Catching Up (Again) - Ethics and PSSA's

As usual, there has been a lot going on, and my thanks to commenters who keep abreast of information even when I am unable to post. Here are a few recent items of particular note:

• David Dehlendorf and Friends Attorney Kyle Loring raised a stink about the fact that three Common Sense Alliance (CSA) Board members sit on the Planning Commission. Dehlenloring alleged that it was a conflict of interest since CSA is opposing the County's draft of the Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO) in court. Loring even said that the conflict was so obvious that it was "Ethics 101." If it is Ethics 101, then Dehlendorf and Loring are late to class.
  
  Unlike the Friends, CSA has never received a penny from the County and never voted to give itself grant funding. Unlike the Friends, CSA is a relative newcomer to County advisory committees. In fact, when Mike Carlson of CSA was appointed to the Planning Commission, he replaced Mike Kaill, former President of the Friends Board. Kaill's tenure on the Planning Commission coincided with the Friends opposition (including lawsuits) of the County's guesthouse legislation. Where were Dehlenloring's concerns about ethics then? Or ... when Susan Dehlendorf took a "straw poll" of Planning Commissioners regarding the CAO last year, where were the concerns about ethics?
  
  Ethics 101? It seems more like Ethics-ish 101. When Dehlenloring are interested in ethics for everybody instead of simply using the name of ethics as a tool to advance their own interests, then we're more likely to pay attention. By the way, our Prosecuting Attorney reviewed the issue and twice produced a written opinion saying there is no conflict. The Planning Commission is only an advisory body to the Council, and as such, no conflict exists.

• By now, most people have probably heard that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been armoring the beach at Watmough Bay, one of the most beloved pocket beaches in all the islands ... and certainly one of the most beloved beaches on Lopez Island. There are several incredible ironies about this story, which we will cover in greater detail in an upcoming post. First, the hard armoring isn't even protecting any structures. Second, despite all the meetings with BLM officials over the past few months about local outreach and involvement, apparently no locals knew the hard armoring project was in the works. Third, the BLM produced an Environmental Assessment of the proposed work which led to a "Finding of No Significant Impact" (FONSI). Think about that for a moment ... the federal government armored a beach in the National Monument and there are no significant impacts, and yet the Friends oppose nearly every dock and armoring project on the grounds that there are environmental impacts. Fourth, one of the contractors involved in the Watmough Bay project, Coastal Geologic Services, is the Friends "go to" consultant whenever the Friends oppose docks and armoring. It's hard to believe the Friends didn't know about the Watmough Bay project ahead of time ... and yet they said nothing, even as they opposed other armoring projects elsewhere and opposed the expansion of the Islander Resort on Fisherman Bay too. There are more ironies, but ... we'll cover them in the upcoming full post.

• Speaking of the Friends, they're at it again. One of the key strategies of the Friends is to take local issues and link them to national and international affairs, so that we become subsumed into a global matrix of restrictions based on the pretense of "local protection." Case in point was Stephanie Buffum signing a treaty to protect the Salish Sea last March. As we've seen, the Friends' megalomania becomes especially virulent when it comes into contact with grant money. Below is an email from ex-CDPD employee Elizabeth Anderson talking to the usual suspects ... Barbara Rosenkotter and Stephanie Buffum ... about (wait for it) a grant to designate our waters a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area (PSSA). I know ... yet another acronym. It never ends. Some of you may remember Elizabeth Anderson, whose employment with CDPD was justified by (you guessed it) a grant, and who was put in charge of writing a County Solid Waste Management Plan during the collapse of the County's solid waste management system. Her time here could not have been more fruitless and pointless.
  
  Now she is touting another "brilliant program."

__________________________________________________

From: Elizabeth Anderson

To: Barbara Rosenkotter

Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2013 11:53:00 -0700

Subject: Fwd: Oil Spill Prevention - Addition to today's discussion

Attachment(s): 1

OOPS! I forgot to copy you on this.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Elizabeth Anderson <ebanderson12@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 11:52 AM
Subject: Re: Oil Spill Prevention - Addition to today's discussion
To: Stephanie Buffum <stephanie@sanjuans.org>

Stephanie - this is a brilliant program with a high degree of probability of success in preventing oil spills. However, it does not fit the NTA where I had notes that you would provide some further milestones. I attach the revised table thus far.  The only red letters are under SD 1B, where I thought you had more to add.  It may be fine as-is.

