The state toxicologist says she hasn’t seen a spike in positive blood tests for marijuana since pot became legal under Washington law.
The Associated Press
OLYMPIA, Wash. — The state toxicologist says she hasn’t seen a spike in positive blood tests for marijuana since pot became legal under Washington law.
Voters last fall passed Initiative 502, allowing adults over 21 to possess up to an ounce of marijuana. The measure, which took effect Dec. 6, set a driving-under-the-influence limit designed to be similar to the .08 blood-alcohol content for drunken driving – 5 nanograms of active THC per milliliter of blood.
State toxicologist Fiona Couper told a legislative hearing in Olympia on Wednesday that the Washington State Patrol’s toxicology lab has completed tests on all blood samples taken from drivers in December, and has started on samples from last month. She says there’s no spike, but notes the law has only just taken effect.
Couper says that every year, about 6,000 blood samples from drivers are submitted to the lab. About 1,000 to 1,100 of those come back positive for active THC, with the average being about 6 nanograms
The Washington state Legislature is considering a bill to prohibit companies from asking job applicants for passwords to social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Debates over social media in the workplace are taking place across the country.
OLYMPIA — Anyone who has hunted for a job recently has heard the warning: Don’t let your Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts ruin your chances with a potential boss.
The sites are now commonly incorporated into the job-application process by HR departments searching for pictures, status updates and messages that may expose candidates’ true colors — or momentary lack of judgment.
But how much leeway should companies have to examine online photos and posts purposely hidden from general public view?
The Legislature may soon attempt to answer that question, one of many that employers and employees are grappling with as social media blurslong-sacred lines between personal and professional life.
“It’s a privacy issue,” state Sen. Steve Hobbs said. “Companies want to know who they’re hiring, but applicants have a right to express themselves on these sites.”
Hobbs is the prime sponsor of a bill to prohibit companies from directly or indirectly demanding a password to a social-networking site as a condition of hiring or continued employment. Senate Bill 5211 would not bar companies from looking at publicly available pages.
Six states have approved similar laws in response to complaints, most recently in California. Congress is also weighing its own version.
Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens, said he doesn’t know how much of an issue it really is here, but he says lawmakers should “nip this in the bud.”
The bill’s prospects are unclear.
A spokeswoman for the Association of Washington Business said the group has not taken a position. But the state director for the National Federation of Independent Business said his group is concerned that the way the bill is worded could end up affecting managers’ ability to monitor company social-media pages run by employees.
The California bill passed last year with little opposition, said sponsor Nora Campos, a San Jose Democrat and Assembly speaker pro tempore.
Few opponents have materialized on the national level either, officials said.
“I think a lot of people agree that this seems intrusive and unwarranted,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a former attorney general who said he introduced the Senate bill after hearing complaints.
Privacy concerns are not the only social-media issues being debated across the country — so, too, are questions about worker rights.
In December, the National Labor Relations Board declared in response to a lawsuit filed in New York state that workers have a right to discuss work conditions with their colleagues on social-media pages, just as they would in the break room.
The board found that such communication is protected under the National Labor Relations Act, which allows for workplace organizing.
“Employees have always had the right to discuss working conditions at the workplace,” said Ron Hooks, the Seattle-based regional director of the NLRB. “We are applying the law to these new technologies.”
New Jersey human-rights attorney Lewis Maltby said the impact of the NLRB decision was limited because it applied only to discussions between employees about work.
Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, said bosses have essentially unchecked power and are using it inappropriately because they don’t understand social media and are afraid of it.
Bills like Hobbs’ are needed, he said, because companies are arbitrarily weeding out job applicants based on social-media posts that have nothing to do with the candidate’s ability to do the job.
“Unfortunately, at this time my advice is, don’t say anything that anybody could possibly disagree with,” he said. “You have to choose between your right to express yourself and your ability to get a job. You can’t have both.”
Patrick Connor, the National Federation of Independent Business state director, agreed there should be some limits on what candidates must provide during the job-application process. He said more discussions are needed about how to maintain a clear line between private social-networking pages and pages that affect the company.
Ryan Calo couldn’t agree more.
