Monthly News Archive:
March 2007
Table of Contents:
- Oil from two military bases may be reaching Puget Sound
- Possible Rainier cleanup price: $100 million
- Growth: After 17 years, farmland rezoning approved
- Snohomish County among U.S. leaders in population growth
- Report forecasts more NW wind power
- King County growth booms
- Air, Water Powerful Partners in Northwest
- Stories of a Wildlife Rescue - "Unexpected Collision"
- Mass transit may end up as biggest winner in Seattle's viaduct vote
- Rainier National Park Tries to Balance Access and Nature as It Rebuilds
- New Washington wilderness area passes key hurdle
- Plan to free river to help salmon, and in turn, orcas
- Washington State seeks green certification for logging
- Puget Sound population growth puts water quality in jeopardy
Oil from two military bases may be reaching Puget Sound
Fort Lewis Army base and neighboring McChord Air Force Base have been flushing oil through their sewage system, which feeds into Puget Sound.
The pollution has triggered concerns among state and federal environmental officials, first alerted to the problem last year by a company that found sewage sludge at the treatment plant contaminated with up to 2 percent oil.
The state Department of Ecology is asking the Army to sign an agreement that it will work to keep oil from getting into sewage pipes and the Sound, or face possible legal action.
"It's a grave concern to th...Read the full story
March 30, 2007
Add Comments...Possible Rainier cleanup price: $100 million
National Parks figure disputed by Mount Rainier superintendent
The National Park Service director Tuesday pegged the price tag of flood damage at Mount Rainier National Park at nearly $100 million, far beyond previous estimates of $36 million.
Mary Bomar offered the figure to the House interior appropriations subcommittee. She also said that the Nisqually Road, which was severely damaged by November flooding, will be open to the public from the entrance of the park to Paradise by May 1.
Dave Uberuaga, Mount Rainier National Park superintendent, told ...Read the full story
Growth: After 17 years, farmland rezoning approved
The appeals court rules in favor of development on fallow farmland
ARLINGTON - In the latest chapter of a 17-year-old land-use dispute, the state Court of Appeals ruled Monday in favor of allowing development at Island Crossing.
More appeals are possible but none has been filed. If the decision stands, it paves the way for a car dealership and other businesses on 110 acres of mostly unused farmland bordering I-5 and Highway 530, just north of Arlington.
"I feel justice has finally been served," said Tom Lane, president and c...Read the full story
Snohomish County among U.S. leaders in population growth
Snohomish County is filling up so quickly that its growth rate is tied for 15th among the nation's largest counties, according to updated U.S. Census Bureau figures released Thursday.
The county, now the 87th largest in the nation, grew 11 percent from 2000 to 2006.
In those six years, it swelled by 63,863 people - up from 606,024 to 669,887, census figures show.
Among the nation's 100 most-populous counties that are still growing quickly, Snohomish is one of the few not in the sun belt.
If forecasts are accurate, the county populati...Read the full story
Report forecasts more NW wind power
Eastern Washington's landscape likely will see many more turbines and power plants built to harness the desert's gusty winds, a new report forecast Wednesday.
But although wind power can play a large role in the Northwest, it will never be a consistent solution to regional needs, according to the 71-page report from a group of energy industry leaders.
The Bonneville Power Administration and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council commissioned the group more than six months ago to develop the Northwest Wind Integration Action Plan.
The report is upbeat about wind...Read the full story
King County growth booms
Strong job market is pumping up population
April Middeljans moved from Illinois to Seattle last August because that's where she got a job.
"The job market for English professors is pretty tight," said Middeljans, who is now an assistant professor at Seattle Pacific University.
She and her husband, John, are renting a house on Queen Anne while they search for one they like and can afford in the city. They haven't completely eliminated Shoreline but are not willing to go as far as Snohomish County, where homes are more affordable.