Do I need to add anything from yesterday's IC discussion?

Thanks, 

Elizabeth

On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Stephanie Buffum <stephanie@sanjuans.org> wrote:

The purpose of the Particularly Sensitive Sea Area (PSSA) for the Salish Sea Feasibility Study is to investigate the possible benefits and costs of enhancing the management regime  of the areas surrounding the shipping lanes surrounding the San Juan Island National Monument, through the creation of an internationally mandated Particularly Sensitive Sea Area for the Salish Sea. This potential designation can only be achieved if the area is particularly sensitive (in ecological and cultural terms) and the existing regulatory regime does not adequately protect it. Whilst such PSSA designations have been recognized in other parts of the United States and the international community, they have not been considered in the context of the highly vulnerable Salish Sea.

Goal: 

To communicate to the Salish Sea populace, including organizations, business, Tribes and First Nations and government, what important ecological and cultural values are present in the Salish Sea, their fragility, and how they will be negatively impacted upon if the risk of vessel traffic in this area is not adequately managed, as it is in other part of the United States, and similarly, within the international community. Simply, we wish to show the gaps in our regulatory protection of the Salish Sea, and an existing tool can be applied to fix this problem, to the benefit of both the ecology and the surrounding communities.

Objectives:

1.     To provide a principle campaign tool for protecting marine waters.

2.     To educate the public about what is at stake if large scale shipping traffic of potentially hazardous cargo, is not adequately regulated.

3.     To show how adequate management has been achieved in comparable areas with similar risks to the Salish Sea.

4.     To empower local groups, including Tribes and First Nations, eco-tourism operators with information for their own campaigns to protect the Salish Sea, and to learn from the experience of other communities facing similar difficulties

5.     To develop “new evidence” to bring to any review process.

6.     To provide an Alternative, which has been successfully adopted elsewhere,  to reduce the risk of an oil spill in the Salish Sea.

Audience and campaign

The audience is the general population of the Salish Sea. The request for designation will require Washington State Tribes and Canadian First Nations, federal, provincial, state and local leaders and public officials to support this designation. Key business leaders and ngo organizations in British Columbia and the US, principally within Washington State, will be essential for cultivating support for these two proposals separately in the US and in Canada. 

Cost: $35,000 for Feasibility Report. Gap: $25,000

$90,000 for full nomination in the US and Canada, conference, materials. Gap: $90,000

Iceberg Government

Who runs this County? Is it the people we elect? Sometimes it's hard to tell.

Many of the posts on this blog present evidence of how this County operates. We've shown emails of public officials and contractors conspiring to avoid public participation. We've seen State officials tell whopping lies. We have accounts from former citizen-committee members about being led around by the nose by staff and consultants.  We've watched consultants dodge questions and ignore evidence contradictory to their recommendations. We continue to hear double-talk, such as the State contending it has no authority over the CAOs yet the Council uses them as a scare tactic. Latest case in point, we currently hear some existing Council members saying that they have to pass the CAOs otherwise the State will slap a building moratorium on us.

A building moratorium? For what? As a penalty for all the horrible pollution here?

Threats. Sometimes our government seems to be nothing more than a network of bullies insisting that the public be ignored. Along those lines, the latest veiled threat from the Friends came out in the past few days. You can read Kyle Loring's buzzword-laden diatribe here, which combines several environmental themes shotgun style in an effort to strike a chord with the public on something ... anything. Having trouble getting traction on your CAO position?  Mix in a little coal outrage and re-launch.

Let's look at one of Loring's CAO comments:

San Juan County is on the verge of adopting one of the weakest critical areas ordinances in the Puget Sound region. The ordinance’s buffers are designed to allow 40 percent of all local pollution into our streams, lakes, and seas.

This is akin to saying we have the weakest air pollution laws in the region because 100% of our air is allowed to flow unfiltered into our lungs and homes. It's like saying that we have the weakest food laws in the region because we are allowed to eat 100% of the produce from our gardens. We have some of the weakest standards for public responsibility in the region because we let our grant-funded local environmental non-profits baldly misinform and conspire against us.

When our local smoking-gunners can't rely on authenticated facts or sound logic, they rely on their network to back them up. That brings us to "iceberg government," which is the term I've coined for the unseen people and organizations who really wield power here. They drown out and "out-consensus" the views that conflict with their bureaucratic self-interests. They freeze out the public good.

