Signs of decline in health of Puget Sound organisms
By Associated Press
SEATTLE — Despite improvements in the most industrialized and populated areas of the Puget Sound, a new report issued Tuesday by the Washington Department of Ecology shows the overall health of the state’s broadest waterway is declining in at least one way.
Sediment health in the central sound — from just south of Whidbey Island to the Tacoma Narrows — has deteriorated over the past decade, according to the report, which has some scientists who closely monitor the watershed wondering what they’ve been missing.
The study of sediment pulled from the bottom of the sound in 2008 and 2009 found a decline in sediment-dwelling life — known as benthic invertebrates — in 28 percent of the region, compared with 7 percent of the region in results from 1998 and 1999.
The results were surprising in contrast with other recent health checkups for the Puget Sound, which have shown improvements such as a decrease in toxic chemicals. Scientists also have found a decrease in concentrations of lead, mercury, silver, tin and other toxics in the central sound sediment.
It is possible scientists have not been looking deep enough or broad enough for other environmental problems, said Rob Duff, manager of the Ecology Department’s environmental assessment program.
“We don’t measure everything. We measure dozens and dozens of chemicals we are concerned about,” Duff said, adding, “There are thousands and thousands of chemicals in commerce today.”
Emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products may be responsible for the decline in the number and variety of small creatures within the Puget Sound’s sediment, Duff said, but there are other possible causes.
The decline in the number and variety of small creatures in the sediment also result from natural influences, such as the normal population cycles of sediment-dwelling organisms, or sediment movement and changes in dissolved oxygen, pH and ammonia levels in the water above the sediments.
“One report only tells you a piece of the puzzle,” cautioned Jan Newton, an oceanographer from the University of Washington who was not involved in this Ecology Department study.
The health of Puget Sound is so multi-faceted — from toxics to habitat to climate change — it’s difficult to talk about its overall health, she said, adding, “definitely, there’s reason for concern.”
Meanwhile, the health of Elliott Bay in Seattle and Commencement Bay in Tacoma has been shown signs of improving health, with decreases in chemicals found and water chemistry overall.
That suggests years of port cleanup and storm water management seem to be working, said Maggie Dutch, lead scientist for the sediment monitoring program.
But the contrasting results also suggest the need for more research, she added.
“We’re thinking that there are other things happening,” Dutch said. “It could be things that we also have an influence on.”
This kind of report shows the importance of continuing to monitor the sound as a tool for figuring out what else needs to be done to clean up the water, Ken Dzinbal, who represents the Puget Sound Partnership on the monitoring program.
“We’ve done a pretty good job of addressing big issues like storm water,” he said. “There still might be something else out there that we haven’t addressed.”
— The Associated Press
Oklahoma Tornadoes: New Website Collects Aid for Native Victims
Brian Daffron, Indian Country Today Media Network
The lives of at least 50 Native families have been turned upside down, many of them literally, by the tornadoes that devastated Oklahoma in May. One of the many groups reaching out to help is coordinating and sending aid directly to Indian families affected by this disaster.
As another tornado tore through El Reno, Yukon and south Oklahoma City on Friday May 31—also touching down in Moore, still reeling from the devastating May 20 tornado that killed 24—Native people from throughout Indian country were already reaching out to help their fellows.
The El Reno Indian Clinic, which lies within the Cheyenne & Arapaho tribal jurisdiction, was also damaged in the storms. None of the 42 fatalities reported—18 people, including three well known storm chasers doing research, perished in Friday’s five tornadoes—were American Indian. More than 20 American Indian families lost their homes in the May 20 tornado alone, according to the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., from tribes including Arapaho, Cherokee, Choctaw, Comanche, Delaware, Jicarilla Apache, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Pawnee, and Shawnee.
While several individual tribes are offering aid, a new group has sprung up to channel aid directly to Indian families themselves. At Trails of H.O.P.E. (Helping Our People Earnestly), people can donate directly to Native American families.
The website is the idea of Oklahoma City area social worker Cortney Yarholar, who is of the Sac & Fox, Creek, Pawnee and Otoe tribes. He was inspired, he said, by words he had been told while growing up.
“ ‘Don’t ask for permission,’ his family elders often told him. ” ‘If you see something that needs to be done, just go do it.’ ”
Yarholar’s wife is from Moore, so he had seen firsthand the aftermath of both the 1999 and 2003 tornadoes that had hit the area. Her family had lost their home both times. He also knew that although FEMA and the American Red Cross handled immediate relief needs, these types of government and non-profit organizations are not always there for the long term. To fill this gap, Yarholar collaborated with the website Last Real Indians to create Trails of H.O.P.E., which is collecting donations to go directly to the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference disaster response committee. The Oklahoma Indian Missionary is the governing body of the American Indian Methodist churches within Oklahoma and exists to assist American Indian disaster victims.
