Comments on Puget Sound Salmon Plan -March 16, 2006
To: Elizabeth Babcock, National Marine Fisheries Service, Salmon Recovery Division
7600 Sandpoint Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115 PugetSoundPlan.nwr@noaa.gov
To: Elizabeth Babcock, Salmon Recovery Planners and Those interested in Saving Salmon:
As a resident of Island County, who has spent the past five years educating, organizing and fighting cooperatively with several organizations to end pollution of wetlands, streams and near shore habitats by stopping the application of herbicides by Island County Public Works and Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) for roadside vegetation control, have knowledge that could contribute to a successful Salmon Recovery Plan.
I am thankful to the individuals, Tribes, local governments and organizations that have put an immense amount of energy, time and thought into the current draft documents. Even though I contribute to and read regularly the South Whidbey Record and the Seattle P.I., last month was the first that I had heard about the existence of the Salmon Recovery Plan.
There are statements made in the WIRA 6 draft that are a stretch of the truth. Island County’s Critical Areas Ordinance adopted in 1998 has been rejected by the Growth Management Hearings Board, The Court of Appeals and the State Supreme Court by upholding the Court of Appeals ruling. Island County has yet to take corrective measures to come into compliance with the GMA. The Island County Commissioners paid former Executive Director of Building Contractors, attorney Keith Dearborn $1.5 million to write a developer friendly GMA and to fight having to implement a compliant GMA and Critical Areas Ordinance. They continue to obstruct obeying the law and put up any obstacles they can think up rather than acting to enable actual protection of wetlands and near shore habitats. Contrary to Court mandates a GMA compliant Land Use Constitution has yet to be completed and implemented in Island County. With approximately 138 wetlands, multiple streams and unmapped sensitive areas on five islands this is very important and has a direct bearing on a Salmon Recovery Plan having any hope of success.
A primary requirement for a successful Salmon Recovery Plan in Island County is a willing landowner. (WIRA6, C. Commitments and Conditions Needed for Salmon Recovery, page 65 under Board of Island County Commissioners.) I don’t have much hope for success. Nor do others with a history of twenty-five years of environmental activism that call this draft Plan a “do nothing plan”. Multiple times WRIA 6 Multi-Species Salmon Recovery Plan refers to encouraging landowners to be responsible for the success of this plan but specifically how this is to be accomplished, funded or who specifically will be responsible to educate the landowner and community is left out. I did not see a commitment by the County Commissioners to any action other that what others could do and what a willing landowner would provide but not how they would specifically become an educated willing landowner acting responsibly to save salmon.
Two current examples of development trumping environmental stewardship occurred at the March 13th meeting of the County Commissioners. A change of designation of 70 acres of pristine forest and wetlands on South Whidbey from Designated Forest to Timber Land was made it so that it could be subdivided into ten acre parcels for timber harvest, for sale and home development. Future landowners would have to decide to save the wetlands. Designations of two other tracks on Camano Island were also approved. One on Camano Island has a wetland that shows “the presence of a regulated (fish) bearing stream and associated wetland”. This puts the property under the jurisdiction of the Forest Management Plan with no mention of any of these areas being subject to a Critical Area Ordinance. When no one, who had read the legal notices in the Whidbey News Times, objected, the request for a change of designation was Okayed. Too many times to count, a single organization has been present, to give the only oversight and objection to development plans that would have been otherwise approved.
The second example is that currently a number of streams going from wetlands to Puget Sound near shore habitats on Camano Island have 75 times the allowable fecal coliform levels as per EPA regulations. Directly west of Camano Island, Holmes Harbor is currently closed to shell fish harvest because of high fecal coliform levels. The source of pollution has yet to be identified. This occurs multiple times a year adjacent to Freeland and Nichols Brothers Boat Builders.
In the decade of the 1990s approximately 10,000 gallons of herbicides/pesticides were applied to Island County by multiple government agencies, business and private landowners. April 2, 2001 I presented 175 pages of scientific studies documenting links to herbicides/pesticides (pesticides is often used interchangeably with herbicides as an identifier) to a decrease in reproductively in salmon and multiple species; numerous serious illnesses in children; and adults as official comments to Public Works roadside vegetation control program. The peer reviewed studies proving salmon habitat of the Endangered Chinook were at risk was not enough for the County Commissioners to make a change to stop the harmful practice. A year of educating and organizing the population to communicate to the Commissioners to stop using herbicides for roadside vegetation control resulted in a unanimous resolution being passed to stop their use April 1, 2002. Public Works continues integrated pest management (IMP) along County roads. (WIRA 6, page 65, C. Commitments and Conditions Needed for Salmon Recovery, Public Works)
I did not find within Volume 1 of the overall draft Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Plan or in the WRIA 6 (Whidbey and Camano Islands) any mention or intent to decrease use of endocrine disruptors chemicals, i.e., organophosphates. Island County is one of only six Counties adjacent to Puget Sound and Hood Canal that does not apply herbicides to roadsides for vegetation control. Although WSDOT claims an 40% reduction in herbicide use on state routes in WIRA 6, WSDOT applies thousands of pounds of various organophosphates on state routes through out the Puget Sound basin and adjacent to Hood Canal. Despite multiple educational conversations and communications WSDOT continues to spray herbicides around guardrails which often are uphill from wetlands, streams and Puget Sound without testing for the presence of adverse effects of the chemicals in those water resources.
