The Mean Girls Of San Juan-istan

In the movie Mean Girls, a homeschooled girl (coincidentally named Cady Heron) returns home to America after living with her zoologist parents in Africa for 12 years. She enters public high school and discovers a clique-ish world of girl-on-girl cattiness that is more vicious than any predator she may have encountered in Africa.

In the gender-neutral style of modern America, our San Juan County Mean Girls encompass both men and women, and they are proud of themselves. You can find the rantings of our Plastics on County news outlets. It is difficult for us to comment on recent web-fits by Kivisto, Dehlendorf, Azous, and Rosenfeld since we are not fluent in gibberish, but we can say that they almost always discredit themselves with self-styled hypocrisy. Kivisto, for example, has editorialized in the past about civility (or lack of it) and then pitched a pencil-throwing tantrum at a public meeting. In her most recent piece, Kivisto ridicules the legitimate fear that citizens feel while she simultaneously plugs draconian retaliatory enforcement. Azous gets in on the act too, applauding Kivisto, but we have heard of several islanders who will never let Azous near their property again because of what she has done to them. Rosenfeld opines about fictitious big-money Republican PACs even though the Democratically-endorsed candidates in this election have raised over $68,000. And Dehlendorf ... well ... the only thing that comes to mind when reading Dehlendorf is Aesop's fable about the Ass in the Lion's Skin.

And the fact that our local Mean Girls are ranting recently about blogs and cached web pages emphasizes how bereft of content our local news coverage has become. Like the CAOs themselves, our County news outlets are filled with pages and pages of content-less mean-spiritedness hidden behind phony talk of community and environmental protection. Real stories about island people and the workings of County government are ignored.

The Mean Girls from our islands feel the County is being abused by its citizens rather than the other way around. The "law is the law," we hear them say. They want land-use violators punished ... severely ... and they want as many land-use laws as they can get. Makes you wonder what sort of eco-planning-sharia laws they would put in place if there were no opposition? Have you ever heard them exercise self-restraint? How far would they go? When is the last time we heard any of the Mean Girls say, "Oh, I think that law or enforcement action goes too far?"

There will always be Mean Girls in our midst, but do we want to continue letting them run the place?

"And I was like, 'Why are you so obsessed with me?'"

The Latest "Shaddup You Face" Message

From the online "news" that appears to resemble the unofficial CDPD blog at times comes the latest high-minded "Shaddup You Face" scolding. For all we know, it might be part of the "misinformation" messaging launched by the County.

Since there is so much talk about personal attacks and denigration, let's review some recent personal attacks and denigrations:

• Shireene Hale refers to the public's participation in the recent Planning Commission meetings as "awful".
• SLM (Stan Matthews) says people should "seek counseling" if they don't understand the County's old "joke" sign about lethal force.
• Erik Stockdale of Ecology emails a Council member to characterize as "belligerent treatment" a citizen who simply disagreed with Dr. Adamus over the Mayer paper.

But getting back to Kivisto's article, what exactly is she referring to when she says?

Outside agitators are invited to meetings to distort facts and stir up citizens. They appear on talk shows in Seattle to spread lies about the county. Edited YouTube videos perpetuate the lies.

How can someone "invite" outside agitators? If you're invited, you're a guest, are you not? Lies? She actually uses the word "lies"? Name them. The article depends so much on vague innuendo that we cannot really be certain what it's talking about. By "outside agitators" does she mean the Friends? Most of the Friends' money comes from outside the County. Maybe the passage is referring to them.

The Kivisto article is long on accusations without any attribution or mention of fact checking. As such, it resembles agitprop that fans the flames while yelling not to fan the flames. She is pouring gas on a fire she is partly responsible for kindling.

Where was Kivisto's concern for the truth during official testimony about the CAOs? What about the hordes of outsiders from Ecology, consultants, and the Puget Sound Partnership? Does she have any concerns there? Think about some of the official CAO testimony of County officials and consultants in light of the following. In Washington State:

To sustain a finding of common law fraud, the trial court in most cases must make findings of fact as to each of the nine elements of fraud. Howell v. Kraft, 10 Wash. App. 266, 517 P.2d 203 (1973). Those elements generally are: (1) a representation of an existing fact, (2) its materiality, (3) its falsity, (4) the speaker's knowledge of its falsity or ignorance of its truth, (5) his intent that it should be acted on by the person to whom it is made, (6) ignorance of its falsity on the part of the person to whom it is made, (7) the latter's reliance on the truth of the representation, (8) his right to rely upon it, and (9) his consequent damage." (Pedersen v. Bibioff, 64 Wn. App. 710, 828 P.2d 1113 (1992))

If the population is upset, then Pete Rose and the Council should consider the likely causes. I don't think they have to look much farther than their own offices, and maybe some house cleaning would be in order.

Or maybe all this messaging is a just another manufactured crisis to generate support for more revenue via the proposed sales tax increase (0.078 to 0.081). After all, the stated reasons for the increase are:

The San Juan County council desires to provide residents with the level of services, equipment and facilities in the areas of criminal justice and public safety to maintain a safe and strong community.

The Problem - Fallacy, Bureaucratic Dreams, Compulsion

A few days ago, Sharon Kivisto wrote a brief article revealing "the problem" with our local environment. She's not the first one to do so. Back in February 2011, San Olson of the Friends wrote a letter to the Island Guardian where he concluded that the problem was "all around us." (Also, see previous post about Friends and (In)Credible Data).

