Western administration has shown an interest in expanding its campus to the Bellingham waterfront. Despite concerns about the environment the buildings would be built on, Western continues to dive into the idea.
Several geological concerns about the waterfront location should be addressed before moving further with planning.
Moving Huxley College of the Environment to the waterfront seems like a good enough idea. It would give students an opportunity to be close to the water, for the marine aspect of the college.
In preparation for this move, Western has developed the waterfront committee to discuss plans for expansion. The committee is composed of members from various Western departments, but until recently, no one from the geology department was on the committee.
The committee has held several forums for students and community members to voice concerns and questions about the possible move.
In case students do not know, geologists can assess whether or not the area contractors are planning to build are safe or not, and they can assess the geologic hazards of a location.
For instance, a geologist could have told the people who paved the road behind the art building that the earth was sliding, and would eventually consume the road. This can be seen where the sidewalk is being consumed by the Sehome Arboretum behind Red Square.
Looking at the fountain when it is filled, students can see that the water level of the fountain is uneven. The level of the water is off because the ground has begun to sink quicker on one side than the other due to the peat in the ground below. Peat can be found in swamps.
Several problems are associated with the waterfront location. One, especially considering the discovery of a new fault line north of Bellingham, the risk of earthquake damage should be assessed. If an earthquake occurred, the bay would experience the most shaking. During strong shaking, sediments, which the waterfront is built on, can liquefy. Because of the unstable soil, the ground can also shift; this is called lateral spreading.
Little is known about the exact composition of the ground under the waterfront, specifically the depth of the bedrock. This makes it difficult to assess the safety of building on top of that land.
Buildings can be constructed on unstable surfaces, but these can be costly and time consuming. More than anything, students do not want to incur more costs, but the administration does not seem to want to wait. Beyond geologic concerns, possible chemical contamination is left over from the Georgia-Pacific plant.
Further research is needed to look into the safety of the environment before deciding where the future Huxley building will end up.
Student safety is probably one of the most important issues for the Western administration, so it should take the concerns of geologists seriously.
Western should also encourage more investigation of the tentative location before moving forward with plans to build.
Western is understandably reaching capacity and great pressure is on the administration to expand campus.
However, Western is closing in on the completion of the Academic Instructional Center, which will lighten the load and give administration time to look at other, safer locations to expand campus.
Western is already built on a bog and a landslide is slowly moving toward an eventual demolition of the art building.
We are not exactly in the best geologic location, but we could try and end this trend by being a bit smarter about future campus locations.
The editorial board is comprised of Editor in Chief Jeff Richards, Managing Editor Shana Keen, Opinion Editor Lisa Hust and Sports Editor Kennedy White.
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