"Our time is ...Read the full story
Air, Water Powerful Partners in Northwest
Region's Hydro-Heavy Electric Grid Makes for Wind-Energy Synergy
PASCO, Wash. -- Like mail-order brides, thousands of long-limbed wind turbines are coming to the empty outback of Washington and Oregon, where they are being married off, via the electrical grid, to hulking old hydroelectric dams.
These are arranged weddings for a warming world -- designed never to give birth to greenhouse gases.
The Pacific Northwest is hardly alone as it chases the wind for clean power. Anxiety about climate change and surging demand for elec...Read the full story
Stories of a Wildlife Rescue - "Unexpected Collision"
By Naturalist Kevin Mack from Earth Share organization PAWS Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, published in the March 14, 2007 edition of Wild Again
On March 3, 2007 I stood on a wooded slope next to a stream along Highway 101 just north of Shelton. To my left a man named Bret was standing next to an empty pet carrier. Up the hill to my right stood PAWS Humane Educator Julie Stonefelt. We were all looking in the direction of a nearby cedar tree.
It was early eveni...Read the full story
Mass transit may end up as biggest winner in Seattle's viaduct vote
OLYMPIA -- Transit supporters will likely be the big winners in the wake of Seattle voters' "thumbs down" to an elevated structure and a waterfront tunnel as options to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.
Seattle's verdict Tuesday may not be enough to prevent the state from going ahead with the elevated replacement -- deemed by the state as the only viable option for a must-do project -- nor will it be the seal of approval for a proposal to tear down the viaduct and replace it with surface streets and expanded transit.
But under every scenario for the ...Read the full story
Rainier National Park Tries to Balance Access and Nature as It Rebuilds
MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, Wash., March 7 — The big loud trucks rumble upstream, past where the Sunshine Point campground stood before the flood, beyond the historic park buildings that came so close to being swept away when the Nisqually River blew out its banks in November.
Then, at a bend where there used to be a wall of evergreens and now there is an unbroken view of the Nisqually, the trucks unload their cargo. Boulders that weigh 15,000 pounds or more tumble out and over the precipice that was once the shoulder of the road and is now the new riverba...Read the full story
New Washington wilderness area passes key hurdle
WASHINGTON - A key House committee Wednesday approved a bill creating a Wild Sky Wilderness northeast of Seattle, the first new wilderness area in Washington state in more than 20 years.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., would designate 106,577 acres in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest as wilderness, the government's highest level of protection.
The Senate has approved the Wild Sky proposal three times in recent years, but the plan has never come up for a vote on the House floor. This year, with their party in charge of Co...Read the full story
Plan to free river to help salmon, and in turn, orcas
Dam demolition would renew spawning ground
A plan to tear down two dams on the north Olympic Peninsula -- one of which would be the tallest dam intentionally removed in U.S. history -- won the approval Wednesday of Washington environmental regulators.
Knocking down the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams on the Elwha River west of Port Angeles is expected to indirectly benefit Puget Sound's orcas. That's because it would open up about 70 miles of spawning grounds for chinook salmon, the orcas' main food source.
Prolific salm...Read the full story
Washington State seeks green certification for logging
Forest council to review Tiger Mountain plan
The state Department of Natural Resources has decided to seek the greenest of the green seals of approval for some of its logging operations.
Across 141,000 acres at Tiger Mountain and other state-owned timberlands in the southern Puget Sound region, the agency will seek certification from the Forest Stewardship Council that its timber is being cut in a "sustainable" way.
That means that logging -- on as many acres as half of Mount Rainier National Park -- will be done at a pace that can go on indefinitely...Read the full story
Puget Sound population growth puts water quality in jeopardy
Bobbing like corks on the water near the Narrows Bridge, crew members aboard the research vessel Skookum plunge 300 pounds of testing equipment into the water.
Their purpose: to take water quality readings from one of 80 sampling stations used in the state Department of Ecology's study of dissolved oxygen in South Sound.
Above them, contractors put the finishing touches on the new Narrows Bridge, which is being built to keep up with the same kind of population growth that prompted Ecology's South Sound study in the first place.
Researchers are trying to answer the qu...Read the full story