“They’re really in it for the long haul, the long term, in helping families rebuild their lives—not only their physical homes but also their lives,” Yarholar said.
As of Monday June 3 the site had raised $5,000, said David Wilson, Choctaw tribal member and the conference superintendent of the missionary. The funds are being used to obtain temporary housing and car rental assistance for storm victims. The missionary has also helped funnel grief-counseling referrals through the Oklahoma City Indian Clinic and assisted in cleanup.
“Because of our various connections with the tribes, we usually know what tribes are going to offer, what support we might get from different agencies that the general public might not have access to,” said Wilson.
The missionary has received pledges for more support from throughout the country, Wilson said, adding that the group will continue working with both the individuals and tribes affected for as long as is necessary.
“Families have gone in to recover as much as they can,” said Wilson. “What we’ve worked on for the last three or four days is helping folks with temporary assistance, with housing. We’ll continue to work with that. We’ll begin looking at the rebuilding stage.”
Trails of H.O.P.E.’s efforts will not stop with this spate of tornadoes, Wilson said, even when the Oklahoma Missionary moves on as it travels throughout the country to help with other disasters.
“Thinking realistically, there will be another disaster somewhere in Indian Country,” Yarholar said. “That way, it will give [the missionary] an opportunity to respond in a timely manner.”
Donations to Trails of H.O.P.E. can be made online through the group’s website, or by sending checks directly to the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference, 3020 S. Harvey, OKC, OK 73109. ATTN: Disaster Relief.
More on the Oklahoma tornadoes and relief efforts:
Tornadoes Pummel Moore and Oklahoma City Anew; At Least Five Killed
Oklahoma Awakes to Grim New Reality as Recovery Efforts Begin
President Obama to Oklahoma: Every Resource Is at Your Disposal
More Than 50 Dead as Tornado Decimates Moore, Oklahoma, Hometown of Rep. Tom Cole, and Levels School
Read more at https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/04/oklahoma-tornadoes-new-website-collects-aid-native-victims-149715
SR 529 Ebey Slough Bridge closure slated for June 8-10
The Marysville Globe
MARYSVILLE — The State Route 529 Ebey Slough Bridge is slated to be closed for the weekend from 5 a.m. on Saturday, June 8, to 5 a.m. on Monday, June 10.
“At this time, the bridge’s final paving is scheduled for this weekend,” said Kris Olsen, of the Washington State Department of Transportation Communications, on Tuesday, June 4. “It’s weather-dependent, but the weather forecast looks good at this time.”
According to Olsen, the final striping should be laid down on the bridge 21 days after the final paving is complete, although the striping work is also weather-dependent.
Local police departments introduce ‘Business Watch’
Marysville Police Chief Rick Smith hopes the ‘Business Watch’ program, in partnership with the Tulalip Tribal Police Department, will help area merchants and retailers safeguard themselves from crime.
Kirk Boxleitner, The Marysville Globe
TULALIP — Members of the Marysville and Tulalip Tribal police departments introduced their “Business Watch” program to the Greater Marysville Tulalip Chamber of Commerce on Friday, May 31, but while they pledge to provide resources and consultation to the program, they made clear to the Chamber members that the “Business Watch” is the community’s program more than it is the police departments’ program.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty in the world, between difficult fiscal times and manmade and natural disasters,” Marysville Police Chief Rick Smith said. “We hope this will bring some certainty back to your lives.”
“As the primary law enforcement for Quil Ceda Village, I understand the importance of business to the community as a whole,” Tulalip Tribal Police Deputy Chief Carlos Echevarria said.
Recently promoted Marysville Police Lt. Mark Thomas, whom Smith touted as a creative people-person, presented the bulk of the program, which he compared to the Marysville Volunteers Program of the Marysville Police Department.
“Perfection is unattainable, but in its pursuit, we find excellence,” Thomas said. “Every good police officer has the goal of driving crime down far enough to put himself out of a job. Realistically, that’s not attainable, but we do excellent work by pursuing that goal.”
To that end, the Business Watch program is designed to work by encouraging businesses to focus on ways they can safeguard themselves from being victimized by crime, with credit card fraud, forgery and shoplifting ranking along the primary illegal perils that they face.
“The Business Watch will never be made into a Hollywood action film,” Thomas laughed. “It’s a coalition of individuals who get together to take care of simple things that might make them vulnerable. Shoplifting alone costs retailers more than $13 billion a year.”
