The "Greening" of PT Paper - and other Glen Cove industries

By Scott Wilson

The industrial development of the Glen Cove area - including Port Townsend Paper - holds the potential for a unique "eco-industrial" pattern that both allows manufacturing jobs and has minimal impact on the environment.

That message came out of a daylong discussion and presentation hosted by WSU Team Jefferson, the county's official economic development organization, on June 3.

Raymond Lam, president of Silk Road Environmental based in Kennewick and a national expert on how pulp mills and other heavy industry can be part of environmentally sound business collaborations, keynoted the session with a talk on "industrial ecology in action."

Key principles for the kind of economic development he promotes, Lam said, are reduction of pollution at the source, reprocessing waste for new uses, and synergy with nearby industries.

Lam said the concept applies to existing industries, like PT Paper and Port Townsend Foundry, as well as to new industrial entities that might locate in the 129 acres of Glen Cove zoned for light industry or commercial development.

Glen Cove today has about 50 businesses.

Key to the concept, said Lam, is managing pollution and waste in ways that might contribute to another industry rather than putting it into the environment. For example, excess heat from PT Paper could be piped to other companies that need heat so that both companies benefit. Mill water could also be recycled.

PT Paper has reduced its carbon footprint by more than 30 percent in the last two years through diligent reuse of materials and pollution controls, according to a report by the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI), MBA students hired by WSU Team Jefferson as part of the Glen Cove study.

Read the rest of the PT Leader article HERE

WA Farms Turn to Tourism to Stay Alive

By Amy Rolf
Snohomish County Herald Writer

One by one, the dairies disappeared.

The cows were sold, the land was developed. And the farmers' sons and daughters moved to the suburbs that pushed their way north from Seattle.

That was north Snohomish County two decades ago. Now, a small group of farmers are staging a resurgence, hoping to preserve farmland close to Washington's urban core and rejuvenate the county's love affair with agriculture.

They aren't angling for a rebirth of the dairy industry; most come from dairy-farm backgrounds and can easily list the reasons why hundreds of farms were shuttered in the last few decades.

They just want people to come spend the day in Arlington -- drive north on I-5 about 30 or 40 miles. They want them to pull off Highway 530, get out of their cars and walk down rows of green vegetables. Pick strawberries, smell lavender. Maybe pet a horse or a friendly goat named Oreo.

"We're trying to get people from the city. So many people don't remember Grandpa's farm," said Connie Foster, the proprietor of Foster's Produce and Corn Maze in Arlington. (She and her husband are the proud owners of Oreo and two other goats.)

The Fosters, along with five other farming families in Arlington and Marysville, are marketing the "Red Rooster Route" for the first time this year, hoping to share their visitor base and draw new tourists north from King County. They provide the map and details of how the trip will play out; guests bring plenty of time and some spending money.

Read the rest of the article HERE