WSDOT’s Risk Assessment, which was done after my 175 page submission of scientific peer reviewed studies, 2,000 signatures on petitions to stop spray roadsides for vegetation control and Island County’s Resolution to not spray, WSDOT did not address the studies, the endocrine disruption aspects of herbicides used, nor include in the Risk Assessment those studies and Washington Toxics Coalition’s 17 pages of comments. WSDOT found WA Toxics comments “too complete and comprehensive” to be included in the final Risk Assessment. To show no or little risk WSDOT used only Chemical Corporations data and the often “falsified studies” (reference PBS’s Trade Secrets March 26, 2001 broadcast documenting such) submitted to the EPA for registration® of formulations. None of the “inert” adjuvant, surfactants and “Trade Secret” ingredients were studied, nor were the complete formulations studied but only the “Active Ingredients” which often make up a small percentage of the herbicide formulation. Possible increased toxicity of combinations of formulations often used together have not been tested. Some of the inerts: diesel, soaps and chemicals like POEA (polyethoxylaled tallowamine) stay in the environment longer and cause more measurable harm than the organophosphates, such as glyphosate used in RoundUp® and Rodeo®, its water weed counterpart. A Federal Court ruled that Chemical Corporations hiding ingredients under “Trade Secrets” was no longer a valid reason and the data had to be made available. Enforcement of this ruling is needed, but not done.
Organophosphates, such as glyphosate the “Active Ingredient”, found in Rodeo®, RoundUp®, Weed-B-Gone® and others feminize males by affecting the hormones in multiple species. This decreases sperm counts, limits achieving sexual, reproductive maturity and thus produces a decrease in species, especially salmon. Rodeo® application is contraindicated for salmon recovery or survival as it pollutes the near shore habitats critical for food and is an organophosphate. Endocrine disrupting toxic chemicals applied in the environment uptake in the food chain, thus effecting the reproduction of herring, etc. and concentrates in foraging young salmonid doing the damage of limiting sexual maturity and reproduction from a very young age, thus causing extreme harm to the species and what eats salmon, etc.
Spartina removal by hand was first organized by Lori Oneal with the Scatchet Head community at minus summer tides and resulted in the majority of the invasive tideland weed being eliminated in that area. Island County, with the Department of Agriculture, will be applying twenty gallons of Rodeo® for Spartina control into the near shore critical habitats of WIRA 6 this year. No chemical application of Rodeo® has had as great a success as the hand removal. (Reference: Washington Toxics Coalition booklet, Tales of Toxicity: A Grassroots approach to fighting Toxic Pollution, by Kari Mosden, Kate Nelson and Hayden Bass 2005, is available at www.watoxics.org. and Sno-Isle Libraries.
Denmark has banned RoundUp® from use in its country because of its migration into the drinking water contrary to claims by the manufacture. New York State has declared the advertisements of RoundUp® false and misleading and has banned them from the state.
Recommendations I would make are:
1) Make the success of the Salmon Recovery Plan in WIRA 6 dependent on more than a “willing landowner” that at present is uneducated to this fact. Include within tax statements educational materials as to specifically what the landowner can do to support salmon recovery and protection. Offer that upon signing up to be an active educated salmon recovery landowner by pledging to follow some simple guidelines; they choose to have a tenth of a percent of their taxes to go to salmon protection; and they would receive a yard sign acknowledging that a “Salmon Friendly” landowner lives here.
2) Include in the educational material that yard care products registered by the EPA stating that the buyer is libel for any damage are likely to damage salmon. Ask that they pledge to not use: RoundUp®, Weed-B-Gone®, 2,4,D and other weed and turf builders that offer to kill weeds, pests, insects, moss, etc. as poison does not stay where it is put. Include information on alternative methods of pest, weed and moss control and suggest that a less than perfect lawn is a sign of a good salmon steward. Promote native plant yards as smarter than green lawns.
