Wwp Makes Smart Move To Improve Image
Washington Water Power Co.’s oil spill in the Davenport Hotel district of downtown Spokane has blossomed into a fullblown community relations nightmare.
Since the public became aware of the decade-old leak last year, reaction has progressed from impatience and frustration, to distrust and anger with handling of the whole affair.
As part of a stepped up effort to rid itself of this nagging bad dream, WWP now is hoping a seasoned veteran in community relations can change people’s perceptions.
Taking over the public spotlight is WWP’s own Judy Cole. She will interface directly with business neighbors in the Davenport district and respond to concerns of the broader Spokane community.
This is the smartest move WWP could make to restore integrity to the “remediation” process, and patch up the utility’s tattered public image.
It’s hard to imagine how the company could have botched community relations worse. First, persisting in denial, corporate officialdom minimized the importance of the 10-year-old spill from the utility’s central steam heat plant.
Then, after this failed, WWP higher-ups allowed community relations in the Davenport district to bog down in hairsplitting by engineers.
Disaster.
Cole, on the other hand, is easily the most experienced and credible person at WWP in the area of community interaction.
She is a leader of Vision Spokane. It is an evolving forum in which widely divergent interests can seek a consensus vision of the future that will facilitate project planning, approval, and progress for the good of the overall community.
With that background, Cole sincerely believes she can make a difference. And attitude is all-important in establishing a measure of credibility to the Davenport district cleanup.
Even so, following a recent “neighborhood briefing” of businesses and property owners by Cole, joined by environmental and economic specialists from WWP and a team of newly retained cleanup technologists, the prevailing sentiment was still: Let’s see some real action.
‘I felt the neighborhood briefing and the information we received there were a very good first step,” said Sheri Barnard, former mayor and now adviser to the Davenport’s ownership. “But now, we need results.”
Owners of the long-mothballed grand hotel say that, with environmental degradation of the district hanging over their heads, they cannot secure financing to restore the architectural showpiece.
“According to the cleanup consent decree that WWP signed, the utility has 16 months to decide what to do,” said Barnard. “And then they will have an even longer period yet to actually do the cleanup work.
“But the economics of restoration are such that the owners of the closed hotel cannot continue to sit idly by and wait for years of investigation and cleanup,” said Barnard. “This whole Davenport business district needs attention as quickly as possible.
“Until the immediate area gets a clean bill of health, the owners of the Davenport can’t go ahead with securing financing for full restoration. That’s why we need action.”
Barnard said the chairman of the Davenport’s ownership group, Ronald Wai Choi Ng, is attending to business back home in Hong Kong.
“He is in contact,” she said, “and will return as soon as there is some definitive action.”
Meantime, said Barnard, “Those of us here who represent the hotel liked meeting with those folks at the neighborhood briefing the other day. I was very impressed with the presentations by Dames & Moore (an environmental consulting firm retained by WWP to examine cleanup options).
“Plus, we liked the comments of Peter Kerwien (WWP’s economic development specialist) on redevelopment opportunities in the district.
“And, of course, Judy Cole is a great plus for WWP.
“But we’d also like to see some of the big chiefs at these public meetings from now on as evidence that Judy Cole has their full support, and that we aren’t just spinning our wheels.”
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Frank Bartel The Spokesman-Review