Calo, a University of Washington law professor, said that social-media-related tension between employees and bosses is likely to grow because the stakes are higher than in the past.
“Employees have always had the ability to embarrass the company,” he said. “But most of them have had limited access to public channels of communication.”
EVERETT — Kevin Nihart made a living by fishing for spot shrimp in the waters of Possession Sound and selling his harvest off the dock near Anthony’s HomePort restaurant.
He won’t be able to do it this year, however.
The state Fish and Wildlife Commission decided in December to ban commercial shrimpers in the inland marine waters south from Deception Pass and Port Townsend, including all of Puget Sound. The idea is aimed to boost sport fishing in more urban areas of the state. Spot shrimp is a prawnlike shellfish found from California to Alaska.
For Nihart, it’s a tough loss for his business and he says it’s a sad loss for his many faithful customers, who bought from him off the docks in Everett, Mukilteo and Edmonds.
Now Nihart, who lives in Anacortes, can commercially fish for spot shrimp only in the marine waters around the San Juan Islands and in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the availability in the San Juans is limited.
“Fishing near Everett was how I made my living,” Nihart said. “I can’t afford to run my boat from the straits to the dock in Everett or even truck my shrimp in for the Everett Farmers Market. A lot of people I sold to are going to be disappointed. I feel bad for my customers.”
Only a small group of people actually shrimp commercially in the waters off Washington. The state licensed just 18 commercial shrimp fishermen last season and only two, including Nihart, harvested spot shrimp in Puget Sound, said department biologist Mark O’Toole.
It used to be that the Port Susan, Possession Sound and Puget Sound spot shrimp harvest was divided, 60 percent to recreational fishermen and 40 percent to commercial boats. The spot shrimp season begins in late spring. Nihart is a long-line fisherman who uses shrimp traps on his lines. Recreational shrimp fishermen use traps similar to crab pots.
Nihart sold spot shrimp at the Everett Farmers Market for the past four years and for the past six years on the dock below Anthony’s HomePort restaurant off Marine View Drive.
Joe Verdoes, president of the Puget Sound Shrimp Association, testified in September before the state Fish and Wildlife Commission, asking that commercial fishing of spot shrimp be allowed to continue in the Puget Sound region.
“This change makes it very difficult for guys like Kevin,” Verdoes said.
The state is encouraging commercial fishing in the strait because it is more of a sustainable resource there, O’Toole said.
“This is particularly hard on Kevin, and we know people in Everett, Mukilteo and Edmonds are going to miss being able to buy fresh prawns from him off the dock,” O’Toole said.
The Stillaguamish Tribe recently partnered with the state Department of Natural Resources Family Forest Fish Passage Program to restore access to Cherokee Creek, near Darrington.
Cherokee Creek provides spawning, rearing and refuge for coho and other species of Pacific salmon, as well as cutthroat and bull trout. However, the creek also was home to a deteriorating metal culvert that had been poorly installed and was too small to withstand floods.
“The culvert had created an artificial waterfall that was too high for salmon to swim or jump past on their way upstream,” said Scott Rockwell, Forest and Fish biologist for the tribe. “It was also interfering with natural stream ecology, interrupting the downstream movement of water, fallen trees and gravel.”
The Family Forest Fish Passage Program replaced the culvert with a steel bridge and an 80-foot-long section of stream channel that restored fish access to more than a mile of productive spawning habitat. The state program helps small forest landowners comply with forest practice rules by covering 75-100 percent of the cost of eliminating stream barriers.
At a fall event celebrating the project’s completion, many coho salmon swam through the restored area.
“Their genetic compasses guided them back to habitat that had not been accessible for years,” said Washington State Forester Aaron Everett, who worked on the project.
As a project sponsor, the Stillaguamish Tribe conducted landowner outreach, collected habitat data, provided matching project funds, and managed project design, construction oversight, permitting and billing.
Cherokee Creek is a spawner index stream for coho salmon. For the past 12 years, Stillaguamish natural resources staff have documented the number and location of spawning adults and redds (egg nests) to help forecast the size of future coho runs.
For more information about the state’s Small Forest Landowner Office, visit www.dnr.wa.gov/sflo.