3) With the weight of your organization and the validity of the scientific reports on the harm done to salmon (request scientific studies of what I and others such as Washington Toxics have) that the Washington Department of Agriculture, Department of Ecology and Washington Department of Transportation stop using herbicides/pesticides for weed control. Include this information in the final Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Plan. I have already sent such a letter to the Governor regarding the Puget Sound Partnership program goals being unachievable as long as toxic chemicals continue to be used by the state uphill of and in Puget Sound and Hood Canal.
4) An immediate stop to the use of Rodeo® being used in critical near shore waters needs to be put into place. Contact: Department of Agriculture, Spartina Program, P.O. Box 42560, Olympia, WA 98504 and Island County Noxious Weed Control Board, Susan Horton, Program Coordinator, P.O. Box 5000, Coupeville, WA 98239-5000. Monies used to purchase the 20 gallons of Rodeo® for attempted Spartina control, would be better used organizing hand removal at summer minus tides. Year after year toxic chemicals are the primary tool used and still the problem is there as are the effects of the toxic chemicals on salmon recovery.
Respectfully submitted, Theresa Marie Gandhi
Monday, December 11, 2006
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Corporatocracy - What we can do!
Corporatocracy - What we can do!
Cut back on oil consumption, don’t go shopping, read a book instead exercise, meditate and downsize home, wardrobe, car, office and most everything else.
Protest against “free” trade agreements and against companies that exploit desperate people in sweatshops or that pillage the environment.
Nothing is inherently wrong with the people who work for banks, corporations and overnments, our problems are not the result of malicious institutions, rather, from fallacious concepts about economic development.
At fault are our perceptions about how they function, interact and of the role the managers play in that process.
Worldwide communications and distribution networks could be used to bring about positive and compassionate changes.
Imagine if clothing and food companies became symbols of companies whose primary goals were to clothe and feed the world’s poor in environmentally beneficial ways.
We need a revolution in our approach to education to empower ourselves and our children to think, to question and to dare to act.
You can set an example. Be a teacher and a student and inspire everyone around you through your example.
Take specific actions to impact the institutions in your life.
Speak out whenever any forum presents itself: write letters, e-mails and phone in questions, concerns and vote for enlightened school boards, county commissions, local ordinances and public representatives.
Shop consciously and get personally involved.
The world is as you dream it and we can exchange an old nightmare of polluting industries, clogged highways and overcrowded cities for a new dream based on Earth-honoring and socially responsible principles of sustainability and equality.
It is within our power to transform ourselves, to change the paradigm.
Tools for conflict resolution could render wars obsolete.
Explore the possibilities offered here by John Perkins by offering study groups about Confessions of an Economic Hit Man at the library, book store or hold town hall forums.
(Find a guideline on http://www.johnperkins.org/)
We must commit ourselves absolutely and unequivocally to shaking ourselves and everyone around us awake.
Ask yourself, what will I do to make sure our children and all children everywhere, are able to fulfill the dream of our Founding Fathers and Mothers the dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
What changes will I commit to making in my attitudes and perceptions?
These are essential questions of our time.
It is now for each and every one of us to step up to the battle line, to ask the important questions, to search our souls for our own answers and to take action.
From Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, http://www.johnperkins.org/. http://www.dreamchange.org/ works transforming global consciousness.
Book donated to Island County libraries by Tom Voorhees.
“Corporatocracy: What we can do” was assembled from the epilogue by Theresa Marie Gandhi.
Cut back on oil consumption, don’t go shopping, read a book instead exercise, meditate and downsize home, wardrobe, car, office and most everything else.
Protest against “free” trade agreements and against companies that exploit desperate people in sweatshops or that pillage the environment.
Nothing is inherently wrong with the people who work for banks, corporations and overnments, our problems are not the result of malicious institutions, rather, from fallacious concepts about economic development.
At fault are our perceptions about how they function, interact and of the role the managers play in that process.
Worldwide communications and distribution networks could be used to bring about positive and compassionate changes.
Imagine if clothing and food companies became symbols of companies whose primary goals were to clothe and feed the world’s poor in environmentally beneficial ways.
We need a revolution in our approach to education to empower ourselves and our children to think, to question and to dare to act.
You can set an example. Be a teacher and a student and inspire everyone around you through your example.
Take specific actions to impact the institutions in your life.
Speak out whenever any forum presents itself: write letters, e-mails and phone in questions, concerns and vote for enlightened school boards, county commissions, local ordinances and public representatives.
Shop consciously and get personally involved.
The world is as you dream it and we can exchange an old nightmare of polluting industries, clogged highways and overcrowded cities for a new dream based on Earth-honoring and socially responsible principles of sustainability and equality.
It is within our power to transform ourselves, to change the paradigm.
Tools for conflict resolution could render wars obsolete.
