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Complicated federal permitting process again delays Commercial Fishing Homeport
The long-promised Homeport dock for Gig Harbor’s commercial fishermen will be delayed another year after the federal government denied Gig Harbor’s third permitting attempt.
The city now projects construction won’t start until July 2026. It has to wait to begin construction until a new “fish window” — the short window of time any aquatic projects will be least disruptive to marine life — begins.
The homeport has been in the works since shortly after the city bought the dock area in 2012. The plan is to create a floating dock that can accommodate 17 commercial fishing boats, each measuring between 60 and 70 feet. The dock would be at Ancich Waterfront Park, adjacent to the Community Paddler’s Dock.
The main obstacle to successful permitting lies in the city’s proposed mitigation measures, which continue to fall short of changing federal metrics.
However, this is not necessarily unusual.
Washington uses a permitting application called a Joint Aquatic Resources Permitting Application (JARPA). JARPA is meant to streamline the permitting process and allow people and municipalities to apply for multiple permits that they would otherwise have to apply for individually at each involved agency.
But this doesn’t mean permitting is a one-and-done deal — the permit application just exists to make the process a little easier and more coherent. Per the official aquatic permitting application’s website: “Agencies may require more information not specifically required in JARPA. It is not until they start the review process that they can find out what other information they need to make a decision about your permit.”
The process so far
Several federal agencies are involved in the ongoing permitting process: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Each agency has stipulations that the city must meet.
The Corps of Engineers started working with the city on its JARPA application in late 2023. The Corps and NMFS suggested a variety of mitigation options for the city. The city addressed the suggested mitigations and submitted the plan for review to Fish and Wildlife.
But Fish and Wildlife found issues with the plan, which the department detailed in a letter to the city and Corps of Engineers in June.
Fish and Wildlife Service letter by vince.dice on Scribd
The original plan seemed feasible, but the best science has since changed, City Administrator Katrina Knutson said in an email.
City Public Works Director Jeff Langhelm also pointed out in an email that federal agencies have seen heavy personnel turnover. The city “continues to work with new staff at the federal agencies on each new version of the mitigation plan and also are hearing new responses from the federal agencies to each new version of the mitigation plan the city submits to the federal agencies,” Langhelm wrote.
The city has publicly pointed to recent staffing cuts and retirements at the federal level as a partial reason for delayed plans.
Original plans
The city has submitted three mitigation plans since embarking on the project, most recently in 2024. In addition to removing the creosote-ridden Jerkovich Pier and restoring a degraded Maritime Pier stormwater outfall, this version of the plan called for planting three acres of two kinds of kelp — Saccharina and Gracilaria — in two areas of nearby waters, including in the txʷaalqəł Estuary. The planting would replace kelp in the area where the city plans to build the floating homeport dock.
The plan identified seven potential acres for kelp-planting. However, the plan also stated that the project requires just under three acres of kelp be planted in what it deemed “worse case scenarios.”
Conservation easements would protect the kelp planting areas from development for 20 years. Conservation easements are voluntary legal agreements that limit the use of land or water to protect it.
The city also proposed monitoring the plantings for three years, as well as an additional, unspecified period of time, if the plantings fail or fall below 50% of their original coverage.a three-year monitoring period for the plantings. If the plantings fail or fall below 50% of what is known as “submerged aquatic vegetation” coverage within the monitoring period, the city proposed “additional monitoring and rectification.” The period of time for monitoring was unspecified in the plan, as was the additional rectification.
Last year, the NMFS tentatively approved replanting kelp, or financially supporting another environmental restoration project in the area that would offset the disruption the construction of the dock will cause.
This latter practice involves buying Conservation Credits, and represents an in-kind exchange. It cannot be done after the fact. The city must find an equally sized area for which it will fund a restoration before getting the permitting green light.
Conservation Credits
The mitigation plan states that the city would have to buy 503 Conservation Credits to cover the area it is trying to change. On paper, that’s easy — until you get to practice. It is harder to find an equally sized area of marine waters than it is of fresh water, Langhelm said. The Corps of Engineers said that it could not help the city find an appropriate area.
Equally challenging is that the federal agencies have recently said that the kelp-planting strategy is not going to work, according to the latest science. Current science does not necessarily support the idea that planting these specific kinds of kelp elsewhere will mean the kelp will take and grow. It could very well just die.
In its June letter to the city and the Army Corps, Fish and Wildlife wrote that the proposed construction “will have unavoidable permanent or long-term impacts to nearshore marine shoreline(s), shore zone(s), intertidal and subtidal habitats, and submerged aquatic vegetation.”