Not only will Business Watches run on the partnerships between businesses, and between businesses and their respective police departments, but Thomas also encouraged Business Watches to forge partnerships with the school district and community service organizations.
“It’s a platform to help teach merchants to crime-proof their own properties, watch over their neighbors’ property, and report and document any suspicious behavior,” Thomas said. “The Business Watch philosophy is straightforward; take control of what happens in your community, and lessen your chances of becoming a victim.”
Among the habits that Thomas identified as contributing to successful groups, Thomas advised Business Watch members to promote communication between law enforcement and business, encourage cooperation among merchants and offer training to their employees.
Thomas broke down the process of creating a Business Watch into five steps, starting with forming a committee to list potential problems in their area, followed by involving law enforcement.
“We can provide training and data on what kinds of crimes are common to your areas, so that you can focus your resources properly,” Thomas said. “From there, you should conduct a survey of your fellow businesses, to identify the issues that you face and establish your common interests.”
According to Thomas, every Business Watch should be launched with a kickoff event, lasting about 45 minutes at a place and time that’s convenient for everyone, after which the Business Watch’s first official meeting should include plenty of questions and answers, to ensure that all of its participants are getting what they want out of the group.
“The difference between a good idea and a great idea is follow-through,” Thomas said. “We can provide you with the tools, but it’s not our place to go out and impose a Business Watch on you. You guys have to pull that together yourselves.”
For more information, contact Thomas at 360-363-8321 or mthomas@marysvillewa.gov, Echevarria at 360-716-4608 or cechevarria@tulaliptribalpolice.org, or Business Watch Coordinator Bob Rise at 360-363-8325 or mvp@marysvillewa.gov.
Five Creative Ways to Use Containers in Your Landscape
By Melinda Myers
Container gardens have long been used to add a spot of color by a fron Container gardens have long been used to add a spot of color by a front entrance or expand planting space in city lots, balconies and decks. Don’t let past experience and tradition limit your vision. Try one or more of these attractive, fun and functional ways to include containers in your landscape, large or small.
Add vertical interest to any garden or garden space. Select a large attractive container filled with tall plants like papyrus and canna. Or elevate a small pot on steppers or an overturned pot for added height. Create height with smaller pots and plants by strategically stacking and planting them into a creative planting. Try setting any of these planters right in the garden to create a dramatic focal point.
Create a privacy screen or mask a bad view. Use an arbor or other support for hanging baskets and then place a few containers below for an attractive screen. Or create a garden of containers to provide seasonal interest using a variety of plants. Use trees, shrubs, and ornamental grasses for height. Save money by purchasing smaller plants. Elevate these on overturned pots for added height and impact. Mask the mechanics by wrapping the pots in burlap. Then add a few colorful self-watering pots in the foreground for added color and beauty. Fill these with annuals or perennials for additional seasonal interest.
Bring the garden right to your back door for ease of harvest and added entertainment. A self-watering patio planter, windowbox, or rail planter reduces maintenance and makes harvesting herbs as easy as reaching out the window or backdoor. Plus, guests will have fun harvesting their own fresh mint for mojitos or greens for their salads
Define outdoor living spaces within your landscape. Use containers as walls and dividers to separate entertaining and play areas from quiet reflective spaces. And consider using pots with built in casters or set them on moveable saucers to make moving these pots easier. This way you can expand and shrink individual spaces as needed simply by moving the pots.
Create your own vacation paradise. Use planters filled with cannas, bananas, palms and New Zealand flax for a more tropical flare. Add some wicker furniture to complete the scene. Or fill vertical gardens, an old child’s wagon, metal colander or wooden and concrete planters with cacti and succulents. Add some old branches and large stones. You’ll feel as though you’ve hiked into the desert.
All you need is a bit of space and creativity to find fun new ways to put containers to work for you in the garden this season.
Gardening expert, TV/radio host, author & columnist Melinda Myers has more than 30 years of horticulture experience and has written over 20 gardening books, including Can’t Miss Small Space Gardening. She hosts The Great Courses How to Grow Anything DVD series and the nationally syndicated Melinda’s Garden Moment segments which air on over 130 TV and radio stations throughout the U.S. She is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine and writes the twice monthly “Gardeners’ Questions” newspaper column. Melinda also has a column in Gardening How-to magazine. She has a master’s degree in horticulture, is a certified arborist and was a horticulture instructor with tenure. Her web site, www.melindamyers.com, offers gardening videos, podcasts, garden tips and more.
