The Friends Owed It To Us

There's a line in the movie Caddyshack where Ted Knight's character says to one of the caddies:

I've sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn't want to do it, but I felt I owed it to them.

Taking a cue from Judge Smails, the Friends of the San Juans today appealed our newly adopted CAOs to the Growth Management Hearings Board (GMHB). They didn't want to do it, but the Friends feel they owe it to us, despite what Stephanie Buffum said as she stood before the Council just two months ago (November 27, 2012):

It's time to finish the CAO. You've got a roadmap. You've had many wonderful comments that have been provided to you. It's unlikely that the next two groups of decision makers sitting in your seats over the next five months will be able to complete more than the previous three councils before you. It's time to finish the CAO. It's time to stop the financial hemorrhage. It's time to stop the conflict. It's time to complete and create certainty for our community. Certainty is good for our economy and our environment.

How is filing an appeal before the GMHB consistent with any of the words spoken by Buffum? It isn't. If the Friends felt the CAOs were so inadequate as to require a GMHB appeal, why did the Friends stridently urge approval? Besides, weren't the Friends (such as Janet Alderton) advocates for some of the more complex and inscrutable aspects of the CAOs?

Who knows what game the Friends are really playing, but it isn't protection of the environment. They just like to mess with people. Pass the CAOs, so we can appeal. Got a B&B CUP permit? ...  we'll oppose that. Want to grow blueberries on your own property? ... we can manufacture a situation where that's illegal too. We're the Friends. We can do anything. We sit on all the important committees. We're the lifeblood of the Network. And we'll get taxpayer money (grants) to mess with you too. Just try to stop us.

From what we've observed, the Friends seem not to be an environmental organization so much as they seem to be professional bullies, and they want our County government to devote all its energy towards aiding and abetting their harassment mission.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Friends, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a County of all its CAOs which it maketh under the GMA? There is no remembrance of former things. All the committees run into the Network; yet the Network is not full: unto the place from whence the CAO come, thither they return again.

Here's the press release the Friends sent out today.
_____________________________________________________________

The FRIENDS of the San Juans has appealed the Critical Areas Ordinance update that San Juan County adopted in December 2012. 

The FRIENDS press release on the appeal to the Growth Managment Board (Board) states the " filed the appeal in an effort to stem the steady, incremental and cumulative degradation of local waters and wildlife. Eelgrass disappeared from 82 acres of embayments between 1995 and 2004. Puget Sound Chinook salmon, Southern Resident Killer Whale and sea bird populations continue to decline. Shoreline trees and shrubs that deliver insects to salmon, and tidal marshes that provide them homes, have also declined significantly over the years."

“Unfortunately, this is the next step,” stated Kyle Loring, FRIENDS’ Staff Attorney. “We see litigation as a last resort, but when seven years and several different processes result in an ordinance riddled with loopholes, like shoreline buffers as small as 30 feet from spawning beaches when other counties seek 150 feet, we feel compelled to turn to the Growth Management Hearings Board for guidance.”

San Olson, President of FRIENDS’ Board of Directors, stated, “We are picking up where experts like the Washington Department of Ecology, locally-affiliated Tribes, and the County’s Marine Resources Committee left off. Each of them offered recommendations to ensure that the CAO protects critical areas, unfortunately many of their recommendations were rejected. FRIENDS’ board is concerned that if we do not challenge the CAO provisions we believe are inadequate, San Juan County would lower the bar for ourselves and those Puget Sound counties just now starting their second round of CAO updates.” 

The Wages of Sin — Awards from the PSP!

Everyone by now should know about the troubled history of the Puget Sound Partnership (PSP). It's the organization that was earmark-funded by Congressman Norm Dicks while it was headed by his son David. Even after stepping down as its head, David Dicks is still on the PSP's Leadership Council. In addition, the PSP Leadership Council was formerly chaired by San Juan County's own William Ruckelshaus while at the same time his daughter Mary served as the PSP's Chief Scientist. Makes you wonder if the PSP had a pro-nepotism policy.

The money dealings involving Norm Dicks and the PSP were so shady that the organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) gave Dicks "dishonorable mention" as one of the most corrupt members of Congress earlier this year.

Over the last few posts, we've seen Stephanie Buffum, Tina Whitman, Barbara Rosenkotter, and others conspire with one another about public meetings or plan secret meetings to altogether avoid public scrutiny of public information. We've seen them create and defend pathetically bad data which falsely incriminates and hectors innocent landowners.

How fitting it is, then, to have the corruption-haunted PSP recognize these same people as "Puget Sound Champions." And Linda Lyshall (remember, she was copied on the emails about secret meetings) is kind enough to announce the awards via email. In the photo below, Buffum, Whitman, and Rosenkotter are standing just behind two of the four plaques (the two plaques on the left).

