Nov. 12, 2020

Fellow boaters, fisher-men and women, and park enthusiasts!

Another public saltwater park is nearing completion! The WDFW permit application for a replacement boat ramp and park facility at Point No Point (Hansville) was filed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over seven years ago. The Regulatory Branch of the Seattle District Office’s new Commander (Col. Bullock) has set a deadline of January, 2021 to decide if they will award the last remaining permit to finish the boat ramp.

A detailed history of new park and boat launch can be found at Point No Point Ramp . All inland development has been completed: paved parking, new rest rooms, ADA access and sidewalks, and street lights were installed at a cost of over $3 million. The only component missing is…the single-lane boat ramp!

With great anticipation, we await the USACE’s January approval of the final permit to allow completion of the park and boat launch at Point No Point so that sportsmen, tribal fishermen, first responders, recreational boaters, and the public can begin using this brand new facility as soon possible.

Thank you for supporting this project with us to its completion!

Sincerely,
The PNP Advocacy Groups:

Bremerton Sportsmen’s Club
Kitsap Poggie Club
Coastal Conservation Association
Puget Sound Anglers
NW Marine Trade Association
Washington Maritime Federation
Kitsap Parks Advocates

Finally a commitment to make a decision. Thank you Col. Bullock!

YEE HAW!

Who got paid and how much did it cost?
SF

That's just a bit too oblique......so just exactly what is the question?

Ok, how much did it cost or what was agreed to, to make this happen?
Cost doesn’t always equate to money and nothing seems to be free these days.

You’ve explained very well in the past posts what was holding this up.
Something had to give to get it moving forward again after seven years.
Has the major opposition group signed off on this? I don’t see their name on the news release.
SF

Well, if there was any quid pro quo I am unaware of it.

Factors:

Persistence and working up the chain of command within the USACE!

Ongoing effort by WDFW to include Region 6 Director and both the current and prior Directors presumably with Commission support based upon Advocacy Group testimony. The website provides a long list of significant actions.

New Commander at the Seattle District Office.

Understand that the promise is for a decision on the permit application by January 2021. That is progress after seven years of the permit application being churned by the bureaucracy with no clear direction.

EDITORIAL COMMENT: Nothing should take this long let alone a single lane boat ramp on publicly owned property which is replacing another launch at the same site. For comparison - the gestation period for an elephant is a maximum 18 months......

Thanks for the explanation.
Hopefully this finally gets approved.
SF

This is one of the problems I have seen with the whole permitting process. It can be stopped for "further review" and held indefinitely. The process should have fixed timelines for decisions with public explanations for whatever action is taken.

That is a huge part of the problem.....lack of defined time lines. In the case of PNP even when the USACE set a timeline they did not enforce it so effectively no timelines. Allowing a permit application to gather dust is effectively a denial without having to defend a decision.

That is why finally having a commitment for a decision is a positive step forward.

That is good to hear. Are they going to put in a breakwater or is it going to be open to the weather?

While this is excellent news, it still has to be approved. Here are a couple links to provide some more background.
https://nwsportsmanmag.com/welcome-news-...-no-point-ramp/
and
https://pointnopointramp.com/

The Suquamish are still very much against the ramp, see the letter from the Tribal chairman dated July 2020 posted on the latter site.

Let's keep our fingers crossed !

I wonder if the residents in the neighborhood will try legal means to prevent to ramp from going in? Earlier this year they were able to get the parking lot locked off due to “noise complaints”. Will that argument fly to prevent the ramp?

As designed and incorporated into the permit application it is a single lane ramp; no floats and certainly no breakwater.

I guess anything is possible but the upland facility is completed and certainly would not be abandoned should the ramp not be completed.

My understanding is that the WDFW facility was closed because of it being used as overflow parking for the Lighthouse Park and alleged trespassing by those users.

Summer 2020 was the perfect storm in terms of Covid 19 having more people looking for things to do particularly with their kids and the failure to implement the property use agreement between Kitsap Parks and WDFW - specifically, that portion calling for a park host to be on site.

I will opine that had the ramp been in place and boaters were making use of it that overflow issue would have been significantly reduced.

