In a Crosscut story on Mayor McGinn’s surprise seawall announcement last week, former mayor Charles Royer said, “I believe him when he says it is a security and safety issue, because that is what the engineers were telling me in 1985.” A 2003 civil engineering paper backs Royer up, saying that the need for a new seawall has been known “for twenty years.”
But since the Nisqually earthquake in 2001, seawall repair was moved from the back burner, if not exactly to the front burner. In the November 8, 1934, Engineering News Record, which looked into construction of the first seawall, several challenges were detailed: “the high cost entailed by the physical problems of soft bottom, and a 16-ft tide range, with the attendant marine-borer menace to timber construction.” These naturally resurfaced with the prospect of repair.
But then as now, you can’t engineer politics. So nine years later, when the Mayor suggests moving seawall construction up by two years, you can read this response on City Council member’s Tim Burgess’s blog: “Elliott Bay Seawall: Questions to Ponder.” What you will learn is that nine years after city leadership was confronted with a significant chance of catastrophic failure of the seawall:
- We don’t know what it will cost or look like,
- don’t know who will pay for it,
- and don’t have a construction process mapped out.
Burgess further argues that the seawall can’t be separated from the Viaduct replacement project, that a property tax levy might be better than a special bond, that not enough voters may turn out to approve the bond measure, and that “41-member citizen planning committee to make recommendations about the central waterfront and the seawall” might be constrained by funding the project.
It’s worth noting that the City Council made this giant leap in central waterfront planning–that is, establishing a 41-member citizen planning committee–on November 2, 2009.
Even Burgess’s pro forma acquiescence to the demands of public safety–“he’s right to jump-start a brisk discussion about how we should proceed to repair the seawall”–litters a simple sentence with hoops to jump through before action is taken. Before repair, we proceed; before we proceed, we discuss how; before we discuss, we jump-start.
What is striking to me is that our city’s leadership finds McGinn’s proposal risky, not the glacial progress of the last nine years. I have yet to hear–of all the remonstrances from the City Council–a single member recognize that not having made any tangible progress in nine years might be considered an epic failure.
If I recall correctly, seawall replacement was originally included in the first tunnel plan, back when it was a lidded trench tunnel. It was dropped as a cost-saving measure, along with some of the lid.
I would have to check the iterations, myself. But no matter how you look at it, I think it’s clear that political machinations (and attempts to duck costs) have kept a public safety issue from being dealt with for far too long.