Bellingham 

"Bay of Death"

Updated 2023 June.

Suckers, Ye be warned....

Thinking of financing, developing, insuring, buying, working, living, yacht parking, visiting or  moving to Bellingham Bay? 

June 2023.  Why Bay of Death?  Bellingham once had a world class sized salmon run. Now mostly gone.  Herring everywhere.  gone. Rafts of wild sea birds, clouds of starlings slaughtered by Port, great blue herons mostly gone, Terns nests wiped out by Port, Canadian geese decimated, migrating geese swans killed by lead, Grey whale visits bay and immediately dies. Orcas flee the bay.  Oysters, clams, mussles mostly gone. Friendly seals mostly all shot by fishermen, dog fish decimated, on and on and on.  Ecology and DFW are pretty much worthless.    Not a proud statement on arrival of Whitey in the last 200 years.  Read on.

Twenty four things they don't want you to know about Bellingham Bay.

1.  Mercury.  Tons and tons and tons coat the bay, the tidelands, the fill, the uplands, the Chemfix, the ponds, the beaches.  Georgia Pacific can not account for hundreds of tons of mercury "used" in their former industrial chemical plant / tissue mill.  The fumes are odorless and toxic.

"Hey, enjoy a nice swim in Bellingham Bay at Low tide!  I did."

Metallic mercury is a heavy, odorless, silver colored liquid. The liquid turns into vapor (gas) at room temperature. Mercury vapor can be inhaled into the lungs or pass through the skin and enter the blood stream, or it can be absorbed through eating mercury contaminated fish. 

Chronic mercury poisoning - Your Symptoms After Moving to Bellingham Bay!
- Gum and dental problems, mood swings and nervous disorders.
- Skin allergies may develop. Repeated exposure can lead to persistent and itchy rashes.
- Birth defects in children born of exposed mothers.
- Mild to severe tremors
- Memory loss, behavioral changes, loss of hearing
- Kidney, heart and brain damage

The mercury will be seeping, oozing, vaporizing, methylating and contaminated the bay and all building sites for hundreds of years.  Capping won't make it clean.  Think Minamata Bay.  

2. Dioxin.  A nasty bi-product of use of chlorine by GP.  Contamination is everywhere, sediments, fill, beaches, uplands.  Now amount is considered safe. Agent Orange. Enough doses to poison millions.  Dioxin production was considered a company trade secret, hence, no records. 

• 
• Results of Dioxin exposure.  Why are kids allowed to play on mounds of toxic waste at Cornwall Beach? 

3. Q - Broxin.  Look it up.  GP made a lovely cocktail of special exotic / toxic chemicals used as heavy drilling mud world wide.  Whole studies have been done on how this toxic goo has destroyed fisheries and water supplies world wide.  Where do you think the practice batches were dumped?  Do you think they might have used injection wells into coal mines under the site and out into the Bay? 

• Drilling Mud, what's in it?  Q-Broxin, a trade secret recipe of toxic heavy goo from Bellingham.  Leaching into water tables.?

  

  
  4.  Radioactive Waste.  Remember the good old days when you could advertise in the Yellow Pages and accept rad waste from around the world?  Oh, wait, that would be allegedly the 1970's and GP's ads.   Guess where that waste went? Radioactive readings as recent as 2003.    By the way, the Bay agreements prohibit "prospecting" for hidden hot spots of rad waste, dioxin, mercury, furans, etc.  Employees were required to wear radiation badges. One mother who had 5 miscarriages was told her badge was over exposed.  Ask about the NO Prospecting Rule!
• The County Council / Health Board was asked to investigate the radioactive water front.  Cleverly, they hire a Radon expert who consulting with GP, looked MILES away from the waterfront in some abandoned land fills.  Gee, Nothing found! Magic combination of science and cover up by County Council Members. Too bad kids! 

Radioactive waste readings taken by Registered Nurse at Bellingham downtown Waterfront.  Nurse was arrested by Mayor Asmundson for "conspiracy".  Quickly Bailed out by activist  friends.  No release on recognizance.  She was forced to leave town. She wrote a book about how corrupt Bellingham is.

5.  Medical Waste?  GP had huge "Hog Fuel" boilers busy busy day and night turning tons of burnable stuff into heat and air pollution.  200 Tons of  "reported" stuff per day went up the smoke stacks.    The beaches of Bellingham Bay are littered with the unburned bone pieces of thousands of amputees parts, aborted babies, syringes, glass, teeth, etc.  The County Health Director ordered this beach fenced off as a public health risk.  He was soon fired  by County Executive. Think Cesium.  Think bones, teeth, body parts, ashes, vinyl chloride used in hospitals.

