A town’s waterfront reflects planning and zoning and how well a community preserves the qualities that make it special.
In Haines, apparently, we like large gravel pads on our waterfront, the natural and cultural history buried under tons of rock and gravel from the bowels of Mount Ripinski. Whatever history you can make of this area is now a large open pad of rock and fill, the envy of WalMart shoppers looking for a parking spot.
Meander over to Front Street and you will notice the old Chilkoot Indian village doesn’t look quite the same either. It has also become industrialized. A new commercial metal building and two giant mounds of fill sit in front of the old clan house. Once there was a beautiful field of fireweed on that lot and now more tailings from the local mountain. The 90-year-old Tlingit woman who has for most of her life lived on that exact spot where her ancestors have lived can no longer look out her window and see the ocean. Does anybody care?
The waterfront’s sterilization is not the fault of the capitalist developers. They do what they do and are good at it. The blame lies on the failure of the governmental planners to provide and protect local neighbors from the industrial onslaught that has occurred over the past two years.
The damage is mostly done. Every day we lose more of who and what we are, becoming a little closer to another truck stop on the road.
Tom Faverty