As a summa graduate of Bowdoin, Loring might claim some familiarity with icebergs (Bowdoin alums are known as "polar bears"), and he might even claim some experience with environmental truth. Here's a clip from Bowdoin's Kent Island Research Station from 1998.

Kyle Loring ('98) conducted an experiment to test whether false eye-spots taped to the back of a hard hat truly deter Herring Gulls from dive-bombing. To my surprise, after exposing himself to daily systematic walks through the gull colony, he found no difference in the frequency of attacks or the number of direct hits with or without eye-spots -- it appears that we may have been fooling ourselves into thinking that the eye-spots conferred some protection. He did document, however, that most attacks come from behind (60%) or the side (35%) vs. the front.

Maybe his research gave Loring insight into how to conduct attacks regarding the CAOs (i.e., approach issues obliquely, from behind or from the side, not head on), but I prefer to think that it might offer a clue as to why Loring's arguments customarily lack cogency (too many blows to the head?).
____________________________________________________

What's a Puppet Master to Do?

Stephanie Buffum is learning that the life of puppet master isn't the life of leisure that it's cracked up to be ... what with all the County employees needing constant TLC to advance the Friends agenda from the inside. It's work rigging public meetings.

Below is yet another email between Stephanie Buffum of the Friends and Barbara Rosenkotter, Salmon Recovery Lead for our County. Recall that Buffum and Rosenkotter have a special relationship (aka Stephanie Rosenkotter), even sharing rants where they liken themselves to Ghandi, Rosa Parks, and MLK.

In the email below, Buffum is informing Rosenkotter of her selection to run an upcoming County SMP meeting (now make it so Barbara). Buffum's preferred speaker is unavailable, so she is resigned to the inevitability of having to make do with Colin Maycock who is, after all, on "our team" as Buffum puts it. Remember, Colin Maycock is nominally in charge of the County SMP update, but it doesn't seem like he's de facto in charge from the looks of this email.

Why don't we stop pretending and just include the Friends on the County organizational chart as the County Department of Natural Resources, which has been an ambition of Stephanie Buffum's for years anyway. The Friends already have a more direct line of authority to some staff than either the Council or the Administrator.

Note: We don't know who "Tim" and "Bob" are referring to in the email below, but we suspect Bob Fritzen of Ecology. There are several possibilities for Tim, including Tim Beechie of NOAA, Tim Strickler of the PSP, or Tim Quinn of WDFW/PSP ... maybe even Tim Hyatt of the Skagit River Cooperative or Tim Trohimovich of Futurewise ... or Tim Gates of the Washington Department of Commerce. But we admit that we don't know, but maybe one of you does.

From: Stephanie Buffum [mailto:stephanie@sanjuans.org]
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2011 1:29 PM
To: Barbara Rosenkotter
Subject: Feb 24 - SMP speaker

Hi Barbara,

I spoke with Tim in detail on Wed. He is sympathetic and overwhelmed with his new position which now also includes Watershed Lead for Thurston County.

After much discussion, we determined that Colin would be the best person, with Bob being back up in the back of the room. I saw Colin’s most recent SMP presentation to the county council and with some minor tweaks to make it fit 15 minutes I am confident that it would be fine. Especially if Bob is in the room as back up for questions. Since this is only an SMP appetizer I think this will work fine with our limited timeline.   Tim was going to be talking with Colin yesterday at the SMP coordination meeting for planners in Olympia. I asked if he would provide some extra tlc to Colin. He may not be Tim, but he’s on our team and we need to do what we can to make the most out of his skill set. I would be happy to meet with him and refine his presentation with him. He’s going to have to improve his public speaking and there’s no time like the present.  

So, it seems like it may make the most sense for you to approach Colin and Bob.  I am getting prepared for our BIG meeting on Monday and a bit stressed for time this next week.

I look forward to meeting on Monday 2/14 at your office to refine the agenda.

Stephanie Buffum Field

FRIENDS OF THE SAN JUANS

Executive Director

360. 378.2319 office

360.472.0404 cell

Stephanie@sanjuans.org

Data by the Back Door

We know the County is looking for an ecological "smoking gun" that can be used against all of us for the CAOs and SMP. We know the Friends have a propensity for "compiling data" on individual citizens (to put it mildly) so they can persecute them. If you're interested in eco-framing everyone in the County using bad ecological data, who ya gonna call?

