Compiled by Barry MacHale Action Taken at September 29, 2015 Meeting Shall the council: 171. Approve a $15,000 contract (amendment #9) with Van Ness Feldman, GordonDerr of Seattle for legal representation in a Growth Management Hearings Board case? The law firm is representing the county in the various stages of [Read More...]
by Lorraine Loomis Did you know that over the past four decades the 20 treaty Indian tribes in western Washington have reduced their salmon harvests by more than 75 percent to protect the resource? That tribes have restored thousands of miles of fish and wildlife habitat? That tribal hatcheries release [Read More...]
by Meredith Moench Part 14 This aerial photo of Lummi Mountain shows the orientation of the Lummi Island quarry property and pit. The shoreline and Smugglers Cove open into Hale Passage in the foreground with the San Juan Islands seen in the distance to the west. The forested areas [Read More...]
by Bruce Radtke Bellingham Activist Helps Protect Olympic Peninsula, With Mixed Results Olympic National Park, Wash. – Residents, visitors, and wildlife are threatened by the U.S. Navy’s proposal for electromagnetic warfare training over the Olympic peninsula. Noisy “growler jets” likely could cause hearing loss for some people as well as [Read More...]
by Preston L. Schiller The Whatcom Transportation Authority (WTA) provides many useful services to many citizens in Bellingham and a few destinations outside of the major Whatcom County city. Its buses are clean and comfortable, and its staff at all levels is friendly and helpful. At present it is engaged [Read More...]
by Joe Meche The typical sights and sounds of late October and early November evoked an avalanche of emotions from the past. When I was growing up in southwest Louisiana, the change from hot and humid summer weather gave way to crisp and clear fall days. There was great anticipation [Read More...]
Mary Trask was born and raised in the Midwest and moved to Washington 20 years ago. This summer, she and her family relocated to Bellingham. She recently organized a local drive to send bikes to Africa. by Katheryn Fentress Kathryn: Have you done other volunteer work before the bicycle project? [Read More...]
Trays of ballot envelopes, as they are assembled into random “batches” at the start of the process, as they arrive in the Whatcom County Auditors’ Office. by Whatcom Fair Voting Trustworthy Elections require a voting system with solid integrity, protected from tampering or corruption of the tallies of [Read More...]
Big Coal’s Gerrymandering Scheme Mostly Thwarted by Kristin Eberhard Election results are in for Whatcom County, Washington, where a proposal for a giant coal export terminal puts communities on the front lines of the fight against dirty energy. Thanks to a flood of money from coal interests, voters approved a [Read More...]
by Stoney Bird Part 17 This is the seventeenth in a continuing series of articles that began with the January, 2014 issue of Whatcom Watch. The series addresses the impediments to democracy and well being in American society. “While many mid-nineteenth-century Europeans had persuaded themselves that the wonders of modern [Read More...]