THE NORTHWEST
Along March Point on Washington's Fidalgo Island, where three generations of the March family let their sheep out to graze on bucolic farm land, there are now Shell and Texaco refineries and there will soon be a $15 million Lone Star Cement plant. Near by, at sleepy Port Townsend, Crown Zellerbach has built a pulp mill.
Throughout the entire Puget Sound area, stretching 140 miles from Tacoma through Seattle, Everett and Bellingham to the Canadian border, the land where settlers thought they had found a paradise, with sheltered waterways on the front step and mountains in the backyard, is bursting with new indus try. Already, natives are dubbing it Pugetopolis. Said Washington Governor Daniel Evans last week: "In our state's history, the present expansion is second in significance only to that during the gold rush of 1898."
On Stream. On the coast north of Bellingham, the first molten aluminum was tapped last week from the pots of the new $135 million Intalco plant, which will be the third biggest aluminum-producing plant in the world when its three potlines are on stream. The owners of Intalco— American Metal Climax, Howmet and France's Pechiney Co.—were attracted by cheap, abundant power from the Bonneville grid, cheap land, sheltered deep water and fine living for employees.
Farther south, around Seattle, Boeing's huge $3 billion backlog of orders means a $250 million expansion this year and 35,000 new jobs.
Intalco and Boeing are only two of the manifestations of Pugetopolis—and many Pugetopolitans are now worried about whether, in the process of industrialization, their paradise will be lost. "How can our state grow with grace?" asks Governor Evans. "We have been the beneficiaries of time and space. We have not suffered the silt and smoke of overindustrialization—yet. We have not succeeded in completely obliterating the beauty of our countryside or polluting our waters—yet. But time, which has been on our side, is rapidly running out."
Bird Cover. Some of the companies creating Pugetopolis are showing considerable conscience. On its 1,200 acres, Intalco has planted bird cover, posted the lands for hunting, leased ground cheaply to neighboring farmers and, where possible, kept the cherished fruit orchards. Its buildings are painted an inconspicuous earthy green and buff. Near Intalco, at a $50 million refinery, Mobil has built in a system for the bacteriological destruction of poisonous phenols, so that wastes discharged into Georgia Strait are not harmful to sea life. Every year Mobil surveys alternately the health of sea and plant life and the health of oyster and clam beds in tidal waters.
Governor Evans has created Design for Washington, Inc., to find ways of preventing the inevitable growth from botching up the landscape. An agency called Seattle Metro has been most successful in checking water pollution around Seattle. But Washington's laws on the whole are not yet ready for the boom. Around Bellingham there are no zoning or pollution regulations. Whether or not the coast remains a paradise is, for the moment at least, up to the esthetic sense of industry.