Recently, I had the opportunity to tour the TransAlta facility outside Centralia. For most people, it’s simply another power plant. For me, it is something more. Before it was TransAlta, it was WIDCO. My grandfather worked there in the 1970s. My father spent much of his career there as it transitioned from WIDCO to TransAlta. Like so many families in South Thurston County and North Lewis County, our story is intertwined with that place. It wasn’t simply an employer. It was part of the fabric of our community. Nearly a thousand people held family-wage jobs there. Those paychecks supported local businesses, churches, Little League teams and school districts. In fact, my own Little League team was called the Miners. That’s how deeply the mine was woven into the identity of our community. In communities like Tenino, everyone knew someone whose livelihood depended on the mine.
It helped power our homes. It helped build our towns. It also came with environmental costs.
Many policymakers concluded those costs were too great, leading Washington toward the eventual retirement of coal-fired generation. Whether one agrees with every aspect of that decision or not, the environmental concerns were real and deserved attention. But standing there, looking across 12,000 acres of what was once one of the largest industrial complexes in the Pacific Northwest, I couldn’t help but wonder whether we’ve become better at deciding what should end than at deciding what should come next.
That question has stayed with me. Because I don’t think it’s just a question about TransAlta. It’s a question about Cosmopolis. It’s a question about aging mills, ports, mines, power plants and industrial communities across Washington. Maybe it’s a question our entire country needs to answer better. We need to get better at what comes next.
At one point during the tour, we stood on a hillside overlooking the valley. In one direction sat the TransAlta facility. In the other, across the valley near Skookumchuck, thirty-eight wind turbines slowly turned in the breeze.
Our guide explained that TransAlta has an ownership interest in the Skookumchuck Wind Facility and that the project has exceeded expectations for renewable energy production.
Standing there, I realized I wasn’t looking at two competing visions.
I was looking at transition. One industry wasn’t replacing another. One chapter was being written on top of another. That experience brought my thoughts back to another industrial site I’ve written about recently: the dormant Cosmo Specialty Fibers mill in Cosmopolis.
The circumstances are different. The challenges are different. But the underlying question is remarkably similar.
What becomes of the places that built our communities?
Over the past year, the Cosmopolis mill has become the focus of increasing concern from state and federal regulators. Serious environmental risks have required significant government intervention, including an ongoing EPA-led removal of hazardous chemicals. Those actions are appropriate.
Public safety cannot be compromised; protecting the public must always come first. Our rivers deserve protection. First responders deserve to return home safely after every call. Communities deserve confidence that dangerous industrial sites are being responsibly managed.
Those should never be controversial statements. But neither should another question.
What comes next?
Too often our public conversations become trapped in false choices. Jobs or the environment. Industry or conservation. Economic development or clean energy. We should reject those as the only choices before us.
The word stewardship appears often in public policy. We usually use it when talking about forests, rivers or wildlife. But stewardship applies just as much to communities.
We are called to leave our towns, our infrastructure, our economy and our environment better than we found them. Neglect is not stewardship. Abandonment is not stewardship. Neither is ignoring legitimate environmental concerns.
