We hope everyone enjoyed the music that Port Gamble had to offer in August. Now we move into September with the Early Irons Car Show, Old Mill Days and Forest Festival.
Be sure to check out all the businesses and places to eat in Port Gamble. Congratulations to all winners in the Best of North Kitsap.
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SEPTEMBER EVENTS
Sept. 4: Early Irons Car Show. We are excited to welcome back the Early Irons Car Show to Port Gamble. All cars and motorcycles are welcome. Registration is $20. All net proceeds go to the North Kitsap Boys and Girls Club.
More information can be found on the event and club at www.clubs.hemmings.com/earlyironsnw.
Sept. 4: Roots Rock 50/25K. This will be the fourth year of this race. This starts and finishes in Port Gamble with quite a bit of single track, and a fully stocked aid station halfway through the loop, as well as the start/finish. Contact Poulsbo Running for more information at www.rootsrockrun.com.
Sept. 30-Oct. 2: Old Mill Days & Forest Festival. This year’s festival, the sixth annual, will be jam-packed with exciting family activities.
Old Mill Days include the lumberjack competition, carnival, Forest Festival, Classic Car Show, chainsaw woodcarving and auction, Kitsap Toughest Timberman Competition, fireworks on Friday night, live music and a beer garden.
General admission is $5 for adults; children 8 and younger get in free. On Sunday, seniors (63+) and active duty military with ID receive 20 percent off admission. No admission is needed for the carnival (all three days) and the Classic Car Show.
At the fifth annual Forest Festival on Oct. 1, you can experience the past, present and future of Washington’s wonderful forest resources.
Enjoy the logging competition and wood-carving shows, and hike our forest trails. Interactive displays and exhibits are fun and captivating for the whole family. Events include pancake breakfast, logging competition, chainsaw carving and educational exhibits.
For more information, visit www.oldmilldays.com.
UPCOMING EVENTS
— Ghost Walks, every Saturday and Wednesday during the month of October and on Halloween night.
— The second annual Port Gamble Ghost Conference, Oct. 28-30, featuring more speakers and investigations. To register, visit www.portgamble.com.
GAMBLE BAY CLEANUP
Our environmental clean-up in Port Gamble will soon enter its 10th year and final chapter, making it timely to do a recap and quick gut-check on the current health of the bay.
Thanks to the efforts of Pope Resources and its subsidiary, Olympic Property Group, plus the state’s Department of Ecology and many other agencies and regional stakeholders, the waters of Gamble Bay are well on their way to returning to health levels that existed in the mid-1800s. But it’s taken a lot of hard work and expense to get here.
Many of us who live in North Kitsap County know that Gamble Bay once was the site of the historic Pope & Talbot sawmill, which operated on the western side of Gamble Bay just above the town of Port Gamble. Between 1853 and 1995, operations at the mill site included a succession of sawmill buildings, two chip loading facilities, a log transfer facility, and log rafting and storage areas.
Mill operations ceased in 1995 and the sawmill facility was dismantled and removed. Later that year, study of the mill site and the adjacent waters of Gamble Bay began in earnest.
In 2002, Pope Resources and Pope & Talbot entered the voluntary cleanup program with the Department of Ecology. Between 2002 and 2008, three shoreline landfills and two uplands landfills were remediated. Additionally, more than 30,000 tons of contaminated soils and sediments located in catch basins, valve vaults and sumps were removed from the site of the old Port Gamble mill. During that same period, contaminated soils and underground storage tanks were removed from the town site.
Additionally, between 2003 and 2007, more than 40,000 tons of sediments containing wood waste and hazardous substances were dredged from areas of Gamble Bay immediately adjacent to the mill site. All of these materials were disposed off-site in accordance with state and federal guidelines.
A thin layer of sand was subsequently placed over a portion of the newly dredged area to ensure the new sediment surface was clean and would be readily colonized by aquatic organisms. The bay began to heal itself under watchful monitoring from the state’s Department of Ecology. In 2004, Pope Resources and Pope & Talbot received Ecology’s Environmental Excellence Award.
In 2008, the Department of Ecology convened a stakeholder group to review and discuss future environmental clean-up strategies. The group includes the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, the state’s departments of Ecology and Natural Resources. Progress has been dramatic. In 2008, investigations and studies confirmed that no contaminated soil remains on the mill site itself.
In addition to its natural beauty, Gamble Bay is recognized for its rich fishery and other aquatic resources. The bay is the second largest herring spawning area in Puget Sound and also home to cockle, manila and littleneck clams, oysters, geoducks, sandlance and smelt.
Based on a combination of natural decay of the wood waste and natural inputs of silt and sand to Gamble Bay, the quality of sediments in the mill site area has improved dramatically over the past 10 years and many sediment areas near the mill site currently provide productive habitat to a wide range of marine organisms.
The quality of seafood in Gamble Bay has been evaluated through detailed testing over the past 10 years and recent seafood sampling data collected by the Washington Department of Ecology supports unrestricted harvest of shellfish from Gamble Bay.
In fact, except for a small area immediately adjacent to the mill site that will be addressed by the final clean-up activities, seafood quality in Gamble Bay is among the best in all of Puget Sound, and those who consume the local seafood enjoy one of the healthiest alternatives available.
Yet there is still work to be done. Potentially detrimental wood waste accumulations remain in two localized areas (less than four acres of the 1,210-acre bay) immediately adjacent to the mill site, and these areas will be addressed through an appropriate combination of dredging, capping and monitoring. Both Pope Resources and the Washington state will continue to be the primary contributors of clean-up funding. (Pope & Talbot declared bankruptcy in 2008). Other areas of Gamble Bay will continue to be monitored to verify that natural recovery continues to take place.
Through the ongoing coordinated restoration program, areas in the immediate vicinity of the mill site will be restored and are projected by experts to support unrestricted harvest of shellfish in the near future. It is expected that a final clean-up action plan will be developed and published in 2012. Through natural recovery as well as the efforts of the state and multiple stakeholders such as Pope Resources, Gamble Bay is poised to resume its place as one of north Kitsap’s most restored and treasured natural resources.