Below are a series of emails regarding County shoreline data. It mentions the Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) update, but the same information is being used for the Fish & Wildlife Habitat CAO. These and other emails reveal the Friends and their friends as some of the puppet masters of County data. Data enters the County GIS/data system with the deliberate intent to avoid any public participation or independent third-party review.

The parties involved in the emails below are Stephanie Buffum and Tina Whitman of the Friends; Amanda Azous, Land Bank Commissioner and one of the consultant authors of the County's Best Available Science (BAS) synthesis; and the cc's include Linda Lyshall, Marine Resources Committee (MRC) Coordinator; Steve Revella, MRC Chair; and Jose Carrasquero, another BAS and SMP consultant from Herrera. Colin Maycock is the County planner in charge of the SMP update.

As Tina Whitman says ... fyi ...
___________________________________________________

From: Tina Whitman [mailto:tina@sanjuans.org]
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2012 11:05 AM
To: Linda Lyshall; 'Steve Revella'
Subject: FW: SMP San Juan data stakeholder meeting

fyi

From: Tina Whitman [mailto:tina@sanjuans.org]
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2012 11:04 AM
To: 'Amanda Azous'
Cc: 'Stephanie Buffum'; 'mrc@sanjuanco.com'
Subject: RE: SMP San Juan data stakeholder meeting

Thanks Amanda,

I totally agree that a face to face meeting is the best tool to help all of us gain a better understanding of what potential changes could be made, using existing data, to address concerns of the mrc, fsj and the tac and improve our support of the inventorty document.

I appreciate your willingness to do this.

-tina

From: Amanda Azous [mailto:aazous@herrerainc.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2012 10:02 AM
To: Tina Whitman
Cc: Stephanie Buffum; mrc@sanjuanco.com
Subject: RE: SMP San Juan data stakeholder meeting

Hi Tina,

I am working on making this meeting happen outside of the County’s public participation plan, which means it must be a private meeting and not on the County’s budget. I think that is the only way to get a constructive dialogue going. I hope to know within the next few days if Herrera can do this, and have the meeting on San Juan Island (I think that would be best). I would really like to resolve these important issues or at least all leave with a better understanding of why certain decisions were made and what should be fixed where needed. I think we all want the same thing which is for the County to be able to move forward to update its SMP and prevent further degradation of our County’s shoreline and nearshore environment. I don’t have Steve Revella’s email but have copied the general MRC email.

Thank-you for your patience in this matter,

Amanda

AMANDA AZOUS

Science Associate

direct 206.787.8251 | cell 206.920.8044 | main 206.441.9080

2200 Sixth Avenue Suite 1100 Seattle, WA 98121

Find Herrera online at: www.herrerainc.com

This electronic transmission may contain privileged and/or confidential information intended only for the recipient(s) named.  If you have received this message in error, please delete it from your system without copying it, and please notify me by reply electronic mail.  Thank you.

SEATTLE, WA | PORTLAND, OR | MISSOULA, MT | OLYMPIA, WA | WINTHROP, WA | GUANGZHOU, CHINA

From: Tina Whitman [mailto:tina@sanjuans.org]
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 10:56 AM
To: 'Colin Maycock'; 'Stephanie Buffum'; Amanda Azous; Jose Carrasquero
Subject: RE: SMP San Juan data stakeholder meeting

Thanks colin,

From my perspective, it would be a gathering of the SMP team (consultants, staff and your tac), with representatives (small number of for efficiency) from the MRC, the lead entity, and FSJ (these groups selected for their familiarity with local data sets and ongoing concerns over current inventory framework), to discuss specific concerns over current integration of existing shoreline data sets, with a goal towards improving everyone’s understanding of the current inventory’s analytical approach and improving representation of existing data into the inventory to end up with a document that better supports next phases of the SMP.

From my own review of the document, as well as communication with tac, salmon recovery and other MRC members, I believe that face to face communication and discussion could help facilitate some changes to the inventory that would make those of us most familiar with local shoreline data sets and their ability to inform management of key processes, species and habitats much more comfortable moving forward. 

As you are aware, the formal public comment process doesn’t support the kind of interactive conversation we feel would be most productive; however, it has been the only tool available to date.

