When Drones Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Drones

(AP)

First of all, I won’t identify the drone operator in my neighborhood by name because I don’t want to inspire others by glorifying his actions. I’m sure he bought his drone legally and thinks he is exercising his God-given constitutional rights to fly it above my house. If someone’s going to take his drone away, they’ll most likely have to kill him first.

On the other hand, it may be as simple as his receiving an “accommodation” based on some religious grounds that allows buzzing over my house. No, the Pope is not going to have the last say in this matter.

Maybe nobody has the last say except the perpetrator. While I, Man of the House, stood in front of the barbecue grill fuming and shouting obscenities and raised the middle finger salute to the contraption whining back and forth over our back yard, the Woman of the House sat quietly nursing her gin tonic, looked upward and said, “That’s enough.”

With iron fist in velvet glove, she marched out to the street and, five minutes later, the whining whirr stopped and she returned home with her report:

“It was (name deleted),” she said. “I asked him to stop flying it.”

“’Why?’ he said. ‘Because I don’t like it flying over my house,’ I said.”

“’Where do you live?’ he said. ‘Down at the corner,’ I said. ‘You can fly it somewhere else.’”

Maybe (name deleted) will take personal responsibility and fly his toy where it won’t bother anyone, where it won’t crash and hurt someone. No different than responsible owners of firearms who take safety training and secure their weapons not because the constitution allows them to, but because they take responsibility for their health and safety and that of the people around them.

Those who are unable or incapable of being responsible for their health and safety and the health and safety of those around them should be guided by the iron fist: no drones, no weapons. And there are places and times where and when we just don’t take drones and weapons. [ FAA Proposes Nearly $2 Million Fine To Drone Operator For Restricted Flights ]

Was anyone in the 12th Man crowd filling the stadium last Monday night packing drones or weapons? No. Did those who could not bring drones or weapons feel like their God-given constitutional right was being violated? Nope. And you know what? Qwest Field was one of the safest places to be in Seattle during Monday Night Football.

--Mike Sato

Are You An Environmental Racist?

(PHOTO: Angela Waye)

Think about it: The disappearance of the wild and its wildlife is often attributed to too many people. Who do you think “those people” are? Do they look like you, talk like you, share your values? If they don’t, who are “those people?”

At the root of American environmentalism are the values of a white, aristocratic class that extolled eugenics, elevated Nordic culture and feared the dilution of that culture, according to Jedehiah Purdy in a New Yorker article, “Environmentalism’s Racist History.”

The creation of America’s national parks and forests by the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot were guided by a vision to preserve in the wild nature’s aristocratic qualities, “the moose, the mountain goat, and the redwood tree,” writes Purdy. Roosevelt also engaged John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, “who felt fraternity with four-legged ‘animal people’ and even plants, [but] was at best ambivalent about human brotherhood.”

Purdy: “For each of these environmentalist icons, the meaning of nature and wilderness was constrained, even produced, by an idea of civilization. Muir’s nature was a pristine refuge from the city. Madison Grant’s nature [ a Roosevelt fellow traveler better known for his views on eugenics ] was the last redoubt of nobility in a leveling and hybridizing democracy. They went to the woods to escape aspects of humanity. They created and preserved versions of the wild that promised to exclude the human qualities they despised.”

Recognize anybody you might know? Most likely not. But put another way, how many environmentalists would agree that their environmental values of protecting the wild in the wilderness is in some sense better than those in cultures that clear rain forests, hunt whales, and kill animals for their fins, ivory or gall bladders? If those perpetrators’ skin color is different from yours, some might call you — loosely speaking-- a racist. (racism: a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular group is inferior to others.)

I say “loosely” because the term these days gets thrown around in heated arguments and polemics. If you spend time saving the whales and ignoring immigration reform, will you be called a racist? If you say, saving African elephants is my issue, not voting rights, will you be called a racist? What happens when a Black Lives Matter activist takes the microphone away from Denis Hayes ala Bernie Sanders when he wants to talk about climate change?

Have environmentalists been racists? I’ve listened to a card-carrying green complain about the people who don’t speak English coming down to the shore at low tide and stripping it bare of the sea weed and limpets. There are California Sierra Club members who have had a hard time dealing with immigration. Good friends deride Canadians for clogging up the local Trader Joes and Costco. The subtext here isn’t hard to figure out (Southeast Asians, Mexicans, Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese) but I’m not sure the speakers felt superior as much as beleagued by a foreign “otherness” that seemed beyond their control.