Sound Publishing, Inc. announced today that it has signed an agreement with the Washington Post Company to acquire the Everett Daily Herald, a 46,000 circulation daily and Sunday newspaper and its other print and online products. The transaction is expected to close in early March.
The Herald has been owned by the Washington Post Company (WPO:NYSE) for 35 years and is a leading provider of local news and information for the Snohomish County area.
“We are thrilled to have The Daily Herald join our growing family of newspapers,” said Gloria Fletcher, President of Sound Publishing. “The Herald is a very well respected newspaper and it is a great fit with our print and digital products serving the greater Seattle area.”
Sound Publishing is the largest community media organization in Washington, with 39 newspaper and digital titles, including The Arlington Times and The Marysville Globe, with a combined circulation of over 730,000. Sound is a subsidiary of Black Press, Ltd. Black Press publishes more than 170 newspapers and other publications in British Columbia, Alberta and Washington, as well as the Honolulu (Hawaii) Star-Advertiser and the Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal daily newspapers.
Kyle Thiessen, the state of Washington’s code reviser, looks at a shelf of pending legislation in his office on Jan. 30 at the Capitol in Olympia. Photo: Ted S. Warren, Associated Press
By Rachel La Corte, Associated Press
OLYMPIA — In Washington state, dairymen, freshmen and even penmanship could soon be things of the past.
Over the past six years, state officials have engaged in the onerous task of changing the language used in the state’s copious laws, including thousands of words and phrases, many written more than a century ago when the idea of women working on police forces or on fishing boats wasn’t a consideration.
That process is slated to draw to a close this year. So while the state has already welcomed “firefighters,” “clergy” and “police officers” into its lexicon, “ombuds” (in place of ombudsman) and “security guards” (previously “watchmen,”) appear to be next, along with “dairy farmers,” “first-year students” and “handwriting.”
“Some people would say ‘oh, it’s not a big thing, do you really have to go through the process of changing the language,”‘ said Seattle Councilmember Sally Clark who was one of the catalysts for the change. “But language matters. It’s how we signal a level of respect for each other.”
About half of all U.S. states have moved toward such gender-neutral language at varying levels, from drafting bills to changing state constitutions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Florida and Minnesota have already completely revised their laws as Washington state is doing.
The final installment of Washington state’s bill already has sailed through the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee with unanimous approval. The nearly 500-page bill has one more committee stop scheduled before full Senate debate.
Crispin Thurlow, a sociolinguist and associate professor of language and communication at the University of Washington-Bothell, said the project was admirable.
He said that as language evolves, such efforts are more than symbolic.
“Changing words can change what we think about the world around us,” he said. “These tiny moments accrue and become big movements.”
Clark and former councilmember Jan Drago — the Seattle City Council has long eschewed the terms councilwoman or councilman — brought the issue to Sen. Jeannie Kohl-Welles in 2006 after they came across references to firemen and policemen in the mayor’s proposed budget, as well as in state law dealing with local-government pensions.
Clark and Drago’s findings sparked the initial gender-neutral language law that was passed in 2007, immediately changing those terms and directing the state code reviser’s office to do a full revision of the rest of the code. A 1983 Washington state law had already required all new statutes to be written in gender-neutral terms, so state officials were tasked with going through the rest of state statutes dating back to 1854 to revise the rest.
As in past bills on the issue that have tackled sections of the state code, some revisions were as simple as adding “or her” after “his.” Others required a little more scrutiny. Phrases like “man’s past” changes to “humankind’s past” and a “prudent man or woman” is simply a “prudent person.”
Kyle Thiessen, the state’s code reviser who has been working on the project along with two attorneys since 2008, said that the work was not without obstacles.
Words like “manhole” and “manlock” aren’t so easily replaced, he said. Substitutes have been suggested — “utility hole” and “air lock serving as a decompression chamber for workers.” But Thiessen said those references will be left alone to avoid confusion.
Republican state Rep. Shelly Short, of Addy, has voted against earlier gender-neutral language bills and said she plans to do the same this year.
“I don’t see the need to do gender neutrality,” she said, adding that her constituents want her to focus on jobs and the economy. “We’re women and we’re men.”