Thanks.  I look forward to working with you all.

Regard

tina

From: Colin Maycock [mailto:Colinm@sanjuanco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 9:11 AM
To: Stephanie Buffum; Amanda Azous; Tina Whitman; Jose Carrasquero
Subject: RE: SMP San Juan data stakeholder meeting

Hey There,

Before going any further, what exactly are you trying to achieve with this proposed public meeting? Is there a specific result you expect?

Respectfully,

Colin

Colin Maycock, AICP

Planner IV

San Juan County Community Development and Planning

PO Box 947, Friday Harbor, WA

98250

Phone: 360-370-7573

Email: colinm@sanjuanco.com

From: Stephanie Buffum [mailto:stephanie@sanjuans.org]
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2012 4:56 PM
To: 'Amanda Azous'; 'Tina Whitman'; 'Jose Carrasquero'; Colin Maycock
Subject: SMP San Juan data stakeholder meeting

Hi Amanda, et all:

I think there is a much larger group of people besides ourselves that would like time in front of the consultants so that we can be better informed about the application of local data in the SMP. These groups include: the MRC, the Salmon Lead Entity, members of the SMP technical review team, the PSP/San Juan Initiative, Skagit Systems Cooperative and Kurt Fresh. 

We believe that such a meeting is essential in ensuring we have a credible SMP Characterization Report. We believe that this meeting should be in San Juan County, but since this is an SMP product and DOE is a part of this process,  Padilla Bay may be a good travel neutral location for all interested parties.

I would be willing to look into the availability of the facility if we can get agreement that this meeting is necessary for the good of the order. 

Stephanie

Stephanie Buffum Field

Executive Director

FRIENDS OF THE SAN JUANS

POB 1344 Friday Harbor, WA  98250

360. 378.2319 office

360.472.0404 cell

Stephanie@sanjuans.org

Countdown to CAOmageddon: Flaw #61 - County Mixins'

For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, "mixins" is what some ice cream shops call the toppings (peanuts, M&Ms, etc.) that a customer can choose to have "mixed in" with their ice cream scoop. However, it might also refer to the modus operandi of our various County officials.

As we saw in the last post, despite the fact that our Auditor is an independently-elected public official, and instead of exercising independent discretion with respect to the economic consequences of Council activities (e.g., the CAOs), she has gone out of her way to put forward Council views on the CAO. From my view, our Auditor has become a participant in the process rather than an independent evaluator of facts.

And that brings us to the lawsuit filed by the Citizens Alliance for Property Rights (CAPR) against the County over the CAO process. The lawsuit alleges two causes of action:

• Meetings (of the CAO Implementation Committee) were held without notice or minutes and closed to the public.
• The County's continuing failure to comply with the requirements of the Growth Management Act (including its public participation requirements) must be enjoined.

One of the difficulties to be worked out on the lawsuit is the status of our Prosecutor's office. Our Prosecuting Attorney is charged with defending the lawsuit; however, a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, Jon Cain, was a standing member of the CAO Implementation Committee. There is a potential conflict, and the Prosecuting Attorney might be called as a witness.

Regardless of how that is worked out, the participation of the Deputy Prosecutor in months (if not years) of meetings as an apparent participant in a legislative committee, just serves to further illustrate the "mixins" that are part of our local government. It seems like one more example of group think instead of independence of mind.

Despite the fact that three Council members have been named in a lawsuit regarding the CAOs and the CAO process, the Council appears determined to continue moving ahead with its approval of the CAOs. It would come as no surprise if we were to learn that everyone were of one mind about that.

No More "Shaddup You Face"

Joe Dolce may not be a name familiar to most of you, but back in the 1980s, he had a hit song which parodied the kind of civility he learned from his Italian mother. Having had some experience with that variety of civility myself, I have named it "Shaddup You Face" civility. It is, of course, based on the premise that if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.

Some from our community have begun a public lament over declining civility. However Beatitude-like their sermons, bear in mind that when "they" are pleading for a return to civility, they really just want us to be quiet and conform. They want a return to "Shaddup You Face" civility:  the bogus civility that has existed around here for a long time.

There is nothing more uncivil than silence while our community is being taken away from us.