I’m also not sure how exclusive our cultural value of protecting wild creatures in the wilderness is but much of this country’s wildernesses, parks and environmental laws are the result of environmentalists who are white, educated and not poor. The membership and leadership of environmental organizations are almost exclusively white. The causes, however, are not about protecting wildlife and wild places from other races but from businesses that threaten their destruction. To prevail in those causes like climate change and Arctic drilling and species protection and recovery, the environmental movement needs to expand its constituent base.

To do that requires more than trying to diversify the complexion of their boards and staffs and printing more brochures in other languages. It will required understanding why a phrase like “people of color” rings hollow (the redoubtable Hazel Wolf said, I’m white, that’s all the colors) and why asking the families of Mexican farm workers to take part in a weeding and planting restoration day makes no sense. Show some respect: People who don’t have the economic luxury of being able to save the polar bears don’t need to be educated about polar bears and climate change. And, it’s important to remember when working in a community on environmental justice issues that the organizers get to go home; the community living with the toxic crap is at home.

The strength of the environmental movement is based on the values of protecting wild things in the wilderness and those are the values of its white, educated and not poor members. OK, that’s not necessarily the values of most of the world or non-white cultures in this country. Saving the whales or the polar bear or ancient forests isn’t the environment for the people environmentalists want to reach. The environment for these folks is health and safety: safe water, safe food, safe streets, safe parks.

Are you ready to write the new environmental manifesto that clearly expresses how we protect the wild and the wilderness by protecting and restoring the health and safety of our communities?

The need to do that if the environmental movement is to grow and move forward has been recognized by folks like Scott Miller of Resource Media: “Many organizations, like Resource Media, with their roots firmly in environmental advocacy, now understand that a greener world is part of something much bigger. We have long contended people have a right to clean air, clean water and places to experience nature. Now we are intentional about saying that list includes rights to adequate health care, safety, equity, economic well being and... human dignity.“

Take a moment to read Jedehiah Purdy’s article, and let me know what you think.

--Mike Sato

A Braille Lego Printer, United Nations Food, and “A Few Stupid Extremists”

Yes, let’s change the world: Last week it was Bill Gates drinking water purified from sewage, this week it’s a 13-year old’s prototype of a simple Braille printer built from Legos.  California teenager Shubham Banerjee, with encouragement and investment from his parents, developed a low-cost machine to print the tactile writing system used by the visually impaired. Intel Corp. is interested enough to invest in his startup, Braigo Lab . Brialle printers currently cost about $2,000. Says Shubham, “I just thought that price should not be there. I know that there is a simpler way to do this." (Boy, 13, builds Braille printer with Legos, starts company) Write on!

I’ve always believed if we’d share and eat each other’s food, we’d fight less. To that end, I’ve been savoring the pages of Lonely Planet’s Food Lover’s Guide to the World. This week, public radio reported on Jesse Friedman and Laura Hadden’s New York City project to have dinner parties featuring the foods of each of the 193 United Nations member states. “As they cooked food from Algeria to Djibouti to Guyana, United Noshes hosted dinners that ranged from just a few friends gathered around a living room table, to dozens of guests assembled in a banquet hall. And the ingredients have ranged as well — from cashew juice to French charcuterie to fermented corn flour.” (United Noshes: Dinner Party Aims To Eat Its Way Through Global Cuisine). Eat on!

And, thus far in 2015 public health, there were “a few stupid extremists” who “handled their firearms unsafely.” French murderers at Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish deli? Nope, Second Amendment gun rights advocates in the state legislature’s public gallery. The quote is from Alan Gottlieb of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms who was working hard to distance the “stupid” from other gun rights protesters. (House bans openly carried weapons in public gallery)

At the same time, sounding not much different than extremist Islamists, legislator Brian Blake (D-Aberdeen) was proclaiming: “This is a culture war, folks. They don't like what we do, and they want to control what we do." (Hundreds of gun-rights activists rally at Washington Capitol)

Brian, Alan! Eat first, talk later!

--Mike Sato

Bring Out Your Dead

I thought about Ebola early last month flying at 35,000 feet with a plane full of people I didn’t know. Liberian Thomas Duncan had entered this country by air, took ill with what was diagnosed as Ebola in Dallas, was eventually quarantined and treated, and died. Makes one look around and want to see what all the coughing is about in the seat three rows back.

Over the last two months I’ve followed the news enough to know that protocols are now in place domestically to afford crucial early detection, that Ebola detected early and treated need not be fatal, that doctors and nurses on the front line of treating Ebola are among the bravest people in the world, and that politicians who ignore medical science by closing our borders and imposing mandatory quarantine requirements deserve all the ridicule that can be heaped upon them for their medieval ignorance. ( Bring out your dead )

The Ebola epidemic is serious business and it’s no longer a West Africa disease alone, not when we are in a global economy. Richard Preston’s scary and informative article in The New Yorker ( The Ebola Wars  ) raises the disturbing prospect of various strains of a rapidly evolving Ebola virus that may take as yet-unknown deadly forms.