Explore the possibilities offered here by John Perkins by offering study groups about Confessions of an Economic Hit Man at the library, book store or hold town hall forums.
(Find a guideline on http://www.johnperkins.org/)
We must commit ourselves absolutely and unequivocally to shaking ourselves and everyone around us awake.
Ask yourself, what will I do to make sure our children and all children everywhere, are able to fulfill the dream of our Founding Fathers and Mothers the dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
What changes will I commit to making in my attitudes and perceptions?
These are essential questions of our time.
It is now for each and every one of us to step up to the battle line, to ask the important questions, to search our souls for our own answers and to take action.
From Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, http://www.johnperkins.org/. http://www.dreamchange.org/ works transforming global consciousness.
Book donated to Island County libraries by Tom Voorhees.
“Corporatocracy: What we can do” was assembled from the epilogue by Theresa Marie Gandhi.
Thinking Globally, Regionally and Acting Locally!
December 7, 2006
Editor: South Whidbey Record and Whidbey News Times
Island County’s Taxes to be Wasted Again!
There should be some formula you could figure out from Island County Commissioners not doing due diligence to protect Wetlands, Salmon Streams and Critical Areas from past experience that would allow us taxpayers to figure out how much the newest avoidance action is going to cost. The first time the County hired Keith Dearborn, former head of the Developers Association, to write the Growth Management Act and Critical Areas Ordnance for a few hundred thousand dollars it cost the County over $2,000,000.00 – two million to defend his inability to follow the law up through several courts to the Court of Appeals that found the County in the wrong.
ISLAND COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS December 11, 2006. 9:30 a.m. Regular Meeting Board of County Commissioners.
Public Comment period per person is ten minuets. Please attend, e-mail and phone your disapproval of the Commissioners repeating a bad mistake again.
….c) Agreement with Dearborn & Moss PLLC for legal and consultingservices for GMA Critical Areas policies and regulations including wetlandsand fish and wildlife habitat conservation. 2-year contract beginningJanuary 1, 2007. Contract amount: $297,380.00 (RM-PLAN-06-133)
3 years ago WEAN submitted proposed changes to the Island County Critical Areas Ordinance, along with an $800.00 fee. The Commissioners, the Planning Commission, and Planning staff took our money but ignored our proposal.
Two years ago we came back and asked what they had to show for WEAN’s money. They acknowledged error and invited us to resubmit our proposal. We did that.
Last year WEAN asked what they had to show for their money and they told us they were busy, they were working on it, we should be patient.
This summer WEAN sent a certified letter to planning director Phil Bakke asking what the county had done with our proposed revisions. He did not give us the courtesy of a reply.
Now, as you can see by the agenda item above, our patience is being rewarded by a new $300k contract with Keith Dearborn. We do wonder why the county would hire an anti-GMA attorney to re-write the Critical Areas ordinance, and why, 3 years after submitting a workable proposal and the $800.00 fee, WEAN still hasn't heard when they intend to address it.
This is how the Commissioners squander your tax dollars. Please attend by person or communications. To see the history of how a few thousand dollars to Dearborn added up to over $2 million see my blog where the history is it posted.
Looking for fiduciary responsibility, tmgandhi
HerStory of Critical Areas GMA and
Whidbey Enviornmental Action Network.
In 1990 the GMA-Growth Management Act (Chapter 36.70A RCW) became law because unplanned growth posed a threat to the environment, sustainable economic development, and the quality of life in Washington. GMA established state goals, offered direction on how to prepare local comprehensive plans and regulations and set forth requirements for early and continuous public participation so that GMA could become a Land Use Constitution unique to local areas.
In 1992 the Hearing Boards were established to make informed decisions on appeals arising from the implementation or non-implementation of the Growth Management Act in a clear, consistent, timely and impartial manner that recognizes the diversity of local regions.
Whidbey Environmental Action Network – WEAN, in reading the law knew from experience that Island County was out of compliance with the GMA law. Experience had shown that the County Commissioners had no intention of stopping uncoordinated and unplanned growth that posed a threat to our common resources so necessary for quality of life. Resources like clean water in our wells, healthy wetlands that maintain our aquifers, rare and endangered native species of plants, fish and sustainable habitats for these species.
WEAN worked through the decade of the 1990's to get a GMA compliant comprehensive plan for Island County. The County Commissioners’ response was to hire a former Executive Director of Building Contractors of Washington State for $60,000 in 1997 to write a Land Developer’s version of a comprehensive plan. The amount paid by County taxpayers grew to $1.5 million dollars paid to Attorney Keith Dearborn. Dearborn used a 1984 Wetland Ordinance because if any changes were made it would have to meet the new Best Available Science standard. In 1998 WEAN stipulated that the County could meet their Critical Area protection obligations in using the AG-BMP in the Commercial AG and Rural AG zones. WEAN went to the Hearings Board when the County claimed that the AG-BMP was good enough to apply in all zones. The Hearings Board upheld WEAN’s claim that AG-BMP plan did not replace a Critical Areas Plan.
