On Friday, I had a meeting with representatives from the King County Facilities Management Department. I had requested a meeting with Tony Wright, the department Director, but he declined to participate and I instead met with Cristina Gonzalez, the Interim Deputy Director, and Stephen Cugier, the agent handling the transaction on behalf of the county. Notes are below, but PLEASE CONTINUE SHARING THIS PETITION WITH YOUR NETWORKS as this may be the only feedback that they hear from impacted residential communities.
They confirmed much of what I learned from my meeting with Joe McDermott. Tony Wright will make the final recommendation to Dow Constantine, who will submit an ordinance to the KC Council for an up or down vote on the recommendation. Tony has toured the Ardagh operation. Ardagh and Labor have been lobbying the council, the executive and their department very hard, but there are currently no plans to do any outreach with impacted communities to gather input or hear concerns. I shared that the Lower Duwamish communities don't have paid lobbyists on staff to speak for them and that while I was fortunate to have the flexibility to take time off from work to meet with them during business hours, not everyone had that same privilege. It is especially difficult when many people have no idea that decisions affecting their health are being made behind closed doors. Cristina mentioned that King County has made a commitment to consider health and environmental justice, but had no concrete examples of how it was actually being considered. I stressed that it needed to be more than just a webpage and signs on the Duwamish reminding residents not to eat fish caught in the river's polluted waters .
They are unable to share the full details of the competing proposals at this time, but received a total of 7 and have narrowed them down to 3 (one of those being Ardagh). Some CMs have asked to see the details of the other proposals, but nothing has been shared with them yet either. Stephen is doing a comprehensive analysis of all proposals and they will consider environmental impact, financial return to the county and net jobs created. The other two proposals are for entirely different uses. No toxic manufacturing is part of either competing proposal and they say that they will create as many as 500 jobs, which would be more than the number of jobs lost by an Ardagh closure, but it isn't an apples to apples comparison because these jobs won't be specific to the manufacture of glass. We discussed whether or not funds could be set aside to assist with job training for any impacted employees, or a concession could be put in place to ensure that impacted Ardagh employees received hiring preference. They said that both of these things were possible.
They are still at the "Letter of Intent" phase of the recommendation, but expect it to be made in the next few weeks. I suggested that they plan to attend an upcoming Georgetown Community Council meeting to hear concerns from an impacted community (perhaps Monday, September 16th). Cristina said that she was open to coming and would do her best to get Tony to attend but made no commitments. I also left copies of the soil testing results from the Georgetown Urban Food Forrest (showing lead and arsenic) and informed them of similar testing being done at Mara Farm in South Park showing similar results, a copy of an article from 2011 naming this plant the #1 polluter in the Northwest, and polluter data obtained by the Toxic Release Inventory Program showing over 2000 pounds of pollutants (Lead compounds and chromium compounds) for the most recent years on file.