Civil discourse must be organized around the central principle of fair, open, and honest debate. Since debates are discussions between opposing views, they necessarily involve advocating for one's own view while critiquing an opponent's. For me, the ideal is British parliament, which outshines American political discourse in nearly every respect. Whatever failings the British political system might have, their civil discourse is raucous and brutally honest. We need more of that. Civil discourse shouldn't be a synonym for being vacuously "nice", "kind", "sweet", or "agreeable". It should be substantive and must often involve a requisite amount of uncomfortable bluntness. Civil discourse is speaking one's mind without resorting to ad hominem attacks.

Far from a decline in civility, I feel our community is having a re-birth of civil discourse. From my perspective, these islands have languished somewhere between a one-party political state and suspended animation for several years. A much larger cross-section of the island populace is now engaged and participating in political discussion. Unfortunately, the new voices are receiving push back from those who thought they knew and controlled this community. It turns out they probably didn't.

I hope the emerging civil discourse continues to blossom. Honestly, I do not think there is any way to put the genie back in the bottle anyway.

As for those advocating for a return to civility, I think they need to examine the civility of the system that brought us to this state of affairs. When I hear laments about our County's supposed loss of civility; when I hear County officials claim they've been personally attacked when they've simply been disagreed with; when I hear sentimental pubic appeals for "community" while many of those same people privately work to divide, punish, control, and abuse; then like some Italian mothers I know, all I can think of is, "Che cavolo stai dicendo?"

How Many Ecology Employees Does It Take ...

Recent public records requests show the flurry of activity at Ecology when the Charles Dalton video surfaced. Ecology prepared a powerpoint presentation. They blogged about about the video. At one point, they had as many as 11 staff at all levels involved with developing a response. Eleven people! And what did Ecology's response say?  Well, in part, it said that Ecology had no authority in the matter at hand.

"We don’t have regulatory authority in local critical areas ordinance issues. We don’t make rulings or issue enforcement actions under local critical areas ordinances. Those tasks are on local government turf" (Gordon White, Eco-Connect Blog, Feburary 14, 2012.)

All that PR effort for a situation where they claim to have no authority?  The email below is just one example of the many emails related to this matter.  You can see there are eight people, including senior managers, involved in just one email.

The real question is why Ecology cares about their image in the first place. They're regulators, not movie stars. Yet, they have a blog, a Facebook page, and they seem to have a surfeit of "communications" staff.  Are they communications staff or publicists?

From: Anderson, Paul S. (ECY)
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 2:02 PM
To: Skipper, Katie (ECY)
Cc: Altose, Larry (ECY); Hart, Curt (ECY); Tallent, Geoff (ECY); Stockdale, Erik (ECY); Summerhays, Jeannie (ECY); White, Gordon (ECY)
Subject: RE: PLEASE REVIEW BLOG RESPONSE TO SJC YOUTUBE VIDEO

Katie:

Once again, thanks for your time with this.  I think it looks good.  I would suggest a couple of changes to the PowerPoint:

Slide 4, Bullet 1,  Wetland scientists educated and trained in wetland vegetation, soils and hydrology  [link to SWS-PWS Website?]

Slide 5, Bullet 1,  County asks for technical assistance

Paul

Paul S. Anderson, PWS Wetland Specialist Washington State Department of Ecology 3190 - 160th Ave. SE Bellevue, WA 98008 Phone: (425) 649-7148 Fax: (425) 649-7098 Email: paan461@ecy.wa.gov  

From: Skipper, Katie (ECY)
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 1:19 PM
To: Anderson, Paul S. (ECY); Tallent, Geoff (ECY); Stockdale, Erik (ECY); Summerhays, Jeannie (ECY); White, Gordon (ECY)
Cc: Altose, Larry (ECY); Hart, Curt (ECY)
Subject: PLEASE REVIEW BLOG RESPONSE TO SJC YOUTUBE VIDEO
Importance: High

Hi, all. Attached is a draft blog item and PowerPoint in response to the YouTube video about Charles Dalton’s property on Orcas. Below is our proposed strategy.

Forgive me for sending to all of you, but I’m not sure who to ask for approval, and it’s important that we post our reply promptly. The YouTube video now has 1,857 views. The Freedom Foundation has it posted on their website, too, http://www.myfreedomfoundation.com/index.php/site/view/friends_of_the_san_juans_offer_justification_for_harassing_local_islander, and the Island Guardian has a short item about it http://www.islandguardian.com/archives/00004240.html .