Then the Commissioners found a sympathetic Judge in Whatcom County that did not bother to read the record, gave no findings of fact and ruled on a topic not even a part of the court case. This judge’s rulings were overturned by the Court of Appeals. The three judges upheld legal arguments submitted by WEAN. The County then took the Court of Appeals proceedings to the Supreme Court and was refused a hearing of the case, making the Court of Appeals action finding Island County out of compliance with the GMA law, the last legal recourse.
The Farms Plans came into contention when the County Commissioners claimed that the very existence of a Farm Plan demonstrated that Critical Areas were being protected on that property. WEAN asked how they could know this, since the Commissioners had never seen a Farm Plan. WEAN asked to see the Farm Plans, not to torture farmers but to verify the statements of the County Commissioners and to determine if Farm Plans really do protect Critical Areas as required by law under the GMA. The Farm Plans do not meet the legal requirements of the GMA and are now secret and cannot be viewed through a Public Disclosure Act request.
The Commissions fought for unregulated development for twenty years, spent $2 million + in fighting implementation of the GMA, exhausted all legal recourse and then started a divide to conquer campaign against WEAN. They sent out questionnaires slandering WEAN and telling farmers that WEAN was out to put them out of business.
WEAN is dedicated to preservation and restoration of native biological diversity of Island County and the Pacific Northwest. They have fought to keep land for farmers not put them out of business. Steve and Marianne are founding members of Whidbey Island’s Tilth and 2nd generation Island farmers.
Why after the Growth Management Act Hearings Board, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court ruled that Island County is out of compliance with the law and subject to the state withholding taxes have the County Commissioners not done as court ordered? If the County would not have spent the $1.5 million + fighting the GMA but instead spent the money and time implementing the Growth Management Act they could have saved the taxpayers a lot of money, brought the community together and contributed to our quality of life instead of the opposite.
Respectfully for our seventh generation,
Theresa Marie K. Gandhi
Editor: South Whidbey Record and Whidbey News Times
Island County’s Taxes to be Wasted Again!
There should be some formula you could figure out from Island County Commissioners not doing due diligence to protect Wetlands, Salmon Streams and Critical Areas from past experience that would allow us taxpayers to figure out how much the newest avoidance action is going to cost. The first time the County hired Keith Dearborn, former head of the Developers Association, to write the Growth Management Act and Critical Areas Ordnance for a few hundred thousand dollars it cost the County over $2,000,000.00 – two million to defend his inability to follow the law up through several courts to the Court of Appeals that found the County in the wrong.
ISLAND COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS December 11, 2006. 9:30 a.m. Regular Meeting Board of County Commissioners.
Public Comment period per person is ten minuets. Please attend, e-mail and phone your disapproval of the Commissioners repeating a bad mistake again.
….c) Agreement with Dearborn & Moss PLLC for legal and consultingservices for GMA Critical Areas policies and regulations including wetlandsand fish and wildlife habitat conservation. 2-year contract beginningJanuary 1, 2007. Contract amount: $297,380.00 (RM-PLAN-06-133)
3 years ago WEAN submitted proposed changes to the Island County Critical Areas Ordinance, along with an $800.00 fee. The Commissioners, the Planning Commission, and Planning staff took our money but ignored our proposal.
Two years ago we came back and asked what they had to show for WEAN’s money. They acknowledged error and invited us to resubmit our proposal. We did that.
Last year WEAN asked what they had to show for their money and they told us they were busy, they were working on it, we should be patient.
This summer WEAN sent a certified letter to planning director Phil Bakke asking what the county had done with our proposed revisions. He did not give us the courtesy of a reply.
Now, as you can see by the agenda item above, our patience is being rewarded by a new $300k contract with Keith Dearborn. We do wonder why the county would hire an anti-GMA attorney to re-write the Critical Areas ordinance, and why, 3 years after submitting a workable proposal and the $800.00 fee, WEAN still hasn't heard when they intend to address it.
This is how the Commissioners squander your tax dollars. Please attend by person or communications. To see the history of how a few thousand dollars to Dearborn added up to over $2 million see my blog where the history is it posted.
Looking for fiduciary responsibility, tmgandhi
HerStory of Critical Areas GMA and
Whidbey Enviornmental Action Network.
In 1990 the GMA-Growth Management Act (Chapter 36.70A RCW) became law because unplanned growth posed a threat to the environment, sustainable economic development, and the quality of life in Washington. GMA established state goals, offered direction on how to prepare local comprehensive plans and regulations and set forth requirements for early and continuous public participation so that GMA could become a Land Use Constitution unique to local areas.
