For Immediate Release:
Dec. 2, 2009
For Additional Information:
Carolyn Casey, Port Communications Manager
(360) 676-2500 carolyncportofbellingham.com
Port of Bellingham Wins Legal Protest of NOAA Decision
[Bellingham, Wash.] This morning the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) ruled in favor of the Port of Bellingham's protest of the site selection process for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Pacific Research Fleet facility.
"We are very pleased with this decision and we believe it validates our concern that this was not a fair site selection process," said Port Commission President Scott Walker. "We anticipate learning more in the next few days about NOAA's next steps following this decision. We appreciate the support we have received from our federal delegation, our state delegation and our entire community during this protest."
To view the full text of the federal ruling click here.
In making its ruling, the GAO instructed NOAA to pay the Port of Bellingham the full costs of preparing the protest, including all legal costs. It also directed NOAA to follow the long standing federal rule requiring a determination that there is no practical alternative to building a federal facility in a flood plain as was planned for the Newport, Oregon facility.
Those legal costs are expected to total about $200,000, according to Fred Seeger, interim executive director for the port. About 90 percent of those costs are fees from the Washington D.C. office of Seattle based Perkins Coie. The Washington D.C. office has particular expertise in federal contracting laws.
It is not yet known whether the GAO decision will require NOAA to launch a new selection process, whether the Newport site will no longer be an option or whether NOAA can remedy the selection errors in some other manner, according to Lee Curtis, the attorney representing the port in its protest.
"Of course we remain hopeful that NOAA will locate its ships in Bellingham," Walker said. "That has been the Port's goal from the beginning. But we do not know if, in the end, we will be able to compete with the $19 million subsidy that the state of Oregon has provided to Newport."
The state of Oregon subsidy could prove an insurmountable obstacle in attracting the facility to Bellingham, since the Port of Bellingham estimated the total in-water and upland facility costs to be about $32 million.
The Port's protest raised a number of concerns about the NOAA site selection process, but the GAO ruling focused especially on the fact that the Newport site is in a federally designated flood plain. NOAA's site selection criteria specified that it would only consider sites that were outside of flood plains.
In August NOAA announced that it selected a site in Newport, Ore., for its new Pacific homeport facility and signed a 20-year lease with Newport. A few weeks later the Ports' Board of Commissioners voted to file its protest with the GAO noting irregularities in the selection process. The private Seattle land owner for the Lake Union site, where the NOAA fleet now homeports, also filed a protest but did not follow through with required continued legal filings so its protest was rejected last month.
The Port of Bellingham has been part of the formal site selection process since it began in 2007. It estimated the NOAA facility could have an estimated $19 million a year economic impact and could generate up to 188 full-time jobs.