Despite early missteps, the Center for Disease Control and hospitals have established and trained in equipment and quarantine protocols. Like the veterans we just honored and the armed forces we spend billions of dollars on, first-line doctors and nurses deserve the very best in equipment and training. After all, as Paul Farmer says in the London Review of Books, ( Diary  ) the US “has the staff, stuff, space and systems” to contain any epidemic within its borders.

I wondered after reading Preston and Farmer whether I would have the courage to comfort Ebola patients, even given the proper equipment and training— and I have to say, I don’t know if I would. I can hardly imagine what it must be like to treat Ebola patients in the hospitals of West African nations. Now that the initial panic in the US has passed with the successful treatment of Dallas nurses and New York City doctor Craig Spencer, the news cycle moves our comfort level farther and farther away from the Ground Zero of Ebola in West Africa.

But Ebola and scores of infectious disease outbreaks that risk becoming pandemics won’t simply go away. “Understaffed and undersupplied, front-line health worker in West Africa have good reason to be afraid,” Paul Farmer writes. “We who aim to help them, though better equipped, are afraid too.”

Here in the US, we still argue about affording medical “staff, stuff, space and systems” to all our citizens. Maybe I’m not ready to go to the front line but I’ll share our “staff, stuff, space and systems” with all Americans, West Africans and the people of the world. We're not dead yet.

--Mike Sato

Let’s Get Together With Guns

Weren’t those Sunday Seattle Times pictures of women and their concealed weapons wonderful? Photographer Erika Schultz captured them well, as did the reporters in their story, “Pistol permits skyrocket, especially for women.”

I thought they were a lot better than the Washington Post photo that accompanied a story earlier this week about ‘open carry’ demonstrations in Texas, “Assault rifles at the neighborhood Chipotle? Even the NRA thinks it’s ‘downright scary.’”

“Downright scary,” “downright weird,” “downright foolishness,” the NRA said about the demonstrations. “Using guns merely to draw attention to yourself in public not only defies common sense, it shows a lack of consideration and manners. That's not the Texas way. And that's certainly not the NRA way," the NRA said, as quoted in “NRA Calls 'Open Carry' Rallies 'Downright Weird.'”

Nothing weird about our Washington women with their concealed weapons.

What was weird was that the politically ferocious NRA was taking such a — how to say it?-- moral position on the ‘open carry’ demonstrations, calling them lacking in “consideration and manners.”

This week’s  weapon stories brought to mind how guns can bring us together. Take this year’s state legislature with a deeply divided state senate basically unable to move any legislation forward. Neither House nor Senate, however, had any difficulty passing SB 9556, which legalized owning a short-barreled rifle (one with a barrel shorter than 16 inches). Federal firearms regulations still apply, and the measure had nearly unanimous bipartisan support and the Governor signed SB 9556 into law on April 2.

At a legislators’ meeting with constituents, the question of what is the public good in legalizing short-barreled rifles was met with silence, then finally answered with the reason: elected officials are afraid of the NRA.

That was a refreshingly candid answer but sadly depressing. Elected officials aren’t afraid of teacher unions, they aren’t afraid of environmentalists, they aren’t afraid of Native American tribes. They oftentimes can’t enact legislation because they are deadlocked politically--- but they are able to work in a bipartisan fashion to legalize owning short-barreled rifles. Ultimately because they are afraid of the NRA.

But who is the NRA afraid of? The NRA got a blistering volley back from demonstration organizers Open Carry Texas. And, a few days after taking such a statesman-like moral position on ‘open-carry’ demonstrations, it reversed itself in “NRA Retracts Statement Calling Open Carry Rallies 'Downright Weird',” claiming that its statement wasn’t an organization position but that of a rogue staffer.

The NRA, Open Carry Texas and gun owners and users across the land closed ranks. Another good example of how people can get together with guns.

And seeing all these pictures this past week of women with their concealed weapons and demonstrators with their ‘open carry’ weapons made me think about a way I could get together with folks who liked their guns. I don’t think I’ll ever have much to do with the NRA but I like to see pictures of people holding their guns and it seems like people are happy to be seen holding their guns.

If you think it’s a good idea, we can set up a web page where folks can share their picture of them with their gun. No names, just a photo of you and your gun.

That’s one way I can think of how we can get together with guns. What do  you think?

--Mike Sato

When Bad Things Happen, Who Ya Gonna Call? Thinkin’ ‘Bout the “G”-Word

Last week Alan Durning at Sightline wrote about how a lot of people distrust and don’t like The G-Word, that is, the government.  I’ve thought about the G-word these last few days while thinking about the 25th memorial anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster and Saturday’s oil spill in Galveston Bay and this weekend’s terrible landslide between Arlington and Darrington along the Stillaguamish River.