In 1992 the Hearing Boards were established to make informed decisions on appeals arising from the implementation or non-implementation of the Growth Management Act in a clear, consistent, timely and impartial manner that recognizes the diversity of local regions.
Whidbey Environmental Action Network – WEAN, in reading the law knew from experience that Island County was out of compliance with the GMA law. Experience had shown that the County Commissioners had no intention of stopping uncoordinated and unplanned growth that posed a threat to our common resources so necessary for quality of life. Resources like clean water in our wells, healthy wetlands that maintain our aquifers, rare and endangered native species of plants, fish and sustainable habitats for these species.
WEAN worked through the decade of the 1990's to get a GMA compliant comprehensive plan for Island County. The County Commissioners’ response was to hire a former Executive Director of Building Contractors of Washington State for $60,000 in 1997 to write a Land Developer’s version of a comprehensive plan. The amount paid by County taxpayers grew to $1.5 million dollars paid to Attorney Keith Dearborn. Dearborn used a 1984 Wetland Ordinance because if any changes were made it would have to meet the new Best Available Science standard. In 1998 WEAN stipulated that the County could meet their Critical Area protection obligations in using the AG-BMP in the Commercial AG and Rural AG zones. WEAN went to the Hearings Board when the County claimed that the AG-BMP was good enough to apply in all zones. The Hearings Board upheld WEAN’s claim that AG-BMP plan did not replace a Critical Areas Plan.
Then the Commissioners found a sympathetic Judge in Whatcom County that did not bother to read the record, gave no findings of fact and ruled on a topic not even a part of the court case. This judge’s rulings were overturned by the Court of Appeals. The three judges upheld legal arguments submitted by WEAN. The County then took the Court of Appeals proceedings to the Supreme Court and was refused a hearing of the case, making the Court of Appeals action finding Island County out of compliance with the GMA law, the last legal recourse.
The Farms Plans came into contention when the County Commissioners claimed that the very existence of a Farm Plan demonstrated that Critical Areas were being protected on that property. WEAN asked how they could know this, since the Commissioners had never seen a Farm Plan. WEAN asked to see the Farm Plans, not to torture farmers but to verify the statements of the County Commissioners and to determine if Farm Plans really do protect Critical Areas as required by law under the GMA. The Farm Plans do not meet the legal requirements of the GMA and are now secret and cannot be viewed through a Public Disclosure Act request.
The Commissions fought for unregulated development for twenty years, spent $2 million + in fighting implementation of the GMA, exhausted all legal recourse and then started a divide to conquer campaign against WEAN. They sent out questionnaires slandering WEAN and telling farmers that WEAN was out to put them out of business.
WEAN is dedicated to preservation and restoration of native biological diversity of Island County and the Pacific Northwest. They have fought to keep land for farmers not put them out of business. Steve and Marianne are founding members of Whidbey Island’s Tilth and 2nd generation Island farmers.
Why after the Growth Management Act Hearings Board, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court ruled that Island County is out of compliance with the law and subject to the state withholding taxes have the County Commissioners not done as court ordered? If the County would not have spent the $1.5 million + fighting the GMA but instead spent the money and time implementing the Growth Management Act they could have saved the taxpayers a lot of money, brought the community together and contributed to our quality of life instead of the opposite.
Respectfully for our seventh generation,
Theresa Marie K. Gandhi
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Participate in keeping Local Control of Media
The following issues and net neutrality (not corporate controlled) are critical. At present the majority of Americans are getting Orwellian news fabricated by the media corporations who also own weapons production corporations and thus profit from war. These "news" fabrications are then picked up and spread. Keep communicating with the FCC on these issues as it will not go away until corporations no longer own the White House and Congress.
At present the internet is one of the few places where uncensored news and views can be found. Fight for net neutrality at every opportunity and let your Represenatives and Senators know that you know several hundred folks (or more) who feel and vote the same as you do. The Democrats (beholding to Corporations for funding their elections) are on probation because of our voter turn out, we must take this window of opportunity to make sure they are educated.
I got a law made, making October 2, 1988 a National Day of Recoginition for Mahatma Gandhi by talking with every legislator's office on the Hill. I had to get 51% of Congress and 51% of the Senate to co-sponsor the bill before it could come up for a vote. I was on the phone for six months talking with the person in the Senators and Represenatives office that handled that type of legislation. What worked was when I said I knew of 60,000 people in their constituency that wanted the same as I did and just specifically how many did they need to 1) show up in their office; 2) call; 3) write; and 4) vote against them if they didn't support it. The last threat I never brought up but it was implied.