Kohl-Welles, who has sponsored each of the gender-neutral language bills, said that while this project hasn’t been her top legislation every year, “overall, it has important significance.”
“I believe,” she said, “that the culture has changed.”
OLYMPIA — Here’s a look at terms being considered in a final installment of a move to revise more than 3,500 Washington state statutes in order to make them gender-neutral.
Brakeman: brake operator
Chairmanship: position of chair
Dairymen: dairy farmers
Draughtsman: drafter
Ex-servicemen: add “or ex-servicewomen”
Fireman (The 2007 bill took care of the firefighters who work for fire departments and put out fires. This fireman reference is for railway employees who tend fires in steam engines): fire tender
GRANITE FALLS — Authorities still are asking for help finding the person responsible for the deaths of four bald eagles last month near Granite Falls.
A recent donation brought the reward money for information leading to an arrest and conviction up to $20,250, wildlife officials said Monday.
The last $6,500 was donated by The Campbell Group, a Portland, Ore.-based timber company that owns property near where the eagles were found Jan. 9, said Sgt. Jennifer Maurstad with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“We are shocked and offended by this crime, and support the efforts of state authorities to investigate and prosecute this case,” Campbell Group spokeswoman Liz Fuller said in an email Monday.
The eagles’ bodies were floating in a lake east of town. Investigators aren’t disclosing the exact location.
They believe the eagles, three of them grown and one a juvenile, were shot with a small-caliber rifle.
Investigators are waiting on forensic results, including possible ballistics, Maurstad said Monday.
They’ve gotten a few tips but nothing has panned out, she said.
“It’s just important to do the right thing,” Maurstad said. “This was such an egregious act, that if somebody has information, they shouldn’t hang onto it. They should do what’s right, and I’m hoping that $20,000 will give somebody the initiative to do so.”
Killing an eagle is a misdemeanor under federal law. It is also a state crime with a maximum penalty of $1,000 and 90 days in jail. Also, under state law, there’s a $2,000 fine per eagle.
There are about 850 nesting pairs of bald eagles in Washington.
Anyone with information should call 1-877-933-9847 or email reportpoaching@dfw.wa.gov.
Reward money also was donated by the Stillaguamish Tribe, state Fish and Wildlife, the Humane Society of the United States and Conservation Northwest.
EVERETT — Between 2005 and 2009, billions of oyster larvae began dying at hatcheries around the state before anyone knew what was going on or could do anything about it.The state’s $270 million shellfish industry, which employs about 3,200 people, is in danger.
One oyster farm, Goose Point Oysters in Willapa Bay, has begun raising oyster larvae in Hawaii because it can no longer grow them here.
The reason, scientists say, is ocean acidification.
“The problem’s not going away,” said Ian Jefferds, general manager and co-owner of Penn Cove Shellfish in Coupeville.
On top of pollution and loss of habitat, rising acidity in Washington waters is the latest hazard faced by marine life, including the lucrative shellfish and fishing industries.
Acidification of marine waters is caused primarily by the ocean’s absorption of carbon emissions, scientists say. Other human activities, such as agricultural runoff, contribute. The oceans are rapidly becoming more acidic after thousands of years of stability, scientists say.
The Northwest is particularly vulnerable to the problem because it receives naturally upwelling carbon-laden water from deep in the Pacific Ocean.
Terry Williams, commissioner of fisheries and natural resources for the Tulalip Tribes, was concerned enough about the phenomenon to be one of several people to approach former Gov. Chris Gregoire in 2011 to form a panel to study the problem.
The 28-member panel, called the Washington State Blue Ribbon Panel on Ocean Acidification, included scientists, representatives of environmental groups, tribes and the business community, and current and former government officials.
Reducing the effect of human activities is one place to start, the panel concluded. Carbon emissions represent a much broader and tougher challenge.
The problem of ocean acidification “is not going away,” said Ian Jeffereds, general manager and co-owner of Penn Cove Shellfish.
Still, work has to begin now, experts say.