When disasters strike, it’s the “G”-word that responds whether we like the “G”-word or not. And that’s a good thing. Sometimes the “G”-word does a great job, sometimes it doesn’t do such a great job in responding but that’s what we count on in emergencies and crises.

I sometimes think it might be hard for people who work for the “G”-word to go to work if they know that lots of people distrust them and don’t like them. But maybe they don’t think about that while they are inspecting meat and poultry, testing drinking water or investigating outbreaks of E-coli.

I think most of us like the “G”-word doing their jobs when it comes to our health and safety. We want them to do their jobs well and we get angry if they don’t.

John Stark at the Bellingham Herald wrote a story last week about how officials at the Whatcom County “G”-word were enforcing health and safety rules on a rental business ( Whatcom County, former tenants in dispute with land owner over run-down rentals ). What made the story interesting was the claims by the landlord that, while he was collecting rent, he was providing affordable places for low-income people to live, despite the lack of proper sanitation and electricity, and that “health and safety codes and zoning makes it hard for people like him to provide low-cost homes for people in need. ‘The rules and regulations are hurting the little guy,’ (he said).”

The word “slumlord” comes to mind and I’m sure he distrusts and hates the “G”-word for getting involved in his business and maybe he will find sympathetic allies and become a next poster child of those who proclaim the “G”-word is turning their world into the “nanny state.”

But those proclamations ring hollow when it comes to public health and safety because we want the “G”-word to do their work and to do it well. In fact, as with disasters, we want the “G”-word to prevent oil spills and landslides in all the ways it can and to respond well when disaster happens. That’s the “G”-word’s job.

As environmental activists, our job is not to defend the “G”-word; it’s our job to make sure the “G”-word does its job well. When we talk in terms of protecting public health and safety and preventing and responding to disasters, we’ll find a lot more folks agreeing with us.

--Mike Sato

I’ve Been So Pissed Off These Last Few Days I Forgot to Celebrate

Today’s meeting of the Puget Sound Partnership’s Science Panel was cancelled due to federal agency folks not being able to attend because the federal government is shut down by Congressional Republicans. The Tea Bagger wing nuts and their spineless GOP colleagues are holding the budget hostage to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. It's really a small thing, the Science Panel not meeting, among more major impacts to be felt when many of the government’s environmental and public health services (deemed “unessential”) shut down.

I’ve been so pissed off about the shutdown I forgot on Tuesday to celebrate the opening of the Insurance Exchange and the first day people who are uninsured can buy medical coverage. Sure, the first day was an online fiasco but you know what?-- it’ll get straightened out and the system’s in place to serve the uninsured. For those of us who have friends and family members with preexisting conditions, employed or not, we no longer will worry whether we can get medical insurance. Sure, it will cost money— nothing’s for free — but it will be there for everyone.

That’s not a small thing that went into place on October 1. If I’d had my way, we would have in place a much simpler system of universal health coverage, we'd reign in runaway medical costs, and we'd improve efficiency and effectiveness of medical treatment. But what we got on October 1 is a step forward, a big step forward--- especially considering where we were four years ago.

And most important, we’re not going backwards. How fast we go forward in making our medical care system work for people depends on how important it is to us and to those we elect to lead us. But after October 1 we are not going back.

Which makes the Tea Bagger cum spineless-GOP-follower shutdown of the government (and what’s next for the debt-ceiling deadline) look nakedly cynical. What is there to negotiate about the Affordable Care Act when we are not going backward?

Maybe the next hostage-taking and act of domestic terror to threaten economic chaos will be to force us to build the Keystone pipeline. Dismantle the EPA? Rescind pollution controls on fracking and burning coal? Drill in the Arctic and off our shores?

The list can be endless and will go on and on until the real Republican leadership stands up to work to govern.

In the meantime, I’ll stop being pissed off for a while and happily celebrate what was achieved October 1. Then move on.

--Mike Sato

Ban the Bomb

Nagasaki, August 9, 2013 (PHOTO: AP)

Today marks 68 years since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The bombs and the aftermath of radiation killed 90,000 to 166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki. I wish the bombs that were dropped had not been named “Little Boy” and “Fat Boy.”

Today is a beautiful August day in the Salish Sea and a bit difficult to think deeply about something that happened 68 years ago in another time and to another people. Most of the world probably has come to feel the same about our 9/11.

There wasn’t much news or commentary today about this 68th anniversary but that’s understandable since we don’t tend to follow up on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy or the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, although the woes of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant continue to worsen.