Will be some interesting launches and retrievals when the north wind is blowing hard or the freighter waves are hitting the beach.
SF

Wow - those letters from the tribe are so much BS and completely disingenuous of them!! Can't somebody get Trump to ram this thing through on his way out the door?!

It is my understanding that the various tribes with U&A rights including PNP have an agreement to not fish salmon in that area and have not done so for years. With that in mind have tribal fishers failed to harvest their 50%? No. In fact, they have been harvesting close to 60% of Puget Sound Chinook over recent years.

The other big money resource is crab and tribal fishermen have been routinely harvesting their 50% keeping in mind that they can and do crab whenever their tribal government authorizes a season with an emphasis on the period immediately preceding the recreational summer season (5 days a week).

In the latest development of Oct 29, the Suquamish Tribe now writes the US Army Corps and claims:
1) "...the proposed ramp will create an in-water physical obstacle that fishermen will have to work around..." and
2) "...and it will take and occupy an area of the Tribes Usual and Accustomed fishing grounds."

In the letter, The Tribe compares the Point No Point launch to the Gateway Pacific Fishing Terminal wharf at Cherry Point, a proposed 2,980-foot dock that would accomodate 487 ships per year. The letter predicts the boat ramp will "...result() in gear damage and even total loss." However, there is no wharf at Point No Point, no pilings, no dock...it's just a single lane ramp lying on the beach. Further, they claim the ramp will "...eliminate the use of a geographic area where Suquamish fishing and crabbing occurs...", and claim "...tribal fishermen also set crab pots in as little as 12 feet of water".

In short, the latest objection is that the single lane ramp of roughly 20'x80' (in water 12' deep at high tide) will cause undue hazard, damage and loss of gear, and "force Tribal fishermen to have to work around the structure."

Read the letter for yourself at

https://pointnopointramp.com

Click Timeline, scroll to Oct 29.

"...the hits just keep on coming.." (shaking my head)

That deserves saying it again - Wow - those letters from the tribe are so much BS and completely disingenuous of them!!

Hope they see right through the BS. The only way they'll loose any gear is if they drop a pot off the trailer and run over it when they're using the ramp. How do they write that crap with a straight face?!

What is even more disingenuous is that the old resort complex to include the rail launch which was removed in preparation for this project extended approximately 200 feet further out than the end of the new ramp as designed. The tribe should be withdrawing its spurious objections and thank WDFW for the additional fishing area it has provided them.

It needs to be mentioned that there are several large mitigation projects which WDFW has agreed to perform in addition to the already accomplished removal of the original resort structures and its numerous creosote pilings.

Great point! Sounds like the tribes want all the mitigation work without the ramp. Hope it's clear to the powers that be that the net effect is a much smaller footprint reducing the intrusion into the tribes "fishing grounds".

Used to fish out of those resorts PnP & Hansville & Mukilteo back in the day as a kid before my dad bought his first salt boat. Even after that we'd often use the float at PnP while winter fishing to go in for a not breakfast and coffee for dad. Good memories.

Riding down the tram at PNP is something everyone who enjoys fishing the sound should have gotten to experience if you are old enough to have done so.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I didn’t see the tribes name on the letter which to me means this isn’t over yet.
It is unfortunate that this permitting process comes with all this bs.
SF

Did I ride the tram in the late 60's? I trust my memory less and less over the years.

Pretty sure it was still operating then. I never used that tram but did go down the rails at Andy's boathouse in Edmonds immediately south of the ferry terminal. Always made sure that the small outboard was running before pushing off for the day.

Onthesauk, you sure could have ridden Leo's tram in the 60's. It was still operating in the late 80's or early 90's. A family friend had his boat at the Point No Point boathouse and would take it out to fish until he sold his boat when the state bought the property.

Running down the tram was pretty fun unless you realized the drain plug wasn't in when you got to the water.

Ward

Hansville was still "ridin' the rails" in the early 80's. PnP & Mukilteo Boathouse I think petered out in the late 70's. All those boathouses had live herring back in the day too!

Not just the boat houses. Taylor Brothers' cafe (now Ivars) immediately north of the Mukilteo ferry dock had two live bait tanks - herring and candlefish. Waiting for the ferry I was just tall enough to watch those fish. Yes, easily entertained.