“Godzilla is still small. Let’s not wait until he’s big,” said Brad Warren, director of the Global Ocean Health Program, a Seattle-based group formed to address ocean acidification and its effect on fisheries.
Warren, a member of the state panel, spoke at an informational meeting on the topic in Everett last Thursday.
About 120 people attended. Panel members have been conducting the meetings around the state by request of local officials.
The committee made several recommendations, including reducing agricultural runoff into local waters; investigating water treatment methods to control the problem in targeted areas, and ultimately, finding ways to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels.
Rep. Norma Smith, R-Clinton, served on the state panel. She’s convinced ocean acidification is a legitimate threat and is concerned for Penn Cove shellfish.
Still, she would have liked more effort to involve the agricultural community before recommending that farm waste be reduced.
“You have to look at this holistically,” Smith said. “We need to recognize that we need both; we need aquaculture and we need agriculture.”
Smith said the panel’s call for stricter regulations on pollutants, while not yet specific, are getting ahead of the game.
“That’s backwards,” she said. “You build solid models, you create a solid scientific foundation, then you move forward with the regulatory practices that are warranted.”
Some people still look at ocean acidification with the same skeptical eye as they do at climate change, Warren said. While both conditions are caused by carbon emissions, they’re not the same thing, said Terrie Klinger, an associate professor in the school of marine and environmental affairs at the University of Washington, a member of the study panel who spoke at the Everett meeting.
Scientists are just scratching the surface about ocean acidification, but a few facts have been established, according to scientists on the panel.
About 30 percent of carbon emitted into the atmosphere from human activity is absorbed by the oceans, Klinger said.
High acidity reduces calcium carbonate levels in the water, preventing mollusks from properly forming their shells.
Acidification is known to affect pteropods — tiny, plankton-size snails — along with krill and some types of prawns that are staple foods for fish, whales and other sea life.
“These species are known to be sensitive to acidity and they’re a large part of local food webs,” said Shallin Busch, a research ecologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. She’s also a member of the study panel.
The ocean’s surface pH level — which measures the acidity or alkalinity of an environment — was about 8.1 for millennia, as far back as carbon dating tells us, Klinger said. The lower the number, the greater the acidity.
Just since 1850 it’s fallen to 8.0, and at the current rate will hit 7.8 by 2094, she said.
When it comes to acidity in the water, one-tenth of a point is a big difference, Klinger said.
“It’s dropping like a rock,” she said.
In measurements taken at Tatoosh Island on the Washington coast in 2000, the level was 7.5, Klinger said.
There are some unknowns as well. Some species, such as the Suminoe oyster native to Asia, are comparatively immune to the effects of acidification, Busch said.
In inland marine waters such as those in Western Washington, it’s difficult to measure acidity with consistent accuracy because of the influx of river water and substances in runoff, experts say.
“We need more sophisticated instruments,” Klinger said.
Penn Cove Shellfish grows mussels near Coupeville and at another site on the Hood Canal.
“We’ve seen some incidents in our Quilcene Bay site and at Penn Cove that we don’t have an explanation for,” Jefferds said.
Specifically, some of the mussels have been having trouble clinging to the mesh socks on which they’re grown. The company has enlisted NOAA to study the problem.
Tulalip tribal fishermen have been noticing a decline in fish and shellfish populations for more than a decade, Williams said.
It’s hard to tell, though, how much of the decline is caused by pollution and loss of habitat and how much it might be because of ocean acidification.
That’s why the tribes plan to hire scientists to do detailed studies of local waterways to try to learn more, Williams said.
One thing everyone seems to agree on is that getting started working on solutions is important.
“This is the first state in the country to launch a comprehensive attack on this problem,” Warren said.
“Being Frank” By Billy Frank, Jr., Chairman, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
OLYMPIA – Allocation is being confused with conservation as the states of Oregon and Washington move to restrict non-Indian commercial gillnet fisheries on the lower Columbia River.
The states’ plan to move gillnetters off the main stem and prioritize sport fishing by reallocating their wild chinook salmon harvest impacts to anglers. Of course the states can allocate their share of the salmon resource however they like, but true conservation doesn’t happen just by reallocating salmon harvest between commercial and sport fisheries.