But unlike those natural disasters alleviated by human heroism or compounded by human folly, the atomic bombings, like the 9/11 terror attacks, were planned and carried out by our fellow human beings.

Maybe I’m not alone in having a difficult time putting myself into a mindset that allows me to plan and execute the killing of tens of thousands of people. There’s been a lot written about the building of the bomb and the political and military reasons for using them to end the Pacific war and ultimately to save more lives. The victors get to write the history. In the case of 9/11 and terrorism, the fight goes on with little understanding of the mindsets of terrorists. Instead we are frisked and listened in on as the “war” goes on.

But consider that for 68 years we’ve managed not to drop another atomic bomb and for that, many of us who grew up during the Cuban missile crisis and nuclear diplomacy based on “mutual assured destruction,” should be thankful. But just like with all these guns around us in the hands of the good guys and the bad guys, somebody’s finger is on a trigger and sometimes accidents happen, sometimes things get out of hand. Consider which ones of your elected officials or candidates you’d trust with a loaded gun or the firing code to our nuclear arsenal.

Those who advocated “Ban the Bomb” were sneered at by the “hard-headed realists” as being cowards and dupes. Hell, ban the bomb. Beat them into plowshares. Not the “hard-headed realists;” the nuclear arsenals. And throw the guns in as well, and ammo, too.

Need a reminder about nuclear weapons? Around every August 6 and 9, take a look at the 1964 Peace Little Girl (daisy) political ad and gather some friends and family around to watch Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Bring popcorn.

--Mike Sato

When Should We Eat More Fish?

PHOTO: Elaine Thompson/AP

Robert McClure at Investigate West wrote an update yesterday ( Story update: Inslee gets involved in water-quality rule changes ) about Governor Inslee forming an informal, advisory group to discuss water pollution rules and health standards based on fish consumption. The new group would include local governments, Indian tribes and businesses but no environmental groups. The formal update of the rules was quashed last year after former Governor Gregoire met with a key Boeing executive and a few days later with then-Ecology Director Ted Sturdevant.

Regarding the new, informal advisory group process, McClure wrote: “Tribal interests and nearly all environmental groups – with the exception of Portland-based Northwest Environmental Advocates – have been boycotting the two-year Ecology 'stakeholder process' set in motion by last summer’s decision.”

Today, Nina Bell, executive director of Northwest Environmental Advocates, resigned from the stakeholder group and, in a pointed letter to Ecology Director Maia Bellon, explained why:

Northwest Environmental Advocates

June 11, 2013

Maia Bellon, Director

Washington Department of Ecology

300 Desmond Drive

Lacey, WA 98503-1274 Via E-mail only: maib461@ECY.WA.GOV

Re: Water Quality Standards Triennial Review for Human Health Toxics –

Resignation from the Department of Ecology Delegates’ Table

Dear Ms. Bellon:

It is with regret that I submit this letter of resignation from the Delegates’ Table for the

Department of Ecology’s process to establish new toxic criteria for the protection of human

health for Washington’s waters. Fortuitously, the Governor has just announced the creation of

his own parallel “informal group of advisors from tribal and local government, as well as the

business community,” a group of advisors that omits the participation of environmental

organizations. Excluding organizations that represent the health interests of Washington’s

citizens and who have expertise in the Clean Water Act and pollution control is both stunning

and insulting. From our perspective, it appears to be yet one more misstep in a process positively

beset by missteps. And it raises the question: in which of these two processes is the real

discussion going to be had?

As you know, Washington’s current water quality standards for human health are established by

the now outdated National Toxics Rule, in which toxic criteria are based on a fish consumption

rate of 6.5 grams/day. Because that fish consumption level falls well short of reflecting current

national averages or the eating habits of Washington fish consumers, including the State’s tribal

members, the Department of Ecology has been discussing updating these criteria. However, as

has been painfully revealed in recent news reports, Ecology is under significant political pressure

from pollution dischargers to both offset increased fish consumption numbers, by changing other

variables used in calculating criteria, and to create new regulatory loopholes, termed in Orwellian

doublespeak “implementation tools,” to relieve regulated pollution sources from having to curtail

their toxic discharges.

Ecology has been wrestling to create a process by which to resolve these issues and, in particular,

it has increasingly sought to avoid making policy decisions up front. In what can only be

characterized as the agency’s lurching from one approach to another, Ecology has finally settled

on the idea of a “Delegate’s [sic] Table.” This group of stakeholders is intended to serve as

something more than a series of workshops but something significantly less than a full-on

advisory committee. Various environmental organizations, Tribes, and tribal representatives

were asked to serve on this Delegates’ Table and all have either declined to serve or chose to not

attend the first and only meeting of this group, held in October 2012. That is all, with the sole

exception of Northwest Environmental Advocates (NWEA).