They're champions alright — champions in the same vein as Lance Armstrong. 
_________________________________________

From: Linda Lyshall <lindal@sanjuanco.com>

Subject: FW: San Juan Champions Photo

Date: August 23, 2012 8:53:36 AM PDT

To: Linda Lyshall <lindal@sanjuanco.com>

Dear IC and AOC,

I’ve attached a photo of the San Juan Puget Sound Champion award winners. Congratulations to the members of our Implementation Committee: Stephanie Buffum, Alan Chapman, Kit Rawson, and Barbara Rosenkotter, for well-deserved recognition. Tony Wright and Diana Gale from the Puget Sound Partnership gave out the awards yesterday at our San Juan LIO meeting.

Linda

Thanks, But We Believe The Friends More Than You!

Suppose you come from an old island family, and you've lived on your property for decades. You have photos of your beach going back 100+ years.

Now suppose that the County identifies "shoreline armoring" on your beach, which the County characterizes as a potential ecological hazard to fish. The trouble is that you don't have any shoreline armoring on your beach, and you don't know what the County is talking about.

So you write to the County to try to set matters straight, but the reply you receive from the County essentially says, "Sorry, but the Friends have mapped shoreline armoring on your property, and I really can't correct the data now that it's in the database."

Thank you for your comments and pictures. The County was not involved in collecting the shoreline modification data used in the Inventory and Characterization Report shoreline modification maps. The dataset was collected by the Friends of the San Juan’s and subsequently passed along to the Department of Ecology to be used in the Washington Coastal Atlas.

Many of the datasets used in the Inventory and Characterization Report were developed by organizations other than the County, including the National Marine Fisheries, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Native Tribes, Department of Ecology and others.

In order to be consistent with the state law, the County collected available information for inclusion in the Inventory and Characterization Report. That said, the County is not precluded from considering anecdotal evidence and your letters and pictures are part of the record that the Planning Commission and Council will consider when evaluating the merits of the updated Shoreline Master Program.

I relayed your concerns to the data providers and they have reaffirmed their original finding. I’ve attached a copy of an email I received from Tina Whitman of the Friends of the San Juan’s. Ms. Whitman, I understand played an active role in the collection of the data.

Without a site visit, I cannot determine the accuracy of this data point.

Please submit your comments to colinm@sanjuanco.com or to the mailing address above.

Thank you for your time and commitment to SMP update process.

Well, thank you very much indeed!  We (the County) believe Tina Whitman and not you, but thanks all the same. We think your homeowner information stretching back decades is anecdotal, but the Friends information is science.

Want to guess what all the fuss is about? I'm sure you've seen old piles of field stones that dot the pastures in these islands. Settlers used to pile rocks during land clearing to make the land easier to work. Many of these piles can still be seen around the county. It just so happens that in the case described above, an old pile of field stone was placed on the upper part of a beach instead of in a field. Roll forward about 100 years or so and along come the Friends, and they map the old rock pile as a "shoreline modification" ... a pile of field stone that's probably over a century old ... and is in rather shabby condition to boot.

See for yourself.  The homeowners are in disbelief (as is the Trojan Heron).
____________________________________________________________

From: Tina Whitman [mailto:tina@sanjuans.org]
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2012 3:28 PM
To: Colin Maycock
Cc: Stephanie Buffum
Subject: modification inventory question

Hi Colin,

Per your request I reviewed the tax parcel number you sent me in our 2009 shoreline modification inventory ARC GIS geodatabase. 

The attached document shows:

Pg. 1) tax parcel (red dot), armor line from modification inventory (red line), as well as the location of the two photos (black dot and purple triangle);

Pg. 2) the county’s vertical aerial photographs from 2008 with the rockery in question circled in red; and

Pgs. 3) and 4) the two project photos taken at the time of the boat based survey, in June of 2009. 

Our project mapped all shoreline armoring (hardening) greater than 5 feet in shoreline length.  The rock fill at the base of and along that section of bank met that criteria and as a result were mapped.  I don’t know if it has been since been removed, or if it’s a difference of opinion regarding more typical ‘bulkheads’ (the definitions of which vary widely depending on your discipline and region of the country and world)  versus ‘armoring’, but the photos indicate the presence of placed rock in 2008 (san juan county’s vertical aerials) and 2009 (modification inventory field photos).

Regards,

Tina

Tina Whitman, MS

Science Director

Friends of the San Juans

P.O. Box 1344 Friday Harbor, WA 98250

(360) 378-2319 www.sanjuans.org