Public Comment - Exhibit A
From: Alexa Fay To: Commission-Public-Records Subject: [EXTERNAL] Public Comment - Port Commission Meeting Date: Sunday, July 25, 2021 4:08:42 PM WARNING: External email. Links or attachments may be unsafe. Greetings, My name is Alexa Fay and I am writing in regards to cruise restarting. I am hoping to sign up to give public comment at this Tuesday's meeting, but would also like to submit a written comment in the chance I am not able to make it to the meeting. I am a registered nurse working in Seattle. Re-opening the Port to cruise ships is a public health disaster. We are still in a pandemic, and cruise ships have the capacity to spread COVID-19 throughout the ports they stop at. Though passengers on ships may be vaccinated, many in port communities may not be vaccinated and it increases their risk to COVID-19. Furthermore, particulate matter, while also being incredibly harmful to the environment and human health, have been shown to spread COVID-19. Many scientists, organizations, and news sources have brought awareness to the fact that we are in a climate emergency. Cruise ships create noise pollution that harms orcas and whales, emit carcinogens that harm our respiratory systems, and release huge amounts of greenhouse gases. It is not logical for us to continue to operate as business as usual, when the health of our planet and our people depend on our communities to stop burning fossil fuels. The economic cost of the climate crisis is huge: from increased hospitalization rates, the cost of mitigating our shorelines and infrastructure, and funding jobs and technology that will stop further acceleration of the crisis. It's estimated that Washington alone will need to fund $24B to mitigate climate risks. Why waste more money now accelerating our crisis, when we can use our energy to begin changing the tide. I am curious why the Port of Seattle, who is the "greenest port in North America", would consider re-starting cruise ships as well as expanding our airport and cruise terminals, when it would be deadly to Seattle citizens and to the planet. Thank you and kind regards, Alexa Fay Commission-Public-Records From: Payne, Aubree Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2021 12:15 PM To: Commission-Public-Records Subject: Port Commission Notes - The Edgewater From: Tracee CahillSent: Tuesday, July 27, 2021 10:31 AM To: Courtney, Rosie Cc: Steven Marais Subject: [EXTERNAL] Port Commission Notes - The Edgewater WARNING: External email. Links or attachments may be unsafe. Per Steven Marais, Noble House Corporate Director of Rooms and Acting General Manager, The Edgewater Hotel: We are one of the preferred hotels with a prime location to the terminal compared to other hotels and are the preferred when guests are trying to stay before cruising. Additionally, we do benefit from foot traffic when guests want to dine after/before their cruise at the Six Seven Restaurant & Lounge. Our guests love seeing the cruise ships embark on a journey from their room or during their dinner. The visual of cruise ships entering our harbor create euphoria of how popular the travel industry is in the Pacific North West not only for our guests, but also our associates. It truly is remarkable and makes us put our hospitality hats on to prepare to welcome the influx of guests. More than ever, the reintroduction of cruise ships in the harbor this year has created a sense of normality for the summer. Tracee Cahill Regional Director of Marketing 600 6th Street S, Kirkland, WA 98033 (c) 858-395-5440 tcahill@noblehousehotels.com 1 2 From: Patrick McKee To: Commission-Public-Records Subject: [EXTERNAL] PUBLIC COMMENT for July 27, 2021 Date: Tuesday, July 27, 2021 7:51:35 AM WARNING: External email. Links or attachments may be unsafe. Commissioners - Energy and Sustainability Committee Co-Chairs Steinbrueck and Bowman have informed us "our weather is changing"; their recommendation is to plant trees. Commissioners, please. If hot weather is, as you tell us, "a wake up call", why isn't the Port waking up? It's been calculated that the carbon emissions from cruise ships and the jet travel that brings passengers to and from Seattle produce an annual GHG output equal to 1/3 that of the entire City of Seattle. Global heating is an emergency we have to face right now. Non-essential business as usual is one place to start. Before cruises resume we need you to show us the plan to convert to clean cruising practices that won't cook our climate, won't imperil marine life in the Salish Sea, won't dump sewage and plastic into our oceans, won't impact coastal communities with particulate pollution. One small immediate step? Require ships that sail from the State of Washington