Strategy:

·         Post the blog on our blog site, link to YouTube.

·         Post a short response on the ChangeWA page referencing our video response.

·         Post PowerPoint with voiceover as a video response. The blog will be the basis for the script.

·         Link to on our FaceBook page with reference to the Friends of the San Juans response: http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10150544103742087&id=106592947086

Katie J. Skipper

Communications Manager

Bellingham Field Office

Washington Department of Ecology

Office: 360-715-5205

Cell: 360-510-0682

The Future ...

Tomorrow is the Planning Commission meeting on the wetlands CAO draft. In my view, the wetlands draft CAO is deeply flawed in nearly every regard. Nevertheless, based on reports recounted to me, Council members and their confidants have been overheard saying that the CAOs will be rammed through by June and enacted by July, and the Council will place great "importance" on what the Planning Commission does. In short, it seems that the Council will use the Planning Commission as cover.

This blog has talked about the scientific flaws and fallacious arguments used to support the proposed CAOs, but I feel the most insidious aspect of the CAOs is its cultural and ecological wrong headedness. One of my favorite books is Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol. It is not an environmental book. It is a story about race. It is a story about American culture. Kozol observes that the best place to find segregated society in America today is to go to a school named after Martin Luther King or Thurgood Marshall. America's schools have re-segregated decades after Brown vs Board of Education:

One of the most disheartening experiences for those who grew up in the years when Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall were alive is to visit public schools today that bear their names, or names of other honored leaders of integration struggles that produced the temporary progress that took place in the three decades after Brown, and to find how many of these schools are bastions of contemporary segregation. It is even more disheartening when schools like these are not in segregated neighborhoods but in racially mixed areas in which integration of a public school would seem to be most natural and where, indeed, it takes a conscious effort on the part of parents or school officials in these districts to avoid the integration option that is often right at their front door.

Kozol goes on to profile one school named Martin Luther King by saying:

Segregated schools like Martin Luther King are often tense, disorderly, and socially unhappy places, and when episodes of student violence occur, the inclination of the parents of white children to avoid such schools is obviously reinforced.

Kozol's observations strike me as having some relevance to currents in mainstream environmentalism as well.  Communities dominated by right-minded mainstream environmentalists are seeking to reestablish a kind of eco-segregation. Environmentalism today seeks our separateness from nature even when, or maybe especially when, it is right outside our front door. Signs, fences, trails, and buffers are advocated to control us from being in nature, and in fact, human-ecological integration seems anathema to the mainstream environmental movement.

It wasn't always this way, Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic was about "extending" our idea of human community to plants and animals. That is a fundamentally integrative concept, not a separatist one. One of my greatest fears over the CAOs has to do with their potentially disastrous effect on integrative ecological ideas like permaculture. Nearly everything that permaculture stands for will become illegal under our new CAOs. In our larger world, it is already illegal to make cheese from raw milk and there are even environmentalist efforts to have farm hogs declared an invasive species. How could the environmental movement have drifted so far off course?

I think it's because contemporary mainstream environmentalism has become detached and institutionalized. The large environmental organizations are headed by "CEO's", and they work with government agencies and other large bodies. Foundations wield influence by providing grant funding to "local" organizations, diminishing the importance of genuinely local voices. Professional societies, such as the US Green Building Council and the American Planning Association, also play an increasing role in advancing their own environmental agenda mixed with professional ambition. These new institutional players are the Sierra Clubs of today, and environmentalism, as a cause, has been supplanted by environmentalism as a career. Instead of being part of the anti-establishment, environmentalism now is the establishment, with all the baggage that comes with it.

In the midst of all this is the missing grassroots, and I'm not talking about people who show up at WTO protests or are Earth First-ers. I'm talking about the grassroots who have a simple integrated view of nature and who just want to live with it, as best they can. They know the community and ecological vision put forward by our CAO authors is wrong.

I suppose it's time to set aside our permaculture dreams, abandon our hopes of living with wildlife, and instead figure out how we will clearly demarcate the buffers and boundaries that will be the hallmark of our coming eco-segregated community. And just as the names of the great civil rights leaders of the past now lend their monikers to sad examples of the failure of integration, we will mark the failure of old time environmentalism by our community's increasing eco-separeteness. I doubt any ecological benefit will result, and in the process we will have become a "tense, disorderly, and socially unhappy place."