The decline of salmon across our region has nothing to do with how we catch them, whether with a net or rod and reel. Salmon are in trouble because of lost and damaged habitat. The key to recovery is to restore and protect that habitat, combined with conservative harvest and careful use of hatcheries.
All types of fishing – including mark-selective sport fisheries targeting fin-clipped hatchery salmon – kill non-targeted fish . Harvest is managed on the basis of fishery impacts from all fishing methods, both sport and commercial. Reallocating these impacts from commercial to sport fisheries does nothing to rebuild the resource.
Allocation is not conservation. Conservation must come first. We need to focus on restoring salmon populations to abundance – mostly by restoring and protecting their habitat – instead of fighting battles over who gets to catch how many fish. Imagine if all of that time, energy and money was spent on true salmon conservation instead.
Whether sport or commercial, most fishermen are conservationists at heart. Neither group is more conservation-minded than the other, and neither wants to catch the last salmon.
The debate between sport and commercial fisheries allocation on the lower Columbia now appears to be headed to the courts, and that’s too bad, because this fight distracts us from the real work at hand – restoring salmon populations to abundant levels. In the end, these allocation battles are self-defeating because they undermine the broad-based cooperation that we need to recover salmon.
After decades of hard work, cooperative salmon restoration efforts in the Columbia basin have started to make a difference. Spring and fall chinook, sockeye and coho populations are growing. That kind of success doesn’t happen on its own. It comes from a shared willingness of many people to work together with common interest toward a shared goal of conserving, protecting and restoring salmon populations on the Columbia and throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Note: A more comprehensive history of the Coastal Conservation Association is available at: http://go.nwifc.org/history
Photo: Genna Martin / The Herald The 3 p.m. Mukilteo ferry heads toward Whidbey Island on Wednesday. A project is in the works to build a new Mukilteo ferry terminal just east of the current dock.
OLYMPIA — Two hurdles to building a new ferry terminal in Mukilteo should be cleared this spring, but state leaders must deal with a looming lack of money to build it.
After years of efforts, there is a $38 million hole in the budget for a new terminal at the former Air Force tank farm, east of the existing terminal. And there are signs it could grow larger.
Ground won’t be broken until 2015, at the earliest, giving ferry officials time to pull together funds from state and federal sources to cover the $140 million tab.
“I’m confident. This has been too long in coming,” said Mukilteo Mayor Joe Marine. “Everybody knows this project has to be done.”
Rep. Marko Liias, D-Edmonds, serves on the House Transportation Committee, which is drafting a new transportation budget. The state has made its commitment clear by paying several million dollars for environmental work thus far, he said.
“My goal is to make sure we keep the project on track, because it’s a critical improvement that needs to be done,” said Liias, a former Mukilteo councilman. “We need all the money identified before we start.”
The Mukilteo ferry terminal is among the busiest in the state’s marine highway system. It has not had significant improvements for almost 30 years and frequent users know well the congestion and conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians with the current layout.
Last May, the state chose as its preferred site at the old fuel depot. Of three alternatives, it is the closest to the transit center and Sound Transit commuter rail station. The other options were to renovate the ferry dock at its current location or build at the far east end of the tank farm.
As proposed, the state will erect four new toll booths and a new building and entryway for walk-on passengers.
The final environmental impact statement on the project is expected to be released in April. Then the Air Force can transfer its land to the Port of Everett, which will then give a slice to the state for the ferry terminal.
Agreements need to be reached with tribes regarding protection of cultural resources and treaty rights for fishing. The goal is to wrap those up this year, ferry officials said.
Lawmakers and former Gov. Chris Gregoire only socked away $102 million in the current state transportation budget for preliminary engineering and construction through 2019.
The $38 million hole could grow to $58 million because Washington State Ferries wants to use some of those construction dollars now, knowing that the big checks for the Mukilteo terminal won’t need to be written for a couple of years.
David Moseley, assistant secretary of transportation in charge of ferries, said he’s optimistic that federal money can be secured and, maybe, extra state dollars too if a new transportation funding package wins voter approval in the next couple of years.
“I don’t think we’ll have it solved in 2013,” he said
