Blast From The Past - How The CAOs Came Together

Some of you may remember Dr. Dr. Kenn Brooks. That's not a typo. I call him Dr. Dr. because he has two doctorates. Brooks was a participant in some CAO-related seminars here a few years ago. He lives in Jefferson County. Brooks challenged much of Ecology's Critical Areas Ordinances (CAOs) and Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) science, and I think we've gleaned enough through our own experiences to know that Brooks was right.

In the email below, we witness Ecology's reaction to Kenn Brooks and other citizens who dare to challenge Ecology (in this specific case, over SMP science, a prelude to our battles to come). It is a typical Ecology reaction, typically organized by Erik Stockdale, to typically malign anyone who confronts Ecology authority, and in typical style it involves way too many public officials discrediting citizens for no apparent reason other than the fact that the citizens are thinking for themselves. Like Delta Force going after terrorists, the Ecology pseudo-science squad deploys to crush independently minded scientists before they spread.

While the email below is about the SMP, Ecology approaches the CAOs and SMP with the same attitude. After all, the CAOs are really just the warm-up act for the SMP. Unlike the SMP, however, Ecology (Gordon White) asserts that the agency has no authority over the CAOs, which is a little puzzling considering they have a whole division of people working on nothing but matters related to it. Fork-tongued Ecology always seems to spend a considerable proportion of time on topics that they profess to have no involvement in. Maybe that's why Stockdale suggests the entire email thread should be deleted.

As a postscript, for a "public" servant Stockdale has an awful lot of conversations that he's thinks should be private. After looking through hundreds of Ecology emails, I wish I had a penny for every instance where Stockdale admonishes, "Please do not forward."
____________________________________________________

From: Stockdale, Erik (ECY) 
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 4:07 PM
To: McMillan, Andy (ECY); Lund, Perry (ECY)
Cc: Hruby, Tom (ECY)
Subject: RE: hola

Andy, I just tried reaching you on your cell. Let¹s talk tomorrow.

Tom, please read this thread from the bottom. Can either Tom or Perry set up a conference call? I can be reached at 206-524-6858. 1pm works well for me.

At some point I think we should all delete this email thread.

Thanks, Erik

From: McMillan, Andy (ECY) 
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 4:03 PM
To: Lund, Perry (ECY); Stockdale, Erik (ECY)
Subject: RE: hola

I am available Friday between 1-3.  I recommend we include Tom in the initial conversation unless you guys think otherwise.

From: Lund, Perry (ECY) 
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 6:51 AM
To: Stockdale, Erik (ECY); McMillan, Andy (ECY)
Subject: RE: hola

I'm in the field today.  Here tomorrow.  I hope you're feeling better, Erik.

---

From: Stockdale, Erik (ECY)
Sent: Wed 3/31/2010 6:38 PM
To: Lund, Perry (ECY); McMillan, Andy (ECY)
Subject: RE: hola

Yes, agreed.

I¹ll be working from home tomorrow as I¹ve got a raging head cold. Are you two available for a phone call? I¹d say let¹s start with the three of us, and Kathy if she¹s available, and then take some suggestions to Gordon.

Thanks, Erik

From: Lund, Perry (ECY) 
Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 4:34 PM
To: McMillan, Andy (ECY); Stockdale, Erik (ECY)
Subject: Re: hola

Thanks, Erik. We should continue this conversation, but it needs to be broader than us. Kathy must be involved, and Gordon had some good ideas. 

Perry J Lund

---

From: McMillan, Andy (ECY) 
To: Stockdale, Erik (ECY) 
Cc: Lund, Perry (ECY) 
Sent: Wed Mar 31 15:51:08 2010
Subject: RE: hola

Erik

I am disappointed to hear what Kenn had to say.  I believe that many of the statements you highlighted are misleading or untrue.

I will be glad to talk with you, Tom , Perry etc. to figure out how we respond.

Andy

From: Stockdale, Erik (ECY) 
Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 1:30 PM
To: McMillan, Andy (ECY)
Cc: Lund, Perry (ECY)
Subject: hola

Hey Andy, hope you are doing OK. You missed an interesting meeting last week. Okay, I lie some times.

We (Gordon, Tom, Paula, Perry, Kathy) met with Ken Brooks, Don Flora et al. in Port Hadlock to discuss the Jefferson County SMP that is before Ecology for review.

He said some stuff that I don¹t think we should leave unanswered. I¹d like to go over what he said, pull in Tom Hruby, and consider setting up a conference call with Ken. Though he says he¹s retired, he keeps popping up in Bellevue, San Juan, Kitsap, and other places.

Some highlights:

-          We ignored Ken¹s supplemental BAS document, and our response was an unscientific diatribe.

-          You told Ken that Ecology didn¹t want to litigate the Jefferson County CAO. ³Andy said let¹s negotiate², implying that his supplemental BAS was a problem for us and we were concerned that we wouldn¹t win and would rather settle.

-          14 references didn¹t support the conclusions made by Ecology.

-          Sheldon et al. was incomplete because we ignored key documents.

-          He hasn¹t seen any scientific rigor in Ecology¹s guidance documents.

-          He¹s appalled by the lack of intellectual rigor and scientific integrity in Ecology¹s work.

-          We haven¹t done our homework, period.

-          There¹s no proof that existing buffers in Jefferson County don¹t work.

-          He wants ³showing of harm² to be rigorous.