6. Toxic waste dumping.  When you are  forced to "clean up a remote toxic waste site near the Port's Airport, where do you  take that tanker truck full of goo to "dispose" of it?   Right, Port property drains.

1970's  Aerial View of Whatcom Creek and GP dumping   toxic goo into the waterway.   Chlorine Gas leaks were a specialty.  

7.  Hexavalent Chromium.  Just when you  think it couldn't get worse?  Hex Chrome is so toxic, it is banned in most countries.  In Bellingham, they mixed it in with drilling mud and/or anti-dust spray made with lignin and spray it around logging roads.  Read  The case alleged contamination of drinking water with hexavalent chromium (also written as "chromium VI", "Cr-VI" or "Cr-6") in the southern California town of Hinkley

8.  Fluoride poisoning.  Aluminum Smelting. Thousands of acres of contamination thanks the Aluminum smelters near Lummi Reservation on the Bay. Look up the lawsuits over all the now un-used lands near Lummi Reservation and Cherry Point.  Contaminated with toxic fluoride.  Wells toxic.

9.  Vinyl Chloride.  When you burn plastic trash you get Vinyl Chloride. A very toxic carcinogen.   Millions of burned up dead tires, mounds of medical waste, burned out salty wood, toxic sludge, rotting wood bark, pulp waste.

10.  Liquefaction of fill in next earthquake..    Why yes, most of the bay is built on either garbage dumps or  fill.  The only reportedly solid ground is the old aeration lagoon site to be made into a Yacht Basin for rich sociopaths.  “Any day now, we are expecting a magnitude 9, magnitude 9.5 earthquake,” said Bernard Housen, associate professor of geology at Western.

11.  Un mapped Coal Mines.  Methane, collapse, tidal flushing, erosion, mercury blasting cap contamination, trapped dead Chinese miners wearing gold money belts, now only  vengeful ghosts. Yes, down town Bellingham and GP site is above a MAZE of abandoned, and largely unmapped coal mines.  Take a minute to find the ones under your site.  Some reportedly run miles out underneath the Bay.

12.  Low Tide Stench. Legendary sulfur smell.  Methane too.  Ask anyone about the famous low tide stench.  A flood of phone calls to 911. Rotting wood waste, sewage, sulfur dioxide and more.

13.  Coal Trains.  They are ARE HERE!  Oil Trains too.  The Highway 9 Transportation Corridors is being used  but all the trains will be going 24/7 on both tracks.  Yes, outside of your new Condo, dusting up your mega yachts.  Blocking traffic to the waterfront every 15 minutes.  The fix is in.  Horns, noise, shaking, blocking traffic, dust, shaking down the bluffs.  All for money!  A forest of Condo For Sale signs have sprouted along Boulevard Ave. Nov 2014.  Will the new Shipping Container Port in Vancouver involve dozens of trains per day rolling through downtown?

14.   N-Gas Power Plant by products, noise, pollution, steam,

Oh, yes.  A HUGE n-GAS pipe line that fed GP and now Encogen is  ready to be snapped by the first liquifaction event/earthquake.  The emergency plan is apparently to FLEE downtown at the first whiff of N-Gas smells.    Expect an expansion of this plant.  Enjoy the noise and cloud of toxic "steam" released to power the local grid and aluminum smelters.

15.  Benzene and PAH's from Whatcom Creek.  Courtesy of the reservoir.  Possible site of another flood of hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline down Whatcom Creek and into the Bay.  The same old rusty pipe carrying explosive gasoline from Cherry Point to SeaTac has never been replaced.    Read about the GIANT Pipeline Explosion on Whatcom Creek.

16.  Tsunami from Lummi Island.  One bad quake, a sloughing of a few million cubic feet of forest into the bay and here it comes...  Ask about how much flood insurance will cost.

17.  Methane from City Garbage Dumps under many of the fill sites is toxic, carcinogenic, explosive, and baaaad for bar-b-queing.  Check out the complaints of methane filling up  the HUUGE new TEchnology Center.  Pave over the dump site and accumulate methane in a large building.  Light up a new legal joint?  Watch the whole thing achieve rapid oxidation.  Other dump sites include the end of Cornwall Ave.  A giant tarp gathers the poison methane to allow the dioxin waste to be distributed over downtown Bellingham.

18.  Middens Ancient Native American Burial Grounds.  Project stopping lawsuits are coming.   Native American Bones and burial sites have already been documented and mapped.  Will your insurer protect you against a protracted multi year lawsuit by local Native groups? 