After thoughtful consideration, we have decided to resign from the Delegates’ Table. We do not

make this decision lightly, particularly given that our absence will leave the group without any

non-polluting participants. Moreover, we believe Ecology can ill afford to lose our Clean Water

Act expertise and experience from our intimate involvement with Oregon’s intensive process to

revise its human health standards. However, we believe that Ecology has pandered excessively

to monied interests, failed to demonstrate a serious commitment to using the Clean Water Act to

control toxic pollution, and will use the outcome of this Delegates’ Table process to justify

taking politically expedient actions. We cannot lend our name to such an outcome.

The remainder of this letter will explicate these points in greater detail, thereby illuminating

NWEA’s decision to resign, as well as to elaborate on how we think Ecology should move

forward with this important and pressing task.

Ecology’s Flawed Process

It is our view that Ecology has bent over backwards to satisfy pollution sources concerned about

having to reduce their toxic discharges to Washington’s waters. As a result, Ecology’s approach

to decision-making on this issue has been and continues to be infected by a stated desire to “push

back” on the Clean Water Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) implementing

regulations, and federal guidance. The passage of time has demonstrated that Ecology has

thrown open the doors to consider any and every option to decrease regulation as the quid pro

quo for increasing the fish consumption rate. This has evolved in a series of steps, starting with

Ecology’s policy decision to re-consider each and every variable in EPA’s equation that

generates toxic criteria for the protection of human health. One of these variables is the risk to

which the State will expose its citizens, a policy choice long established in Washington as a onein-

a-million risk of cancer.1 The second step in this process was Ecology’s agreement to

establish inaptly-named “implementation tools,” by which it would let permitted dischargers of

toxic chemicals off the regulatory hook.2 While considering and addressing the practical realities

of making the State’s toxic criteria more stringent is a fair topic of discussion for rulemaking,

Ecology’s ideas for regulatory relief far exceed the types of regulatory loopholes that have been

tolerated to date under the Clean Water Act. For example, while variances – which are intended

to be short-term downgrades to water quality standards – are normally 3-5 years, Ecology seeks

to institute 20-year variances. But even worse was to come.

In the October 2012 meeting, the agency made a further announcement that Ecology would leave

no stone unturned in revising policies that support its regulatory program. Specifically

mentioned were policies for determining whether Washington waters are impaired, that is

identifying those waters that fail to meet water quality standards, and the issuance of discharge

permits to toxic sources. For example, Ecology has specifically suggested removing impaired

waters from its list that were based on levels of toxic contaminants found in fish tissue but this

ignores the fact that fish tissue is the best medium in which to measure toxics because of the

technological limitations in measuring toxics in water. In short, NWEA found the sheer scope of

Ecology’s proposed regulatory rollbacks particularly shocking and disheartening.

Although eager to announce its willingness to gut the States’s water quality regulatory program,

Ecology has expressed no concomitant desire to control other sources of toxics to Washington’s

waters. An extremely superficial effort to paper over the problem of unregulated toxics was

made by a group that met a handful of times to generate a report in January 2013.3 The report

contains not a single recommendation for increased regulation of sources that Ecology does not

currently regulate and no proposals for rulemaking.4 But having produced a 30-page paper,

Ecology now perceives itself free to carry on with the task of de-regulating currently regulated

pollution sources.5

Finally, the purpose of this Delegates’ Table remains unclear, particularly in light of the new

Governor’s advisory group. At most, it appears the Ecology group will meet six times and serve

as a “sounding board” rather than an advisory committee. Because, with the exception of

NWEA, the participants are exclusively pollution sources or allied with pollution sources,

Ecology will be taking the pulse only of interests vested in an outcome that benefits their

commercial endeavors. Left out are those who represent the fish consumers and water users of

Washington, that is the vast majority of its citizens and those who bear the burden of pain,

heartache, and financial devastation of cancer and chronic diseases caused by toxic chemicals.

Moving Forward

It is NWEA’s view that the environmental and tribal representatives who have refused to

participate in Ecology’s latest lurch in the process would likely come to the table if Ecology were

willing to make policy decisions on the basis of what is best for the State’s citizens, not just its

business interests. This would be evident if Ecology first and very simply made certain major

policy calls – such as retaining the State’s current risk level for cancer – rather than throwing

everything open for change. Specifically, Ecology needs to make clear this bartering of increased

fish consumption and increased risk – the combination of which would generate a result equal to

or less protective than current standards – is a fraudulent game it is not willing to play. Likewise,

Ecology needs to, as Oregon did, settle on a fish consumption level that it believes is supported

by the evidence, rather than negotiate that level based on its regulatory implications for toxic

dischargers.

