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