Puget Sound Gets Troubling Report Card On Sediment Contamination
Do you ever remember getting a bad report card – the kind of report card you’d purposefully leave in the bottom of your backpack, underneath the dirty lunchbox in the hopes that your parents wouldn’t notice it?
Washington Department of Ecology just released that kind of a report card on Puget Sound.
Back in 1998-1999 Ecology sampled the muck at the bottom of Puget Sound from Tacoma up to the southern tip of Whidbey Island. Ten years later they took samples from the same area and then compared the results.
The scientists tested for 133 potentially toxic chemicals including flame retardants, mercury and PCBs:
- 1998-1999: 4 percent of the study area had contamination levels above the standards.
- 2008-2009: 11 percent of the study area had contamination levels exceeding the standards. The contaminated area had almost tripled.
Here’s another comparison:
Back in 1998 Ecology judged that invertebrates – like mollusks and worms – were being negatively impacted at 7 percent of the study area.
Ten years later that figure had jumped to 28 percent of the study area.
Chemical contamination near the cities of Seattle and Tacoma showed some improvement.
But overall the report concludes that “the declining sediment quality… seen almost everywhere throughout Puget Sound should be a concern for environmental managers.”
Lakota to file UN Genocide Charges Against US, South Dakota
Jeff Armstrong in Native Challenges.
June 1, 2013 7:57 am est
Jeff Armstrong is a longtime journalist and activist in Fargo, North Dakota. This article originally appeared in Counterpunch.
NEW YORK – In April, a grassroots movement led by Lakota grandmothers toured the country to build support for a formal complaint of genocide against the United States government and its constituent states. Though temporarily overturned, the recent conviction of Efrain Rios Montt for genocide against indigenous Guatemalans should give US officials, particularly members of the Supreme Court, pause before dismissing the UN petition as a feeble symbolic gesture.
The tribal elders’ 12 city speaking tour culminated in an April 9 march on United Nations headquarters in New York and an April 18 press conference in Washington where the Supreme Court had just heard arguments in a challenge to the landmark 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act. Attracting support from Occupy Wall Street and other non-Native allies in the New York march, the Lakota Truth Tour delegation was physically blocked by UN security officers from presenting Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s office a notice of charges against the U.S. under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
An excerpt from the complaint, still being refined into its final, legal form, reads: “This letter serves notice as complaint, that the crime of genocide is being committed, in an ongoing manner, against the matriarchal Tetuwan Lakota Oyate of the Oceti Sakowin, an Indigenous First Nation people whose ancestral lands comprise a large area of the Northern Great Plains of Turtle Island, the continent known as North America.” As evidence, the Lakota cite systematic American usurpation of their land and sovereignty rights, imposition of third world living conditions on the majority of Lakota, US assimilation policies that threaten the future of their language, culture and identity, and environmental depredations including abandoned open uranium mines and the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline slated to invade the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Lakota grandmothers and their allies in the Lakota Solidarity Project have even produced a powerful, full-length documentary, Red Cry, available on DVD or online at www.lakotagrandmothers.org »
But the UN complaint is just one facet of a multi-pronged legal, political and educational movement within the indigenous Lakota, Sioux, nation to stop the state removal of Native children from their families into white foster homes and institutions, arguably the most salient and best-documented evidence of ongoing US violation of the genocide convention. Article 2 of the convention defines acts of genocide as follows:
“…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Historically, one could make a case for the applicability of most, if not all, of the above provisions to official US policies over more than two centuries. Certainly the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Wounded Knee massacre, of which the perpetrators have yet to be stripped of their Medals of Honor, and Sand Creek slaughter perpetrated by the US military in the latter part of the 19th century, the General Allotment Act of the same time period, the Termination/Relocation policy of the 1950s, the FBI’s war on the American Indian Movement, and the cumulative legal decisions validating the above on explicit or implicit grounds of racial or cultural superiority, come to mind as constituting violations of contemporary international standards of crimes against humanity, if not genocide per se.
Indeed, the ink was scarcely dry on the Genocide Convention before the US deliberately set out to violate Article 2(e) by arbitrarily removing Native children from their families as part of a comprehensive strategy of abolishing reservation boundaries and absorbing indigenous peoples into the states that surround and besiege them. In 1950 President Truman appointed Dillon S. Meyer, fresh from his experience administering the Japanese internment camps with an iron fist, as Indian Commissioner to carry out the final solution to the Indian Problem, i.e., their stubborn refusal to fade into the mists of history, itself a genocidal concept, that has haunted this nation since its inception. It was the formal policy and procedure of the United States at the time to forcibly transfer indigenous children to white homes and boarding schools as a component of a strategy to “terminate” tribes as distinct peoples, meeting the essential threshold of intent under the Genocide Convention. It would have been embarrassing to say the least if the Soviet Union or its allies would have initiated legal genocide charges against the self-avowed fount of human liberty at the United Nations. So it was that the US celebrated its victory over genocidal Nazi imperialism by rebranding the practice in Indian Country as emancipatory individualism and refusing to ratify the 1948 convention until nearly 40 years later.