The other part of my team at the Gandhi Memorial International Foundation (GIMF) was Santanam Chary. He would communicate to the East Indian communities across America to contact Senators to co-sponsor Senate Joint Resolution 169 and Representatives to co-sponsor House Joint Resolution 330, especially those that needed to recieve requests to do so. We discovered after going to Washington, D.C. that we got better access from using the pay telephones in the hallway than we did showing up and trying to speak with someone in the office. After the President signed the approved Joint Resolutions into law we went to the Oval Office for a photo opportunity.
This experience added to the three months I spent on the Hill, lobbying for First Aid to be required of all Forest Service and National Park employees, after Mt. St. Helens blew I learned that: a hand written letter has the most weight; then individually typed letters (I witnessed these being tallied up); faxes; short to the point e-mails and telephone calls.
The Forest Service did not want the First Aid law and I was the only one speaking for it (an Agriculture Committe member told me this). It was voted out of Committee and on to the Floor for a vote. (Most legislation dies in Committee.) I split my time between looking for work in the Senate, showing what I could do and I volunteered at Democratic National Headquarters. I'd known in January 1980 that President Carter would lose and I wanted to do everything I could to make my knowing not be so.
Several issues in addition to Corporate Control of Media and the Internet will come up in the next two years that will be critical. Please, participate in the legislative process, especially in Olympia where the fate of the Puget Sound Partnership will have a chance of being successful or not.
Speaking Truth to Power, TmkG
Chairman Kevin J. Martin
cc: Commissioners:
Michael J. Copps; Jonathan S. Adelstein; Deborah Taylor Tate; Robert McDowell
Federal Communication Commission, 445 12th Street, SW, Washington, DC 20554
October 9, 2006
Comments Re: Expansion of Corporate Media Ownership
Honorable Chairman and Commissioners:
This is a submission of my comments to the record on expanding ownership of Corporate Media. Corporate Media already has too much control and it should be broken up to allow more local ownership of television, radio and newspapers. To give mega corporations more would be anti-democratic and an insult to the air waves that are supposed to be where community dialogue could take place. If there had not been such an expansion Fox’s Orwellian War is Peace would not have had such a huge advantage in repeating the misrepresentations coming out of the Bush administration to take us to war.
Los Angeles is an example. The Los Angeles Times decided to charge multiple times the going rate and limit the content of an ad announcing an opportunity to testify on this issue at your recent meeting.
My own experience in 1998 as one of two running the only radio station for 100 miles in any direction in Rawlins, Wyoming is an example. We were live in the morning with local weather, school information, a swap and shop segment and covered on location promotions for local business. The Going Fishing song was the most requested. We did tests on the Emergency Channel and if anything happened the phone would ring off the hook wanting to know, “what was that explosion or questions on whatever happened”. We would find out and let the community know. We covered election night and had the office seekers on to discuss, “why we should vote for them”. On Friday nights the high school got to produce their show. On Sundays local residents produced a Spanish show. In the afternoon we would switch it to the satellite. We always knew that it was 3:47 PM because Spirit in the Sky would play out of Denver with the same music every day. As long as Jolene could sell $15,000.00 in ads the owners were fine with us having a local community radio. The engineer for the owners was stationed 250 miles away. He showed me a new station; it was a continuous CD player in a closet. Community radio has died in Rawlins and with it a sense of community.
I came back to the west coast for family and in 1999 had a radio show in Bremerton, Washington. It really creates a sense of community to have community radio. More and more that possibility has been diminished by your rulings.
Please do not expand Corporate Media’s ownership. You would better be serving “we the people” by revoking your previous expansion and or open the analog frequencies to community ownership as the big guys have gone digital.
Respectfully submitted,
Theresa Marie K. Gandhi
At present the internet is one of the few places where uncensored news and views can be found. Fight for net neutrality at every opportunity and let your Represenatives and Senators know that you know several hundred folks (or more) who feel and vote the same as you do. The Democrats (beholding to Corporations for funding their elections) are on probation because of our voter turn out, we must take this window of opportunity to make sure they are educated.
I got a law made, making October 2, 1988 a National Day of Recoginition for Mahatma Gandhi by talking with every legislator's office on the Hill. I had to get 51% of Congress and 51% of the Senate to co-sponsor the bill before it could come up for a vote. I was on the phone for six months talking with the person in the Senators and Represenatives office that handled that type of legislation. What worked was when I said I knew of 60,000 people in their constituency that wanted the same as I did and just specifically how many did they need to 1) show up in their office; 2) call; 3) write; and 4) vote against them if they didn't support it. The last threat I never brought up but it was implied.