Second, having settled such fundamental matters of State policy, Ecology must make clear it

genuinely wants the community of interests to discuss regulatory solutions for dischargers that

are reasonable to all who make Washington home, not just business interests. This means an

explicit retraction of statements about re-examining and possibly overturning every single Clean

Water Act regulatory rule and policy in the State. It also means a commitment that Ecology will

reject, up front, approaches that will poke holes into the integrity of the Clean Water Act by, inter

alia, turning temporary regulatory relief into decades of noncompliance.6

Third, Ecology must commit to concurrently increase regulation of the numerous sources of

toxics – industrial, commercial, residential, agricultural, and silvicultural – that currently

contaminate Washington’s waters with limited or no controls whatsoever. If Ecology wants to

establish regulatory loopholes for permitted dischargers it must also commit to conducting

rulemaking to establish pollution controls on currently un- or under-regulated sources of toxic

pollution. There is no point in establishing new criteria if literally no pollution source is on the

hook to reduce pollution.

Finally, Ecology must commit to completing rulemaking by a date certain. And it must agree

that it will not adopt regulatory loopholes in advance of adopting new toxic criteria.

We believe these four steps would bring most of Washington’s stakeholders to the table.

However, in the absence of these actions, this entire process is at best an academic exercise.

Potentially much worse, it is one likely to move the state’s regulatory program backwards.

Conclusion

Even Ecology is likely to agree it has handled poorly the process of updating these toxic criteria.

But the problems are not limited to process. The agency has also misleadingly termed proposed

regulatory loopholes “implementation tools,” agreed to play a confidence game in which it might

increase cancer risks to eliminate any safety benefit that would accrue to the public from

increasing the fish consumption levels, and produced a fig leaf of a report to conceal its utter

disinterest in regulating currently unregulated sources of toxics, even as it seeks to let regulated

sources off the hook.

Washington citizens deserve better than this.

Until Ecology sponsors a discussion that is more than how to re-create the water quality

regulatory program to meet the desires of toxic polluters, NWEA cannot see lending its name to

the outcome. Naturally, we will continue to participate in the formal process and we hope that

our expertise in the Clean Water Act and pollution control will continue be of use to Ecology.

Sincerely,

Nina Bell

Executive Director

cc: Governor Jay Inslee

Kelly Suswind, Ecology

Melissa Gildersleeve, Ecology

Angela Chung, EPA

------------------

1 See WAC 173-201A-240(6); 40 C.F.R. § 131.36(d)(14)(iii). Washington went so far as

to urge EPA to promulgate the one-in-a-million criteria nationwide and, if it did not, to urge a

federal rule to “specifically address the issue of multiple contaminants so as to better control

overall site risks.” 57 Fed. Reg. 60848, 60867 (Dec. 22, 1992).

2 At some points in the process Ecology announced it would develop these regulatory

loopholes prior to the new toxic criteria, leaving open the prospect Washington would have an

abundance of regulatory flexibility but not even new human health protection on paper. While

the timing of these two regulatory packages remains unclear, Ecology has not agreed they will be

linked.

3 Ecology, Washington Toxics Reduction Strategies Workgroup, Toxics Policy Reform for

Washington State, January 16, 2013 at http://www.ecy.wa.gov/toxics/docs/trs_ToxicsPolicy

ReformWA.pdf.

4 The paper has 12 recommendations, the strongest being a tepid recommendation that

Ecology be given limited authority to institute bans of certain chemicals. Oddly this group’s

recommendations also include the very regulatory loopholes being discussed by Ecology as socalled

“implementation tools,” not a single one of which is intended to reduce toxic inputs to

Washington waters.

5 Ecology’s website also includes some parting thoughts from Ted Sturdevant, its former

Director, in which he states that “[t]o break the impasse, we have to ask a different set of

questions: What is the simplest, least expensive and most effective way to address the root causes

of toxic pollution?” Ecology, Conversations on Washington's Future: Clean Water, Healthy

Fish and a Sound Economy at http://www.ecy.wa.gov/about/ECOnverse05.html. He then

describes a collaborative approach to phase out brake pads with heavy metals. Mr. Sturdevant

does not explain why one example of a collaborative approach is a justification for not regulating

the innumerable sources of toxic contaminants that remain.

6 While Washington certainly can explore ideas for providing regulatory relief for

permitted discharge sources, the reality is that there are only a few acceptable methods under the

Clean Water Act: e.g., short-term variances that can be renewed, compliance schedules where

sources can commit to an effluent-certain/date-certain outcome, intake credits, Use Attainability

Analyses, site-specific criteria, and combinations thereof.

