on a petition against a proposed clearcut at Lincoln Park, citizens group member Devon Graywolf said.
The mountain people, namely Graywolf and William Hunt of Port Angeles, urged “Stop the Lincoln Park Clearcut” volunteers to gather more signatures and to speak out against the proposal at the Port Angeles City Council meeting this Tuesday at 6 p.m. in council chambers at City Hall, 321 E. Fifth St.
“I’m encouraging everyone to go there and talk to them,” Graywolf said.
“I sense a strong urgency about this.”
Eleven citizens attended an informal meeting Tuesday at the Port Angeles Library.
It was mainly for volunteers to gather information about the Port of Port Angeles’ plans to remove the Douglas fir trees in Lincoln Park to improve landing access at William R. Fairchild International Airport.
The city, which owns the park, and the port plan to replace the trees with a lower-canopy species by 2014.
Better runway access
The move would allow Kenmore Air and other aircraft to use more of the runway.
The existing trees have rendered 1,354 feet of the east side of the runway useless.
Aircraft coming from the east cannot land on the foot of the runway in bad weather because the planes come too close to the existing canopy.
The approach parallels Lauridsen Boulevard by a short distance to the north.
“I’m concerned that this will effectively move the airport a quarter-mile to the east, closer to the heart of residential Port Angeles,” said Kim Weimer, who lives under the flight path north of Albertsons.
‘Quality-of-life issues’
“It will have at least a subtle effect on quality-of-life issues for people living underneath the flight path, which is a lot of people.”
Shifting the landing zone would increase noise “in our yards, in our neighborhoods,” Weimer said, and may impact property values.
“It’s hard to know what effect it really has, but cumulatively . . . it has to have some value,” Weimer said.
“And that affects property taxes that are collected by the port and the city and the county.”
Representatives of a BMX club and disc golf association that use Lincoln Park were among those who spoke against the tree removal.
Natural barrier
Others said the trees provide a natural windbreak and sound barrier for the Lincoln Park area.
Hunt and others questioned why the port can’t use the western end of the airport to expand the landing zone.
“To the west, it’s much more sparsely populated,” said Weimer, who displayed a zoning map of Port Angeles at the meeting.
Port airport manager Doug Sandau has said the port, which owns Fairchild airport, has no other option.
It would cost $30 million and more time to acquire the property, Sandau has said.
The Federal Aviation Administration is covering most of the $3.2 million redevelopment of Lincoln Park, minus a 5 percent match from the port.
The port maintains that the FAA is unlikely to fund a more costly option.
350 cut in 2008
About 350 trees were cut down in 2008 to prevent more of the runway from becoming unusable.
All of the trees would be cut down under the current plan.
Beyond the potential impacts on noise and property values, Graywolf said, trees provide “patches of cool” and can even affect the weather.
Graywolf said her interest in protecting the trees at Lincoln Park was foreshadowed by a dream about a tiger jumping out of a full moon.
“I started doing research on tigers, and it turns out all over the world, they’re worshiped as protectors of the forest,” Graywolf said.
To join the signature-gathering campaign, phone 360-452-4271 or email huntwr4261@yahoo.com.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com
