I’m a resident of Centralia. I want a good quality of life in this region not just for us but for the watershed and the salmon habitat.
On Tuesday, July 21, the Centralia City Council moved to lift the moratorium on building warehouses over 250,000 square feet, with the exception of City Councilors Ray Chapman-Wilson and Jan Nontell, who voted no to lifting the moratorium for warehouses over 250,000 square feet.
I am deeply concerned that the environmental degradation and flooding impacts from the project were not even part of the council’s discussion. The Port of Centralia and a corporation called Logistics Property Company (LPC) want to build five more mega-warehouses on the banks of the Chehalis River, near Galvin Road.
One warehouse will be 1 million square feet and all will be very close to banks of the Chehalis River. During Tuesday’s meeting, several citizens spoke out against building these mega-warehouses along the Chehalis River because of the environmental and flooding impacts. The proposed warehouses will cover bare soil with pavement, impacting groundwater recharge so close to our water supply, reduce flood water storage ability, and forever eliminate the potential for enhancing stream habitat on the river’s banks.
Adding substantially more truck traffic in and out of the warehouses will introduce more of the tire-chemical 6PPD-Q, which we know is toxic to adult salmon. Chinook, steelhead, coho and coastal cutthroat trout all rely on this section of the Chehalis River for their habitat.
The state, most recently through the Office of Chehalis Basin, has spent millions of dollars on improving the watershed and the salmon habitat. It is much less expensive to prevent degradation than to try and restore damaged ecosystems.
Adding more buildings in the floodplain when we all know we need to find ways to reduce flood damage makes no sense. Please contact your city council member to say “no” we don’t want warehouses being built near the Chehalis River.
There are other ways we can make money than have mega warehouses and not hurt our ecosystem around us.
Monique Farland
Centralia