Yesterday, the comment below was left in response to a Seattle Times article about the San Juans:

It is long past time. The people that live on the Islands are the problem. They must be relocated before they destroy it for all time. The Ferry service is the drug, eliminate that and the cure will suely follow.

The people that have ruined the land must not be compinsated. To pay people for this distruction is akin to paying people to kill little baby seals.

The future is now.Every day that the people that squat on the San Jaun Islands and destroy the habitat is a nightmare. The military has the right to be, the rest of the people must go.

The aminals and the enviroment need our help now. The death ferry's must end. The future of these percious lands depends on your actions. Remove the people and remove the threat. Why these people were allowed to decimate the land in the first place is beyond belief.

Help us now, remove the cancer before the damage is simply to great. There is no cure for the damage they have done, but there is hope. Eliminate the Ferry Service, our children will why didn't you do anything?

Remove the people and let nature heal this hideous scar. The ferry is their hypodermic needle, lets cut the supply off. Lets do it for the children, lets do it for our future, lets do it because it is the right thing to do.

It belongs to eagles and the seals, it belongs to nature. These people have polluted it long enough. The time has come to say fair is fair, it belongs to nature, lets give it back.

Taking Our Medicine

Imagine you sit on a citizen panel that is responsible for approving a new drug, a pill. This pill is an antidote for a poison. Actually, it's reported to be an effective antidote for an innumerable variety of poisons, and we are told by the finest scientists in the land that we are surrounded by undetectable but lethal poisons. This is surprising to us because we do not feel ill, but the scientists tell us that nearly everyone in the community must now take this antidote, in varying doses prescribed for us, or we will all die. We have to live with this pill for the rest of our lives, and by the way, this pill is very expensive and has crippling side effects. All the same, we must take it. We have no choice.

As a caring member of the community, you accept the imperative to protect. You are, however, very concerned about the side effects of the antidote.  As a member of the approval panel, you focus all your efforts towards reducing the pill's side effects, if only marginally.  If you make palliative modifications, you feel heroic since you have approved a vital community-saving measure while reducing negative consequences.

Based on recent conversations, many members of our Council and Planning Commission seem to feel this way. They have accepted that we are sick (eco-hypochondriacs?). They have accepted that we need to take the miracle pill despite the terrible side effects. They believe the (buffer) pill is the only solution that can save us: there is no alternative or combination of alternatives that might be a substitute remedy. There is only one final solution, and it is worth everything. Our officials feel embattled, but heroic. As such, they are focused only on forcing us to swallow the pill, and to that end, they are trying to gain our grudging cooperation by reassuring us that the side effects will not be as bad as they are reported to be.

But the surest way to prevent side effects is not to take the pill in the first place. That said, hardly any of our public officials are seriously scrutinizing whether the pill is needed to begin with. For its advocates, though the evidence is scant, the pill represents science. Although we have lived an apparently healthy life without the scientific pill, "they" insist that we cannot go on living without the new drug.

This is how most of our public officials think of the CAO, its buffers, and the diagnosis of Dr. Adamus and others. The fact that our officials can think this way is the most difficult pill to swallow of all.

Previous posts raised questions about our diagnosis, the remedy (i.e., pill), and the methodology used to compute our dose. Upcoming posts will ask whether the proposed remedy has any active ingredients at all? Or, is it just a placebo with crippling side effects?

50 States And No Winners

This site makes liberal use of information obtained through Public Records Act requests. That Act eloquently states its purpose:

“The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.’’

There is a new ranking of State integrity, and Washington ends up with a B-. The best score in the nation was a B+ (New Jersey), and overall, Washington ends up third. Yes, we're worse than New Jersey, and in fact, everyone is worse than New Jersey.  It shows we have a long way to go. The linked article to this post ends with this admonition.

"Despite constraints, Washington in many ways is still a progressive model for other states. The mechanisms for accountability are in place. But more and more, experts here say, it's up to citizens to exercise them, in part because the mainstream press is shrinking. Some three dozen reporters covered state government during a legislative session 20 years ago, but today the total is just 6-8 fulltime journalists. "It's up to the people to monitor their government," said Nixon.

Perhaps never more so than today."

Corruption isn't something that just happens somewhere else. It's an everyday occurrence in everyday places ... like here in our own community. You are needed to stop it.