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Monday was the 54th anniversary of Earth Day, organized in 1970 as a teach-in on college campuses to emphasize the harm out-of-control pollution has on human health as well as the environment. In typical homo sapiens fashion, giant inflatable earth balls got tossed around, guitars were played and laughter and music filled the air. So, for 50 years the seriousness of human-fueled devastation danced with the joy of opening our eyes to the beauty and wonders of the natural world. “It is only a little planet / but how beautiful it is” the poet Rob...
Tsunami is a Japanese word for what used to be more appropriately called a “tidal wave.” In movies and television dramas, tsunamis are portrayed as monster ocean waves cresting over the likes of New York City or Los Angeles. A bit misleading to say the least. Tsunamis are huge bursts of energy being transported in water. In reality, when a tsunami reaches land it’s much more like the tidal flood that invaded La Conner a few years ago, only bigger, much bigger. As most folks have seen in YouTube videos of Japan’s 2011 flooding, a tsunami...
The Swinomish Tax Authority uses the same levy rate for 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021: $11.98 per $1,000. The assessed value of homes in Shelter Bay, Pull & Be Damned and Thousand Trails increased from $206,399,050 to $262,085,926. The Swinomish Tribal Community has the right to collect $3,139,456 in taxes from Shelter Bay, Pull & Be Damned and Thousand Trails in 2024. Last year they collected $2,440,832. After deducting contributions, exemptions, uncollectable taxes and taxes shared with the county, the Tribe will have an estimated $1,958,197...
Make housing a Jensen priority The population of La Conner is aged and aging. In-migration or family formation by families of low and moderate incomes hasn’t been the case for a decade or more. There is little to no housing available for young families who would like to live here and send their children to La Conner schools. This has led to frequent calls for “affordable” housing. The prior mayor and town council had a promising opportunity to turn those calls into action when it purchased (and immediately sold) two-thirds of the Maple Avenue b...
The energy infrastructure we have today is the result of thousands of years of technological development, during which the systems evolved based on what had and hadn’t been invented, and where. The Romans had everything they needed to develop a steam engine, but they didn’t. Where would humanity be today if we had almost 2,000 more years of industrialization? The existence of legacy systems significantly affects the speed with which we design and install energy systems based on the latest tec...
Earth Day is Monday, April 22. This is not an Earth Day editorial and not because the almost holiday atmosphere and platitudes reverently uttered by politicians and corporate heads have hijacked the original intent. It is the same with Mother’s Day, which started after the Civil War. In 1870 Julia Ward Howe called for a “Mother’s Day for Peace” dedicated to the celebration of peace and the eradication of war. Howe hoped mothers could prevent the cruelty of war and the waste of life since mothers alone bear and know the cost. That is from al...
A few years ago I was managing an experiment aimed at determining whether it was practical to power cars with hydrogen, instead of gasoline. Most of the cars were small gasoline-engine SUVs which had been modified to burn hydrogen. Hydrogen, at automotive operating temperatures, is a gas that must be compressed and stored in high-pressure tanks. The tanks are made of carbon fiber. They look a lot like very large scuba tanks. A hydrogen storage system small enough to store aboard a car can only...
Do you know fact from propaganda when see or hear it? Learn more at the April 29 forum “News & Media Literacy: Informed or Influenced?” The League of Women Voters of Skagit County offers its second program in their series of voter education, part of their ongoing commitment to community engagement and understanding of key electoral issues. Speakers are Andrew Paxton, Skagit Valley Herald executive editor and Skagit Valley College librarians Elena Bianco and Libby Sullivan. Join them Monday, April 29, 6:30-8 p.m. at the Public Utility Dis...
My name is Wood Weiss and I am the Chief of Skagit Fire District 13. Recently people have been asking me about the upcoming ballot measure for the countywide Emergency Medical Services (EMS) levy renewal. I thought it might help to clarify who we are as a fire district and how the EMS levy impacts us and the people we serve. Our district provides Fire and EMS protection for a 71 square mile area, which includes the Swinomish Tribal Reservation (Tribal village, Shelter Bay, Snee Oosh beach area, Casino), farmlands east of the Swinomish channel,...
About that cute little 0.53-acre plot known as the “Jensen Parcel?” As a resident of Channel Cove for a couple of years, I spent a lot of time thinking about it, from my permaculturalist perspective. How many wants and wishes could be achieved if the parcel could be creatively developed. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the Jensen family makes an enticing offering of the challenged property for the town. It’s not big enough for a ball field, it’s very low and wet, just ask Maggie, for she lives next to it and wrote last week of her thoughts...
The tide-based currents in the Swinomish Channel may offer a local source of reliable, predictable renewable energy. Several people have asked me whether this natural resource could be developed to power greater La Conner, including Shelter Bay and Swinomish Village. A tidal energy system must be durable, reliable and capable of being installed and maintained cost-effectively in salt water. Doing all this has been challenging, so the engineering needed to extract energy from tidal currents...
If there is one thing that is certain in the dominant culture of the United States, it is that we are number one. The best. The greatest. Back in the halcyon days of certainty portrayed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, the metaphor was that we were the shining city on the hill, the beacon of light and hope, the place where everyone in the world wanted to be. Our citizens were the envy of mankind. We were all born with silver spoons in our mouths and our streets were paved with gold. That is why people from all over the world strive to...