The city’s proposed restoration would only partially offset these impacts, Fish and Wildlife said. The federal agency added that “it appears to us that the City does not have a plan for offsets or mitigation that meets all of the [Corp of Engineers’] related Clean Water Act … requirements or performance standards that guide the delivery of predictable, reliable, durable, and resilient mitigation.”
Fish and Wildlife suggested that the city and Corps of Engineers go back to the drawing board and refine the mitigation proposal.
“So,” Langhelm said on a recent visit to the site, “where we are now is, we’re not giving up, but we’re like, ‘Okay, we’re back to the drawing board.”
Environment, heritage and identity
Guy Hoppen, a commercial fisherman who has advocated for the Homeport since 2013, said that nowhere else in the area “offers the necessary protection and the necessary zoning to accommodate the Homeport.”
“Nowhere else south of Seattle, or arguably anywhere in Puget Sound, is commercial fishing heritage and use so integral to a community’s historic built environment, cultural heritage and identity,” Hoppen said.
Hoppen believes that all of this, as well as community history and heritage, should factor into an agency’s determination. He said that while he understands that the agencies “hold all the cards,” he doesn’t understand why they are holding up the permitting process.
“The designated Homeport site is not located on a pristine ocean beach or even the more lightly used beaches of western Pierce County or South Puget Sound,” Hoppen said in an email. “The Homeport is proposed on a historic fishing family property in a uniquely protected harbor that has been home to commercial fishermen and their boats for 150 years.”
Hoppen also said that Homeport represents a significant source of revenue for the city, deeming it the “rare City project projected to pay for itself.”
In 2020, the city projected that Homeport would bring in revenue from what is known as “transient” moorage — temporary docking for other boaters while fishermen are out fishing — and commercial moorage.
“The city estimated that based solely on moorage revenues paid by the commercial fishing vessels at the Homeport, the Homeport project would be paid for in just under 50 years,” Langhelm said in an email. “The costs for calculating the return on investment include the annual operations and maintenance costs that will likely be incurred by the city.”
Escalating costs
Langhelm said that the city will once again have to pay for its consultant, Marine Surveys & Assessment (MSA), to come up with yet a fourth version of a mitigation plan — and “all of that costs a lot of money.”
Langhelm said mitigation plans have so far cost $86,76, and that yet another mitigation plan — which will cost “tens of thousands of dollars,” Langhelm said — has not yet been invoiced.
Added to all of that is the increasing cost of labor and construction materials, which the city also has to account for.
While both normally climb in cost every year, tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump have significantly increased the prices for important imported construction materials, well over what would be expected in a normal year-over-year cost increase.
The Homeport project calls for galvanized steel pilings and aluminum framing. In June, Trump slapped a 50% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports, doubling the 25% tariff he had originally imposed on these materials. The tariffs apply to all countries except the United Kingdom.
The original construction costs, which saw their last update in 2022, don’t account for this.
“The United States does receive quite a bit of building materials, such as timber, steel, ingredients for cement from our neighbors to the north,” Knutson said in an interview. “And so, as those tariffs go on and increase those costs, we do expect that those will increase, not only for everyone else, but for city projects as well.”
‘Holding pattern’
Knutson followed up in an email to further explain that though the city cannot predict market conditions resulting from a “rapidly shifting landscape and global trade policies, including changes to tariffs and material sourcing regulations, the last time tariffs were a significant market factor in 2018, the city did experience increased costs associated with construction projects.
“The city makes every effort to monitor these developments and works to build flexibility into its budgets and project timelines where possible,” she continued. “However, fluctuations in material costs and availability remain outside the city’s control.”
“We have increased costs. We’re nowhere near approval with the federal agencies,” Langhelm said. “So, we are in a holding pattern until we can get a mitigation plan that’s acceptable, and then we can figure out how much mitigation is going to cost us, and how much is construction going to cost us.”
Knutson said that city staff are still in the midst of analyzing the permitting requirements.
While all of these factors make it difficult to properly estimate exactly how much the project will cost, Langhelm said that the project is currently budgeted at $3.5 million, which includes a little wiggle room for cost increases. However, he said, the city is preparing to update the estimate, once the mitigation plan is established.
Funding sources
The money for the project comes from varied sources, including the city’s commercial fishermen, who are giving $200,000 towards the project. A majority of the funding comes from Real Estate Excise Tax (REET). The city is also planning to use $150,000 from from the Port of Tacoma’s Local Economic Development Investment Fund. The deadline to use the port money is June 2027.
The city also previously sought $1 million in capital funds from the state for the project, Knutson said, in order to free up city funds for other purposes. However, they were unsuccessful.