The weather was nice, so I continued my little Saturday afternoon walk north past Point Wells. The south side of the point is a big construction site, since I think this is where they are building the new sewer outfall from the Brightwater Plant in Woodinville. The north side is Chevron's asphalt plant - something it's been for a very long time.
Point Wells is a fairly large cuspate foreland that I suppose may have originally sheltered a marsh or lagoon. The tip, in the vicinity of the piers, seems strangely squared off. Maybe this is the way the landform was always shaped, or maybe it's some sort of response to the piers (or to dredging adjacent to the piers). The southern beach is swash-aligned and very broad. The berm and drift logs are backed by riprap and a big fence, but the beach itself is in remarkably nice shape. I wonder if some of the beach's stability results from the presence of a coarse-gravel bar or ridge out nearer the tip of the point, which appears to act like a low-tide groin? On the north side, the riprap encroaches on the beach and I doubt you could walk all the way around the point at anything greater than a mid-tide.
Someday Chevron will pack up and leave. And once the soils are cleaned up, something else will move in. Maybe it will be condos and a marina. But maybe it could be a regional park, maybe the biggest and best shoreline park between Seattle and Everett, adjacent to one of the most densely populated stretches of the urban corridor. It would be nice to pull back the riprap and the fill at the tip and on the north side, leaving a wide high tide beach all around. There's enough room for a mix of recreational uses and maybe even a little bit of restored wetland or forest. If they need to have condos and businesses, put them back at the base of the hill next to the parking lots. Oh, and then add the trail along the base of the bluff from here to Edmonds...
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