Earth Day 2013

April is like high church season for environmentalists and Earth Day on and around the 22nd its culmination. Writing about this year’s Earth Day became tough this week after Monday’s bombing of the Boston Marathon and yesterday’s Senate actions and inaction on gun public safety.

I wanted to reflect and write about the power and the limitation of a movement like Earth Day but instead was being informed about how to construct and detonate a pressure-cooker bomb. Getting a phone call on Monday alerting me to what had happened in Boston brought back many of the same feelings I felt when I first learned about the bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma and the 9/11 terror attacks: shock, anger, impotence, sadness...

These were the same feelings I felt when I learned about mass shootings, murder and woundings, the last coming during the December high church season at Sandy Hook Elementary. Again, people wanted change to improve public safety. Alas, shame on our state Senate Republicans for refusing to vote on gun public safety. And shame shame shame on U.S. Senate Republicans for voting against gun public safety.

I wanted this week to write that Earth Day represents people power, people demonstrating how volunteers working together on behalf of the Earth’s health can accomplish a lot. It is serious work but meant to be celebratory. We like to say, “Every day is Earth Day,” and you can really feel the power this time of year.

But it’s hard not to feel like people, ordinary people, aren’t powerful but just victims when something like pressure-cooker bombs explode, kill and maim at the Boston Marathon. That people who join in to write and call to ask for change to gun public safety are no match for the powerful interests of gun manufacturers, Second Amendment zealots and the NRA.

Many people will work together this weekend and on April 22 in celebration of Earth Day. That’s good. My celebration is tempered this year by knowing that our work in the environment has to be looked at in a much wider community safety perspective— and by knowing the limitations of collective action when facing powerful special interests.

--Mike Sato

Gimme That Gun! (Or, Lessons Guns Have Taught Me)

Gun safety is public safety and the U.S. Senate begins its deliberations this week. Our state legislature seems to have already tucked its head neatly into the sand on the issue, despite state legislators going on a shooting junket last week ( Legislators answer a call to arms for fun, education ).

Seattle Democrat Jamie Pedersen, prime sponsor of a background-check bill, said, “We are having serious policy discussions about guns and I don’t think it’s a bad thing for people to have some experience of holding them and knowing what it feels like to shoot one who don’t have that experience.”

Maybe you need to handle a gun to have any cred in talking about gun safety as public safety. OK, so gimme that gun. Here’s what guns have taught me:

My first gun was a Daisy BB pump rifle. We lived in the country and at 10, I’d shoot at targets I set up on the wall below the second floor back porch. One day I aimed at a small gray dove on the wall. I shot it and it fell over— dead. Lesson: Shoot something and it dies. (The other lesson was being made to eat every little bit of that little dove: what you kill, you eat.)

My father liked to show off how good he was hitting targets from the second floor back porch. One Saturday afternoon he was standing with the BB rifle pointing upward and my baby brother crawled over the pulled the trigger. The BB hit the roof overhand and ricocheted onto my father’s chest. The BB gun was put away after that. Lesson: Sh*t happens and you most likely would shoot out your eye.

While in high school, my father’s friend Mr. Nakamura took me to the Koko Head Shooting Range and let me load and fire his .38 revolver. Everyone started yelling, “Shoot the rat, shoot the rat!” as a big brown rat appeared out near the targets. The place erupted in yelling and gunfire. The rat disappeared. The only other time I’d heard that kind of urgent yelling was from my uncle suffering in his final days from Parkinson’s Disease and hollering, “Shoot the green man, shoot him now.” Lesson: Guns and moving live targets bring out very strange human behavior.

One dark night on Lopez Island, I finally cornered the coon that had been killing the hens in my chicken house. I held the flashlight beam on him and raised the single-shot .22 rifle but dropped the flashlight and couldn’t see the coon any more. I picked up the flashlight and saw the coon frantically digging under the coop corner to get out. I put the flashlight down and aimed in the dark at the corner and pulled the trigger. The hens cried out the began fluttering around the chicken house off their roost. I picked up the flashlight and saw the coon still digging in the corner. I took out another .22 bullet and reloaded, then turned to the corner with the light as hens fluttered back and forth. The coon had almost dug his way out. I dropped the flashlight and I shot again, the hens cried out— then all was quiet except for nervous clucking and my heart beating. I shined the flashlight beam at the corner. No coon, just a big hole. Lesson: Seeing your target and shooting at your target are two very different things.

OK, so there. You can have your guns after we close background check loopholes, ban military-style assault weapons and sales of magazines of more than 10 rounds, increase police protection at our schools and on our streets, and increase access to mental health services. These measures don’t infringe on rights afforded law-abiding gun owners; these measures balance those Second Amendment rights with our rights to life, liberty and happiness.

What’s your gun story?

--Mike Sato