Ironically, it was the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 that enabled the US to ratify the Genocide Convention by manifesting its intention to stop the wholesale removal of Native children from their families and tribes. ICWA established minimal protections of due-process rights for indigenous parents and recognized the exclusive jurisdiction of existing tribal courts to adjudicate child welfare cases within reservation boundaries, also allowing tribes to intervene in state cases. Ratified by the US in 1986, the Genocide Convention was not implemented until 1989, and then only after denying universal jurisdiction and limiting prosecutions under the act to a five year statute of limitations for violations of the federal crime of genocide. As a measure of the government’s commitment to punishing the ultimate international crime, the federal offenses of arson, art theft, immigration violation and some crimes against financial institutions all carry a statute of limitations period longer than five years. Rios Montt himself would be immune from prosecution under the federal genocide act.
A remarkable 2011 National Public Radio series, Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families, revealed that the federal government not only fails to enforce the baseline standards of ICWA against the states. but actually underwrites the removal of Native children in some cases with additional funds, adding an economic incentive to the racial and cultural ones.
Focusing on South Dakota, a yearlong investigation by NPR reporters Laura Sullivan and Amy Walters found that 90% of the 700 Native children taken from their homes yearly in that state were placed in white foster homes or group homes, in blatant violation of ICWA provisions mandating that any Indian child taken into foster care be placed with a family member, tribal member, or other Native family in the absence of “good cause” to the contrary.
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Chinook Tribal Council Makes Ancestral Canoe Journey
Indian Country Today Media Network
From June 9-14 the Chinook Indian Nation Council will travel down the Lower Columbia River Water Trail in traditional canoes. The route, starting from Washougal, Washington will include stops in Kelly Pt. Park, Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge, Kalama, Mayger Dock/Clatskanie, Cathlamet, Elliott Landing/Pillar Rock, Ilwaco, and Chinook Point/Fort Columbia.
The Chinook Council consists of nine members: Chairman Ray Gardner, Vice-Chairman Sam Robinson, Secretary/Treasurer Peggy Disney and Representatives Marketa Van Patten, Charlie Funk, Jane Wekell, Lisa Elliott, Jeremy Wekell, and Kate Elliott.
(Chinook Indian Nation/Facebook)
In accompaniment with other Chinooks and friends, the Chinook Council will spend five days and five nights travelling down the Lower Columbia River Water Trail. This will be a celebration of the great river, Yakaitl-Wimakl, which is still home to many Chinooks today. This journey will include the chairman’s family canoe, Itsxut (“Black Bear”), the Snohomish Chairman’s family canoe Sbeqwá (“Blue Heron”), Chinook Dan Heiner’s Canoe the Beau Tanner, and will include long time Chinook friend, Lyle Deschand’s new canoe.
After spending Sunday night in the Cathlapotle plankhouse, the Chinook Council and People will meet up river at the Clark Park in Washougal to conduct a naming ceremony for Deschand’s new canoe. They will then place all the canoes in the water and begin the journey back to Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge. As the canoes travel down the river, Chinook families will host dinner and provide shelter for the travelers, much in the way of their ancestors.
This week of sharing and commemoration will culminate in paddling down to Chinook Point on Friday afternoon to participate in the private annual Chinook Nation First Salmon Ceremony.
Historical photo, Chinook canoe (Chinook Indian Nation/Facebook)
The Chinook Indian Nation/Chinook Tribes consist of the Cathlamet, Clatsop, Lower Chinook, Wahkiakum, and Willapa tribes. Despite being an influential tribe in this region since time immemorial, the U.S. government does not recognize the Chinooks as a tribal nation. The U.S. Senate shelved the 1851 Tansey Point Treaty agreements with the Chinook because they did not move them east of the Cascades. The Chinook continue their fight for federal restoration today.
Read more at https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/05/chinook-tribal-council-makes-ancestral-canoe-journey-149720
Car Wash and Father’s Day Car Run, June 16
Raising money for the Cystic Fibrosis Walk 2013.
Car Wash: Dairy Queen, Marysville, 11am-4pm
Fathers Day Car Run: Start at Bob’s Burger & Brew at 10am, end at the car wash at 1pm