If this was an editorial, it would be titled "Journalists to the ramparts to save democracy: Buy small newspapers" Journalists, self-reflective navel gazers, are quoting studies that 2.5 newspapers a week – 10 a month and 130 annually – closed in 2023. Is there a future for small newspapers? Yes there is. Here is one way to succeed. In the March issue of the national political magazine, The Nation, D.D. Guttenplan offers a brief lament on the continued collapse of local newspapers, a tragedy stretching back 30-plus years. He follows Nation con...
Just beyond the deer fencing, lying between this old rotting house with fruit trees just as old, between these and a dense development, lies what used to be called a “vacant lot.” It might have been called a “swamp,” also, rather than a vestige of an estuary. It did take on some water in the 2022 flood. One engineer called it a “natural catch basin.” But all that belies an amazing feature: it’s ability to grow food. Eons of decomposing salmon bodies makes this soil, like much of the Skagit Valley where I live, among the top 1% of agricultural...
We live at the bottom of Snapdragon hill, one of those beautiful, quiet islands of wildlife in town, that made La Conner’s charm. It was covered in summer with wildflowers, people would come pick blackberries, deer liked to climb up the hill, there were rabbits and once I saw a family of raccoons feasting on berries. You could hike to the top. I once had a picnic there. When I saw the contractors break and deface part of the hill or when they sprayed the hill across the street from us to kill the vegetation, I was horrified. They did, after h...
On Dec. 27, 2022, a predicted 11-foot tide in La Conner Channel was met with low atmospheric pressure, high river flow and a western wind. As a result the channel rose to over 14 feet and spilled over along lower places on the eastern bank, flooding parts of town and causing more than $1 million damage before receding. The mayor and town council created an Emergency Management Commission to deal with any future floods or other natural disasters. The sandbags that have recently been removed were placed by our incredible town public works...
One probably wouldn’t think that El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, would be particularly influential as regards the future of electric generation in the Pacific Northwest. Surprisingly, he might. Before Bukele took office, a currency experiment called Bitcoin Beach was underway in the El Salvadoran town of El Zonte. That experiment, which is ongoing, is aimed at demonstrating that it’s possible to use Bitcoin, or a Bitcoin derivative, as a day-to-day currency. The Bitcoin Beach proje...
Reducing energy use during the design and construction phase of a new building is almost always easier than retrofitting the building afterwards. There are many techniques that can be used to reduce the amount of energy a building needs. Using efficient systems like LED lighting and heat pumps are obvious. However, the building architecture itself can be designed to save energy, both without management of control systems (passive technologies), and with controls (active technologies). Architectu...
In the 1951 movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” the landing of a spaceship on the Washington Mall and the emergence of Klaatu in a spacesuit and helmet immediately changed everything worldwide. By the film’s end, humanity learned valuable lessons and nothing would be the same ever again. Ah, stories. In real life, catastrophe strikes, say a three-year-plus worldwide coronavirus pandemic – for that is what a pandemic means, worldwide infections, sickness and death – and societies near and far, local and global hunker down, survive and a year...
To the editor: Thank you so much for the effort to get the newspaper out earlier to those of us in the 98273 ZIP code area of the school district. Much appreciated! Gale Fiege Pleasant Ridge...
La Conner School District Director of Finance David Cram offered a realistic assessment last summer when presenting student enrollment numbers and the year’s budget to the school board and Superintendent Will Nelson. The head count in the elementary, middle and high schools had dropped below 500, to 490 full-time students. He projected a student population of 448 in 2026-2027. Cram’s forecast is turning into reality. His mid-March estimate for September, the 2024-2025 school year, is for 30 fewer students. His larger concern is that the new...
Dear Editor: I am writing to express my deep concern regarding the recently announced closure of Little Braves preschool due to lack of funding. As a member of our community and a parent who understands the importance of early childhood education, I believe that eliminating programs for young children only harms our community and creates hardship for families. The Little Braves Preschool program, which operates in the elementary school through funding from Head Start, is the only publicly funded early education program in La Conner. The...
To the editor: Thanks for running the article about zero-emission school buses (Weekly News, March 13, 2024). The bill would not have been possible except for the work of a broad coalition of Seattle climate and education activists, including Climate Action Families. The CAF website gives the history: “It started in 2013 to host the Washington chapter for Plant for the Planet. Our community trained over 600 youth in climate justice and participated in countless actions. Lessons learned brought us to developing this movement, knowing we must m...
To the editor: In all the parking discussions I have read and heard, enforcement seems to be ignored. I walk my dog daily through the South Third Street lot, which is theoretically pay parking, and have yet to see anyone checking for compliance. For most, it is free parking. So what is the loss if it is officially made free? And now on to First Street. In Friday Harbor there are time limits on parking and an enforcement person marks tires and writes tickets. Do tourists, non-locals, pay the fines? I doubt most do. Do those fines cover the cost...
To the editor: I would like to thank the Skagit Board of County Commissioners for placing an EMS levy renewal on the April 23, 2024, special election ballot to continue critical funding for emergency medical services in our community. Every second counts in an emergency, and the EMS levy renewal will ensure we have enough personnel, supplies, equipment, and ambulances to respond to calls, which have increased by 25% in the last four years. In 2023, Skagit County EMS provider agencies, like mine in the upper east county, responded to over...