19.  Furans  Toxic carcinogens, we got em.  Check out GP TRIS reports. Toxic Release Inventory Stats.

20.  Suppressed Dept of Ecology reports.  They know.  Rad waste, Mercury tons and tons, Furans, Sulphur, dioxins,   Their motto:  Don't Ask, Don't Look, Don't Tell.  Oh, yes they happily shred all records.  Ask ex Gov Gregoire what was her role in hiding GP's waste.

21.  Combinations of toxic chemicals. Radioactive Chromium Bones? Dioxin clams, Mercury Furan Salmon, 

22   Views blocked.  When the millionaires in South Hill condos finally figure out their views are about to be blocked by 240 foot tall giant water front condos.  The lawsuits will commence.  Highest bidder - For the Win!  Expect Spot zoning in favor of developers blocking views from all over downtown.

21.  "Knowing endangerment"  by greedy elected Public Officials facing jail time, fines.  They know.  They know and yet they will put your children and grandchildren at risk.   It is illegal for WWU to try to place students on these toxic sites?  Will they be sued?  Is it all for the kick backs?  Why are they shifting liability to unwitting tax payer? You decide.

Will Realtors disclose what they know about hazards they are selling at the waterfront?  Expect big lawsuits.

22.   Tribal Rights lawsuits.  Damage to fishing rights, fishing grounds, tide lands. lack of access, damaged middens, salmon treaties enforced, clean up enforced.  YEARS of litigation awaits.  City forced to cancel extension of Taylor Dock to the North. Blocking Native fishing grounds is considered poor taste.

23.  New Hydroelectric Generator coming.  What is that constant whining noise?  A 6 foot diameter pipe comes from Lake Whatcom to power the new e-plant.  More power lines, transformers. Fun!

24.  Others who have seen the light and RAN away from Bellingham Bay.  NOAA!!, Huxley College, WWU, Foreign Developers, Local Developers.  You are only the latest Great Fool on the sucker list drawn up by the Port and City of Bellingham. Liabilities exceed profit unless you can shift them to the tax payers.

25.  Anecdotal Trivia.

Hog Fuel Boiler.  Roast mercury and hex chromium, burned med waste, tires.

Radioactive Cesium readings. Curious RN's arrested & driven out of town.
No "prospecting" rules written into Waterfront agreements.

The Beach where Gray Whales come to die.

The Bay where Grizzly, Cougar, Terns, Starlings, Heron, Harlequin Ducks, salmon, Chinook, seals, oysters, kelp and others species disapear. The Bay used to be TEEMING with life.
What happens when radioactive readings are reported? Coverup?
Which former Gov was head of DOE while GP was busy dumping.
Hex Chromium contaminated lignin road dust dumping.  Miles of Whatcom County Forest roads may be contaminated already.

Dead human floater in the GP Aeration Lagoon.   Teeth pulled out to try and hide ID.  ID is still a mystery.

Dead reporter found in the bottom of the Tall boiler stack.  Broken leg, pillow made of coat.  Roasted slowly from neighboring boiler. Local Medical Examiner baffled. Youtube video on the murder mystery exists.

GP Manager, quietly dying from GP poisoning.  Ends his life on the BNSF tracks.

Port busy killing all the Caspian Terns.  Destroy nests!  Kill! Kill! Kill! 
Mercury contaminate babies and mothers milk. Nearby Lake Whatcom Bass are too toxic to eat safely.  This is your drinking water. PCB's contaminate fish also.
Radioactive badges worn at GP.  Showing exposure to rad waste.
Mercury filled trench near Encogen Plant.  Backhoe uncovers Hg saturated site. Dig a trench, slowly fills up with dirty mercury.
Coal Mine subsidence in downtown Bellingham. Rail Road Ave.

Near by Smoke Stacks by Squalicum Creek.  Too toxic to close down site?  Kept open to avoid clean up costs?

New 2022 Anecdote. Developers fleeing waterfront due to DOE sending letters say too contaminated? Insiders are making deals with City Hall and the :ort to dump their contaminated lands onto the public.

New 2022  $275 Million dollar (Now BILLION dollar) new sewage plant needed?  Why not build it atop the already contaminated sites.   Prevent kids being exposed to the wastes?

New 2022  Potential reason why few salmon are returning.  Canadian fishermen poaching them all and Washington State took cash from BC Government in lieu of protecting Orcas and salmon? 

New 2023. Murder along Taylor Dock.  Body thrown into Bay.  Shot in the middle of the night. Memorial set up at his favorite spot.

New 2023 Derailment efforts succeed North of Town.  Sabotage of track signaling system.  Will another train derail downtown? 

