Keystone Harbor remains top priority

Published 2:00 pm Saturday, March 20, 2004

The people have spoken, and they seem to have been listened to as well, as state legislators last week reduced funding for the Keystone terminal relocation project and ordered ferry officials to concentrate on the current site and smaller ferries to serve the run.

Spearheaded by Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, the final supplemental transportation budget cut the project study funding from $2.7 million to $1 million.

Haugen originally asked funding to be cut to $300,000, but then decided that might kill the project altogether. The House supplemental transportation budget called for eliminating funding entirely.

“We included this amount of funding in order to move forward with the project,” Haugen said.

The ferry system must now form a citizen advisory group which will meet with Department of Transportation staff at least three times during the year-long analysis period.

The citizen advisory group must include one Washington state ferry pilot, two members of the traveling public that use the Keystone run on a regular basis, and one tug boat pilot.

The group will submit a report to the legislative transportation committee by Dec. 1, 2004, and the report must include alternatives to relocating the Keystone terminal.

Washington State Ferries determined two years ago that the aging steel-electric ferries serving the Keystone-Port Townsend run had to be replaced, and that the best option was to replace the two boats with one larger 130-car boat which was interchangeable with others in the fleet. They plan to build four such boats in the next few years.

The bigger boats would require a larger harbor, thus the harbor relocation project was set in motion. The public was not given the opportunity to comment on the boat replacement plan.