1

Paul R. Murphy

From: Paul R. Murphy <ah2wa@hughes.net>Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 2:09 AMTo: 'Doug Chadwick'; kmede@whatcomcounty.us; rbonsen@whatcomcounty.us;

jvanloo@whatcomcounty.us; 'Spencer Kope'Subject: Fresh trails @ Gulf Rd.

I was poking around the end of Gulf Rd. last week, checking on one of my projects: Vince Jones, BCSmuggling, Inc. and found a freshly cut trail, west into the tree line roughly halfway between HenryRd and Gulf Rd. on Powder Plant Rd. Bonsen, Van Loo and I later trekked in to see where it went andfound that it went all the way to a creek bed ravine about ¼ mile in (north westerly) through heavybrush. It terminates at a swampy looking ravine, in an area where the heavily treed canopy opens upa bit. It all appeared to be freshly cut and appeared to have taken considerable effort to do so, butwe couldn’t identify the purpose of it at the time. To me, it had the feel of being somethinghaphazard and illicit, but I’m hard pressed to say what the purpose would be.

I was in the same area tonight doing an area check and found 2 more of these trails not far from thefirst one. While I was there, I met up with one of the refinery security patrols, Shane Walls, andasked him about the trails. Walls tells me that they also discovered the trails, about 6-8 total, andthey don’t know what to make of them either. Walls tells me that they have verified that the trails arenot geological, survey or pipeline related and that neither of the large plants knows why they weremade either. Walls also told me that they found 1 trail that terminates just short of the US CoastGuard station off Cherry Point and speculated that perhaps it may have been intended as a backaccess to that area for reasons unknown at this time.

Shane told me that their security office has already notified the refinery and aluminum plants andthat DHS has also been advised of the discovery by USCG personnel. As it’s already been reportedand up-channeled to DHS, I didn’t see any point in creating a duplicate report for our alreadyplentiful archive of useless paper.

No further action is required of us at this time and this is primarily an FYI to keep an eye on thingsout there until the purpose of those trails can be identified.

Murphy

Regards,

P. R. Murphy360-920-4020email: ah2wa@hughes.netMSN live IM: Murph147@hotmail.com