Perhaps into large natural gas plant, pipelines, tanks at Encogen?

New 2023.  More Barges dumping into the middle of Bellingham Bay.  Contents to wash up on beaches where kids play.  Anything goes as long as it is under some majick volume  500,000 Cubic Yards per dumping? 

New 20223 Lignin waste used for dust control was contaminated with Toxins, dumped on Whatcom Logging Roads to permanently contaminate water tables? Hexavalent Chromium, Mercury?, Rad Waste?  Affecting salmon spawning?

New 2023.  Heron nesting site near Poe's Point downgraded to conditional.  Meaning if they can be poisoned, disturbed, scattered, the nesting site will go up to the highest developer.  Guaranteed to make them unfortunately leave.  By developers hands.

Toxic Tin Statue.  Notice how nothing grows on it?  Look up tri-methyl tin.  Toxic in parts per billion.

New 2023 Ceramics plant too toxic to demolish or sell.  North of Town along water with tall chimney.  Cheaper to hire full time person who does nothing but pretend they are working making product to avoid forced cleanup?

New 2023  Metal Scrap business along waterfront.  More toxic sludge falling into the waters to further wipe out sea life?

Low Tide shell fish slaughter.  Watch Oysters, Clams, Mussels vanish as non-enforcement occurs.

New 2023 Harlequin Ducks.  The Bay used to have rafts of these colorful ducks.  Now you are lucky to see even one.  As stuffed birds for sale on Ebay at $695 each, you can see why WDFW looks the other way.

New 2022  Investigate the term "Mud Flood".  Did a recent liqufaction event get covered up?  Check out photo of Tulip Parade over Cornwall Avenue Bridge.  

New 2022 Will Great Blue Heron nesting site  stay after expanded Sewage plant begins construction? 

New 2022 Bellingham's Great Export Product.   Large rocks.  Trucked through downtown, shipped out on barges for projects needing large rocks.  Very high tech and value added.

New 2022.  Atmospheric River attacks. November 2021 Flooding of Ohio Street car dealerships.  Cars floating away in waters.  Did the City keep the Lake water levels high in order to sell the water for hydro power generation on the waterfront? Resulting in flooding as 4" of rain fell in 24 hours? 

New 2022  Will BC's new Container Port require a second rail line through downtown Bellingham?  Imagine if half of the new volume comes through the waterfront?   Will cars need all new expensive bridging just to get to the contaminated waterfront?

New 2022  Barges hauling toxic waste can dump into the middle of Bellingham Bay, if their total amount is under some magic tonnage.  What is being dumped out in the middle of the bay under the non supervision of DOE and EPA and Bellingham Health Department and WDFW?

New 2022  Oysters are re-appearing near Taylor dock.  

New 2022 Report of at least one major Bellingham Developer busy unloading their contaminated site onto the Port and/or City.

New 2023.  After rain induced flooding in November 0f 2021, the question arises : Was Lake Whatcom Reservoir levels optimized for Encogen power use and allowed major flooding destroy Auto Row and businesses because it was kept high for the profits of some unknown group of business owners. Did taxpayers cough up for this error/decision?

New 2022  What ever happened with the  "No Prospecting" clause to avoid discovering toxic hot spots?

New 2022  What ever happened with HarCourt, the Irish clean up management team?   Who audits their work? 

New 2022 June.  Bank runs reported in China.  Will cash flow into downtown Bellingham from BC? 

New 2023.  New Condos being built.  Who will disclose to the lucky buyers about the Rad Waste, mercury, Dioxin, liquifaction risks?

New 2023. A pod of Orcas reportedly came though the Bay and quickly fled.  No salmon to eat, no seals to eat, toxic waters plus they are smarter than most politicians. 

New 2023.  Train derailments are now common across USA. Will Bellingham get its own toxic train derailment that conveniently explodes with toxic fumes and waste destroying downtown and WWU?

Key to Lovely secrets of  Bellingham Waterfront for potential suckers   investors.

