August – 2017
Action Taken at June 6, 2017 Meeting Shall the commission: 70. Authorize the executive director to accept a $782 state grant for costs associated with maintaining readiness for the oil spill response trailers at Blaine Harbor and the Bellingham Cruise Terminal? In 2006, the port received two oil spill response [Read More...]
Action Taken at June 13, 2017 Meeting Shall the council: 111. Solicit public comment on the size of the proposed Whatcom County jail? (Public hearing held) At the 5/30/2017 meeting, vote #109, the council set this meeting for a public hearing to address the size of the proposed jail. The [Read More...]
Compiled by Boris Schleinkofer Action Taken at June 5, 2017 Meeting Shall the council: 104. Grant a noise variance to the Washington State Department of Transportation for the I-5 cable barrier upgrade project? Construction work in residentially zoned areas between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. requires a noise variance.The variance [Read More...]
Boris Schleinkofer, poetrywatch editor “When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.” — John F. Kennedy Artwork by Hilary Cole Poetry [Read More...]
This section is devoted to studying the local impacts of specific issues the Trump Administration or Republican Congress will propose. Artwork by Hilary Cole by Lyle Harris Ronald Reagan said this in 1983: “Since the founding of this nation, freedom of the press has been a fundamental tenet [Read More...]
by Robert A. Duke “Modern Death: How Medicine Changed the End of Life,” by Haider Warraich, M.D., says modern technology and law have made death more complicated, so maybe you need to be more detailed about what procedures you want at the end of your life. Specifically, you might need [Read More...]
by Eric Hirst Whatcom County enjoys ample water supplies when averaged over the year, but summer conditions are quite different. Winter rains recharge groundwater and fill our streams, but summer’s hot, dry weather increases demand, especially for irrigation, and cuts stream flows. The discrepancy between summer supply and demand will [Read More...]
by Ron Kleinknecht Part 2 Editor’s Note: Part 1 appeared on the front page of the Whatcom Watch June 2017 issue. In Part 1, (1) I made the case that eelgrass (Zostera marina) and other sea grasses are critical to local estuaries and near shore areas as well as to [Read More...]
Over the 25 year period that the Treoil facility has been on Ecology’s suspected contaminated site list, it has only been operational twice, once briefly in the 1990s and again between 2006 and 2008. photo: Andrew Wise by Andrew Wise On a marshy piece of land sitting in [Read More...]
To celebrate 26 years of publishing Whatcom Watch, we will be printing excerpts from 20 years ago. This article is from the August 1997 issue of Whatcom Watch. by Preston Schiller Previous articles (Whatcom Watch January 1997, May and June 1997 ) have discussed the many ways in which [Read More...]