Sharon's thesis relies in large part on the local 303d water quality reports done by the Department of Ecology. That, in itself, is not a problem, and in fact, I often advocate using the 303d and 305b reports (which are requirements of the Clean Water Act) as one line of evidence regarding our environmental quality.  It is true that the 303d reports identify some of our waters as impaired:  there are 11 instances, out of 378 database entries, showing that some of our waterways are "impaired." Of the 11 impairments, 7 are because of fecal coliform; we also have two of our marine waters listed for low dissolved oxygen levels; and lastly, we have two waterways listed for two different reasons: Mountain Lake in Moran State Park for PCBs and Horseshoe Lake on Blakely for phosporous.  Yes, you read that right. Mountain Lake in Moran State Park is identified as one of our nation's most impaired waterways because of PCBs. More on that in a moment. Let's examine these results by group.

Let's start with fecal coliform, which is one of the most widespread forms of pollution in the US. Contributing sources for fecal coliform pollution include humans, pets, livestock, and wildlife. Without knowing the relative contributions of each source, it is impossible to determine an appropriate remedy. For all we know, the source of the high fecal coliform levels may be wildlife sources. One way we could distinguish the sources from one another would be to perform genetic tests on the coliform bacteria. Even so, the 303d coliform data itself is somewhat suspect. The 303d listing was based primarily on data that is 10 years old or more, and the more recent data (2003) is accompanied by the admonition that these data "may not meet minimum data requirements of Ecology WQP 1-11." In other words, the data quality for coliform is questionable, and what doesn't explicitly fail state data quality standards, is old.

Moving on to dissolved oxygen (DO), low DO was measured in East Sound and San Juan Channel. It may have an anthropogenic cause, but then again, Ecology's notes for the 303d report do not clearly point the finger to humans. In 2004, the evaluation for East Sound even said:

These excursions beyond the criterion are a natural condition with no direct human-caused influence due to natural variations in the marine environment, based on the 11/03 judgment of Jan Newton (Dept. of Ecology).

However, by 2008, a different Ecology employee opined that human factors may be influencing the results and further analysis was warranted. Yes, further analysis is warranted, in my opinion, especially because the 303d DO screening level used for the San Juans is 40% higher (i.e., more strict) than the DO criterion used for saltwaters elsewhere, making "failure" here more likely.  In the San Juans, the criteria used was 7 mg/L of DO, which is 2 mg/L higher than the saltwater aquatic life criterion set by EPA in other places (e.g., Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras, 2000). And the sample sizes used in the DO analyses were very small. We don't know enough about the statistics of these small data sets (e.g., the mean, standard deviation) to properly evaluate the confidence limits of the data relative to any screening criterion. In short, it is impossible to say whether there is a DO problem, statistically speaking, and the data interpreters at Ecology do not seem to be able to point to a clear cause for any problem.

Now, let's look at the reports of contamination at Mountain and Horseshoe Lakes. Both of these lakes are situated in protected areas without any nearby development. The 303d note for Horseshoe Lake cites a study by Ecology (Welch, et al, 1992) from their "Lake Restoration Program." If you look up that report, you will notice that the Horseshoe Lake in that report is in Clark County. Based on that, it appears as if the 303d report for Horseshoe Lake in Clark County erroneously found its way into our 303d report for Horseshoe Lake on Blakley Island in San Juan County. It's very likely that there never has been a water quality issue at our Horseshoe Lake, and the 303d listing for us is just a case of bureaucratic confusion and mistaken identity.

As for the PCBs in Mountain Lake, the notes in the 303d report indicate that the sample was taken from the tissue of a kokanee salmon in 2004. PCBs are deposited atmospherically, like many pollutants, so it is possible that air-deposited PCBs are accumulating in the tissues of Mountain Lake kokanee. However, hatchery raised kokanee are stocked into both Cascade Lake and Mountain Lake, and hatchery fish have been known to carry PCBs into the ecosystem from the hatchery. I would not be surprised if the tested Mountain Lake kokanee was a hatchery-raised fish that had picked up PCB contamination at the hatchery, similar to what happened at Icicle Creek in Chelan County.

As for other arguments made by Sharon, she points out that the number of species of concern for the Salish Sea increased by 23 over the past two years. However, the term "Salish Sea" was only approved by the U.S. Geographic Board of Names in late 2009 and Canada didn't approve it until 2010.  It is, therefore, not surprising if data are still being compiled and correlated to this new geographic designation. The additional species listings may reflect circumstances related to the change in geographic nomenclature and categorization rather than species decline. The Salish Sea encompasses a huge area, from Desolation Sound to Oakland Bay, so re-categorization is likely to take a while to sort out.  Also, given a population of about 6 million people in this vast region, our 16,000-strong County represents 0.3% of the potential human contribution to Salish Sea anthropogenic issues.

Sharon's article also contains several fallacious arguments. For example, she quotes Gaydos as saying, "nearly 60% of the bird species and 30% of the mammals that need the Salish Sea also require terrestrial resources to survive, illustrating the intimate link between the land and sea and the need to conserve both." In saying this, Sharon is implying a post hoc fallacy in reverse: that avoiding further conservation measures here will prevent Salish Sea species from obtaining the terrestrial resources they need to survive. That's a flawed argument based on false premises, and it's like saying that if we prevent the rooster from crowing, we will stop the sun from rising.

In sum, the discussion of "here is the problem", whether it has been advanced by Sharon Kivisto, the Friends, consultants, or various government representatives, has been mostly kettle logic: using multiple inconsistent arguments to defend a position.

The problem isn't the environment. It is flawed logic and the deceptive exploitation of environmental claims to advance bureaucratic dreams, self interest, and compulsion. It's the unjustifiable smugness of people who feel they know more than you do, giving them the right to tell you how to live.