-          There¹s no mention of the toxicity of tropalones in wood in our BAS (implying this was a fatal flaw).

-          Terrestrial insects, shade don¹t support salmon in marine shorelines.

-          The role of large woody debris in salmonid ecology is misguided. There isn¹t a tree to be seen in the copper river in Alaska, yet the river teems with salmon. Therefore wood isn¹t necessary.

-          ³Who says that 90% removal of a particular pollutant is what a buffer should be designed for?²

-          ³It¹s incomprehensibleŠ with all the criticism of Ecology¹s so-called peer reviewed BAS that the agency continues to push it on local governments.²

Perry may have other notes of some of his statements.

Am not feeling well and am going to head home to rest. Pls. don¹t forward this email.

Let¹s talk in the near future about a response strategy.

Thanks, Erik

Burning Down the House

Watch out, you might get what you're after. That's a line from the Talking Heads song Burning Down the House. That's how today's hearing on the CAOs went: a bunch of talking heads burning down the house.

In many ways, today's hearing was typical of the standard public participation events occurring throughout the CAOs. We heard from the tribes (the Tulalip). We heard from the Friends multiple times. During public access time we also heard from staff, such as Barbara Rosenkotter who is a County employee serving as the Salmon Lead Entity Coordinator. In customary zoomorphic and theomorphic style, she claimed that she spoke for the salmon who are not able to speak for themselves. I wonder how many salmon know that? We heard from the Common Sense Alliance (CSA), and we heard from CSA supporters too. And oh yeah, I suppose somewhere in there was a non-affiliated person or two, but I honesty couldn't tell you.

We heard the usual environmental hysteria talk. The San Juans are unprotected. The CAOs are the weakest in the state. We have to be more careful with an island. We have to ... we have to ... we have to ... blah blah blah.

Surprisingly, there were some curious parallels between the testimony of the Friends and CSA. Both organizations feel that the CAOs are deeply flawed. The Friends, for example, say the proposed CAOs are the weakest in the state. They say the CAOs amount to no protection at all. Then in the next breath, with no concern for their self-contradiction, the Friends urge the Council to pass the CAOs. That puts the Friends in the peculiar position of openly supporting the passage of laws which they allege do nothing in terms of environmental protection.

CSA also thinks the CAOs do nothing, except place lots of restrictions on homeowners, trap them with incomprehensible formulas and rules, and potentially restrict nearly every aspect of property use.

However, the Friends apparently like the part about abusing homeowners, so they urged the Council not to kick the can down the road to the next Council. Buoyed by such bold encouragement and despite the Council's repudiation during the recent election, the Council members have convinced themselves they are on a mission from God to pass the CAOs. We heard Lovel Pratt today refute the notion that the elections were a referendum on her performance relative to the CAOs. She claimed that she lost the election because she was outspent and because we voters were confused. We heard other self-puffery and deflection from other Council members too. They flattered themselves with their knowledge and hard work on the CAOs.  The bottom line is that this Council is going to pass the CAOs come hell or high water. No more kicking the can down the road.

Kicking the can down the road? The Council fully admits that these CAOs will be appealed to the Growth Management Hearings Board (GMHB). Instead of kicking the can down the road to the next Council, they're kicking the can upstairs to the GMHB.

In written testimony to the Council today, here is how CSA summed up the Council's position relative to the CAOs:

We have supported this Council’s intent not to “kick the can down the road.” However, if Council adopts a seriously defective CAO just to “get 'er done” and satisfy those who keep saying it is taking too long, YOU WILL BE “KICKING THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD” and leaving a toxic mess for our community, by elevating form over substance and failing to properly protect our critical areas, our economy, or our community. Much hard work has been done, and significant progress has been made, but this is not the time for analytical shortcuts or legislative horse-trading. The fundamental defects we have identified are not new – they are not 11th hour delaying tactics. We urge you to keep working to either cure these defects or consider the alternative approach, “A Reasonable Way Forward for the County and the CAO Process” submitted by CSA on September 10, 2012.

But in typical fashion, the County isn't listening.



P.S. Don't miss Nick Power's article in the Island Guardian because we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Their Finger Is On The Button

As we approach the final hearings on the CAO (tomorrow 10:45 am), I feel it is an appropriate time to reacquaint ourselves with our vision statement from our Comprehensive Plan. As was noted in a comment to an earlier post, the preamble says:

WE THE PEOPLE of San Juan County recognize that these rural islands are an extraordinary treasure of natural beauty and abundance, and that independence, privacy and personal freedom are values prized by islanders. Being a diverse people bound together by these shared values, we declare our commitment to work towards this vision of the San Juan Islands in 2020 A.D.

The rest is pretty good too. Read it at this link, and judge for yourself whether we are living up to our common vision.

After you do that, reflect on the miserable quality of the scientific deliberations for the CAOs. Reflect on the baseless, blind ambition to invade islanders' privacy. Reflect on what the CAO restrictions will do to our sustainability, our self-reliance, our independence, and our personal freedom.

One of my favorite Facebook pages goes by the enthusiastic but somewhat improper name of "I Fucking Love Science", which is often abbreviated IFLS. I'll leave you with some of the posters and cartoons from IFLS that have particular resonance with the CAOs.

Okay, this last one is from the Economist, not IFLS.  We may not be Greece exactly, but have you seen the County's debt or the growth of its expenditures while we have frittered away time on the CAOs?