 A.  Ye Olde Aeration lagoon.  Wherein GP would spray its toxic waste into the air shed to contaminate schools and nearby houses.  Deep layer of dioxins, furans, sulfur dioxide, mercury.  Future yacht basin for rich dudes.  Perversely, it is reported to be that most geologically stable / non-filled area.  I.e. plans for a couple marinas here are go go go.  No bonus' involved to Port Officials.  Really.
B.  Old Bellingham Garbage Dump site.  Now laden with Dioxin dredgings under a thin plastic tarp.  Methane will be produced for decades to come to gather into buildings to enhance the health of residents. Children recently photographed playing on tarps, exposed to dioxin and mercury.  Will mounds ignite the methane?
C.  That contaminated ship has been docked here since the 1990's to pretend to dumb people that this is some kind of active port.  The Port proudly proclaims they charge $1000 per day to host the ghost ship   (Update 2022, Ship is now gone)  A rust bucket that rests on the bottom of the channel at low tide and in 2014 ripped the rotten dock into pieces as it tried to escape and crush the marina.   How about a loose rusty freighter crashing into your development at high tide in the next winter storm! Fun!
D.  ENCOGEN Natural Gas power plant.  Producing clouds of toxic "steam" 24/7, noisy, smelly, and able to be expanded at whim.  Accepting water from GP's old water pipe from Lake Whatcom for hydropower?  How much do they pay for this water?
E.  BNSF Rail way.  Coal Cars, Oil Cars, Amtrak, noisy horns, traffic blocking, able to use their right of land condemnation to expand right of way to two, even three tracks. Fun!  A blizzard of For Sales signs have appeared along the tracks in 2014.
F. Numerous abandoned Coal mines.  Some running out under the bay for miles.   Tidal erosion, settling, contaminated mine shafts, dead trapped Chinese coal miners (not minors), we have it all.  Spot all the settlement of land on Railroad and Holly.  Watch the Starbucks building expand its cracked floor!
G. Mercury contaminated Log Pond?   Check it out at low tide.  The smell....the smell.
H. Dig a trench here.  In a few hours it happily floods full of dirty liquid mercury fills trench, lots still left in the ground. Have a nice day.
I.  Ye Olde Port offices.  Port quietly moved out because of contamination and nearby radioactive beach?
J.  Cheapest way to clean up a major toxic waste site?  Put a concrete slab and building on it and sell it to the Port. Methane fills this building from the garbage dump underneath.  Ka Boo M?
K. Site of future noisy electric generation plant.  Hydropower = $$$$ = Insider deals made already.  Encogen Plant up and running.  Pretty murals won't hide the noise or stop the fumes.
L. Whatcom Waterway.  Where hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline from Whatcom Creek explosion can come down and explode.  The old rusty pipes from the big gasoline explosion of June 1999 are still in place, ready to rupture again.
M. Radioactive "pocket beach"  Where gray whales come to die. Quick, drag the body out away where no one can test if for mercury, dioxin, cesium.
N. Whatcom Creek.  Outfall of reservoir. Raw Sewage, benzene, algae, Asian Clams, mercury, homeless park.  However, Bellingham puts on a keeno Michael Jackson Thriller rendition here on Halloween!
O. New, barges operate at night in Nov 2014 and anchor out in the middle of the bay, dumping toxic dredge waste to have it wash ashore all over the Bay in a few years as the cap (if any) erodes.  Hard to see the cloud of sediment when dumped at night.  Looks like innocent fun.  Why hide it?
P.  The choicest, non contaminated sites have been promised to local developers. NOT Ebenal or Trillium or others.  Try to find one local developer/insider who was unhappy with how this waterfront plan was evolved. GP dumps, tax payers pick up the clean up bills, developers get the gravy.   The Bellingham Bay Foundation plan was popular yet it was ignored, sued and all comments from the public were ignored after the system ran them out of time, money and enthusiasm.
Q.  An overwater walkway to "link" Boulevard toxic dump site/park to the new Klipsun/Cornwall toxic dump site/park will NEVER be approved by the Lummi Nation.  Plus, all White City Council plans to steal/borrow $4 million dollars of Greenways funding to create an elevated walkway for kids to get up close to the Dioxin and Mercury site at Cornwall beach  Klipsun Dioxin Beach.
R.  Ask about the two or three barges in November 2014 anchored out in the bay and very busy at night. Benzene?  Contaminated fill.
S.  SECRETS.  The Port Attorney. have an extensive history of hiding all paper work, contracts, studies, etc as ... wait for it.... privileged legal communications not subject to Public Disclosure. This is the policy of  the Port Commissioners.  Secrets! Secrets!   What could they possibly want to hide?

T.  Does anyone own mineral rights under the Waterfront?  Trillium had articles about their ownership of thousands of acres of mineral sites NE of Bellingam.

U.  Bellingham Herald ran a story by local historian Hunsby about the tide waters running in out out of coal mines 80 feet deep under downtown Bellingham.  The intersection of Railroad and Holly has been rebuilt several times due to settling?

Will all of Bellingham down settle  as the tide works its magic every day?

Do you know more trivia on our waterfront?  Put it into a comment below.

Kindly share with any realtor ready to sell condos without full disclosure of the health risks.