PORT ANGELES — The state Department of Natural Resources has sunk the idea of sinking the former ferry Kalakala to create a recreational reef as part of an Ediz Hook dive park — and has suggested the dive park itself may never get off the ground.
“We are not currently authorizing the sinking of vessels for dive attractions,” Kristin Swenddal, division manager for the state aquatic resources program, said Tuesday.
Even if the decrepit vessel were sandblasted and its oil removed, a significant level of contamination still would exist, she said.
Also, once sunk, the art-deco-style vessel — 276 feet long with a 55-foot beam — would kill anything it sat on.
“Basically, anything down there living in the mud, you are essentially smothering,” Swenddal said.
Recurrent proposal
The idea of sinking the vessel for recreational diving has been circulating for years.
It surfaced again Jan. 20 at a contentious private luncheon meeting in Port Angeles between Kalakala owner Steve Rodrigues and about 25 community leaders.
Participants suggested a sunken Kalakala could be featured as part of a dive park being proposed about a mile up Ediz Hook that would be situated on the harbor side of the shoreline facing Port Angeles.
Rodrigues insisted he would not consider sinking the Kalakala for a dive reef until he exhausted all options to restore it to its former art deco-style glory and use the vessel for a multipurpose entertainment center, an estimated $15 million endeavor.
He did not return calls for comment on Tuesday.
City Manager Kent Myers said that next week, he will sound out a committee of residents interested in establishing the dive park on Ediz Hook to get their take on DNR’s decision.
DNR ‘wall’
“It appears to be a wall that will prevent us from pursuing this option,” Myers said Tuesday.
“People came up to me and said other boats have been sunk, and DNR allowed it. There’s a question on consistency of enforcement.”
The Kalakala ran Puget Sound and Port Angeles-Victoria routes from 1935 to 1967, when it was converted in a fish processor for use in Alaska before returning to Seattle 11 years ago.
Rodrigues, 58, bought the Kalakala for $136,560 in 2003 in a bankruptcy sale in Seattle. It’s tied up at a private dock on the Hybelos Waterway in Tacoma.
DNR’s stand against sinking the vessel for the dive park is consistent with its skepticism over even permitting the facility in the first place, based on the notion that artificial reefs must “protect and enhance aquatic habitat,” as the agency recently put it.
“DNR is apprehensive about this proposal as described and proposed, because we cannot determine whether it would provide any net benefit to the environment, we are concerned that this may not be the right artificial reef design given the location and we wonder if an artificial reef at this location is appropriate given the presence of wood waste,” Aquatic District Manager Brady Scott said in an Oct. 2 letter to the Port Angeles Department of Community and Economic Development.
DNR makes it difficult to pursue dive parks, Myers conceded.
“I don’t know why they put up so many roadblocks,”he said. “It seems like a moving target.”
Andrew May, a horticulturalist and the Peninsula Daily News’ gardening columnist, has been pushing the proposal to sink the Kalakala for recreational diving for 10 years, he said Tuesday.
“My interpretation is that artificial reefs enhance fisheries,” May said.
“That’s why across the nation and the world, ships are used to make artificial reefs.”
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