to the State of Alaska to be flagged in the United States, subject to U.S. labor practices, environmental regulations, taxation. Remember taxes? That's where we'll have to look for the money to mitigate the damage this industry is causing. Then, sure - let's plant some trees. Trees are good. Thank you for your time, Patrick McKee Mercer Island, WA 323.336.3651 From: Georgetown OpenSpace To: Commission-Public-Records Subject: [EXTERNAL] Gateway Park North Date: Tuesday, July 27, 2021 11:55:00 AM WARNING: External email. Links or attachments may be unsafe. Dear Port of Seattle, I wish to make a public written comment supporting Gateway Park North and advocate for the Port's continued efforts towards park construction. We as a small community have several asks, including regular workgroup meetings with all agencies once again, written memos to accompany any agency presentations to community groups, community representation at each meeting moving forward, and coordinated monthly updates on the project. SDOT has confirmed that the Port must complete the in-water work for SDOT to move forward with the 2nd phase of conveyance swales on 8th ave. We hope the Commissioner's can support this project going into the next phase. The Georgetown community has advocate d for over 40 years to have river access. We appreciate all the work the Port of Seattle has done so far and we look forward to finishing this project in the very near future. Thank you, The Georgetown Open Space Committee Chair, Rosario-Maria Medina From: Bonnie Miller To: Commission-Public-Records Subject: [EXTERNAL] Cruise Restarting Date: Saturday, July 24, 2021 8:18:21 AM WARNING: External email. Links or attachments may be unsafe. Dear Port Commission: I have watched and read about the Port's expansion and the so-called environmental sensitivity supposedly included. Building a huge parking lot in a natural area to encourage more commuters to come to work at the Port is twisted thinking. Hold the Line! Cruise ships create all kinds of harmful pollution--noise pollution impacting our orca and whale populations, toxic emissions of carcinogens and particulate matter that impact human health or even cause early death, and large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions worsening the climate crisis. The global pandemic continues Even if all on board are vaccinated, the communities where cruise ships dock may not be. Particulate matter, like that emitted by ship smokestacks, was found to spread the virus. Communities near air pollution sources were found to be hit harder, experience worse symptoms, hospitalizations, and deaths. The economic impact to communities from cruise ships have been found to be highly inflated by numerous studies. With shopping malls and discounted meals on the ships, very little is spent in local stores and restaurants. The money brought in by traditional tourists who stay in hotels and do all their activities in town is much higher. Workers on board cruise ships often make very low wages, work long hours, and lack labor law protections. Last year when outbreaks of COVID-19 happened, 10's of thousands of workers were stranded on the ships for months after guests were evacuated, often while not receiving any pay, some even taking their own lives. While workers were not being paid, cruise company CEO's made millions, more even in 2020 than in 2019. Cruise ships choose not to register their business in the US to avoid paying taxes, avoid labor laws and avoid environmental regulations--how does supporting the cruise ship industry fit into the Port of Seattle's equity goals? The Port of Seattle claims it wants to be "the greenest port in North America'', yet it still wants to build an additional cruise ship terminal (and expand the airport and expand/deepen our harbor to accommodate the world's biggest cargo ships). The port always brings up shore power in response to the argument that we shouldn't be expanding fossil fuel intensive industry while the climate crisis continues, and scientists give us less than 10 years to kick our fossil fuel addiction shore power only reduces the total greenhouse gas impact from a roundtrip voyage by less than 1%! Expansion = Extinction Sincerely, Bonnie Miller 900 University Street Apt 15BC Seattle, WA 98101-1730 206-922-2780
Limitations of Translatable Documents
PDF files are created with text and images are placed at an exact position on a page of a fixed size.
Web pages are fluid in nature, and the exact positioning of PDF text creates presentation problems.
PDFs that are full page graphics, or scanned pages are generally unable to be made accessible, In these cases, viewing whatever plain text could be extracted is the only alternative.