The other part of my team at the Gandhi Memorial International Foundation (GIMF) was Santanam Chary. He would communicate to the East Indian communities across America to contact Senators to co-sponsor Senate Joint Resolution 169 and Representatives to co-sponsor House Joint Resolution 330, especially those that needed to recieve requests to do so. We discovered after going to Washington, D.C. that we got better access from using the pay telephones in the hallway than we did showing up and trying to speak with someone in the office. After the President signed the approved Joint Resolutions into law we went to the Oval Office for a photo opportunity.
This experience added to the three months I spent on the Hill, lobbying for First Aid to be required of all Forest Service and National Park employees, after Mt. St. Helens blew I learned that: a hand written letter has the most weight; then individually typed letters (I witnessed these being tallied up); faxes; short to the point e-mails and telephone calls.
The Forest Service did not want the First Aid law and I was the only one speaking for it (an Agriculture Committe member told me this). It was voted out of Committee and on to the Floor for a vote. (Most legislation dies in Committee.) I split my time between looking for work in the Senate, showing what I could do and I volunteered at Democratic National Headquarters. I'd known in January 1980 that President Carter would lose and I wanted to do everything I could to make my knowing not be so.
Several issues in addition to Corporate Control of Media and the Internet will come up in the next two years that will be critical. Please, participate in the legislative process, especially in Olympia where the fate of the Puget Sound Partnership will have a chance of being successful or not.
Speaking Truth to Power, TmkG
Chairman Kevin J. Martin
cc: Commissioners:
Michael J. Copps; Jonathan S. Adelstein; Deborah Taylor Tate; Robert McDowell
Federal Communication Commission, 445 12th Street, SW, Washington, DC 20554
October 9, 2006
Comments Re: Expansion of Corporate Media Ownership
Honorable Chairman and Commissioners:
This is a submission of my comments to the record on expanding ownership of Corporate Media. Corporate Media already has too much control and it should be broken up to allow more local ownership of television, radio and newspapers. To give mega corporations more would be anti-democratic and an insult to the air waves that are supposed to be where community dialogue could take place. If there had not been such an expansion Fox’s Orwellian War is Peace would not have had such a huge advantage in repeating the misrepresentations coming out of the Bush administration to take us to war.
Los Angeles is an example. The Los Angeles Times decided to charge multiple times the going rate and limit the content of an ad announcing an opportunity to testify on this issue at your recent meeting.
My own experience in 1998 as one of two running the only radio station for 100 miles in any direction in Rawlins, Wyoming is an example. We were live in the morning with local weather, school information, a swap and shop segment and covered on location promotions for local business. The Going Fishing song was the most requested. We did tests on the Emergency Channel and if anything happened the phone would ring off the hook wanting to know, “what was that explosion or questions on whatever happened”. We would find out and let the community know. We covered election night and had the office seekers on to discuss, “why we should vote for them”. On Friday nights the high school got to produce their show. On Sundays local residents produced a Spanish show. In the afternoon we would switch it to the satellite. We always knew that it was 3:47 PM because Spirit in the Sky would play out of Denver with the same music every day. As long as Jolene could sell $15,000.00 in ads the owners were fine with us having a local community radio. The engineer for the owners was stationed 250 miles away. He showed me a new station; it was a continuous CD player in a closet. Community radio has died in Rawlins and with it a sense of community.
I came back to the west coast for family and in 1999 had a radio show in Bremerton, Washington. It really creates a sense of community to have community radio. More and more that possibility has been diminished by your rulings.
Please do not expand Corporate Media’s ownership. You would better be serving “we the people” by revoking your previous expansion and or open the analog frequencies to community ownership as the big guys have gone digital.
Respectfully submitted,
Theresa Marie K. Gandhi
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Call to Action to Preserve and Save Puget Sound
This blog is a bit more about me and about things I have learned and done in working to preserve and save Puget Sound for our seventh generation.
I returned to the Northwest in 1998 just as soon as my eldest granddaughter finished requirements for high school graduation in Rawlins, WY. I’d been living near Oak Creek in Sedona when I returned to Kitsap County to help my family as my forty-one year old brother was dying of cancer. Then I shared a Rawlins apartment with Christina, my granddaughter, as her mother drove a tractor trailer back and forth across the country.
I came back to Kitsap County, Washington to help my mother with the process of my dad dying from cancer. The day after the funeral my sister and I flew to Arizona to drive back with my stored belongings, visit my family in Wyoming and pick up my poodle, Shaktipaw to come with me back to Bremerton where I’d gotten an apartment.
In Rawlins I worked as a radio host on regular programming and produced my own show. Back home in Kitsap County I produced and hosted “Kitsap Views” live on the radio. I was just in time for the November 30, 1999 World Trade Protest and volunteered at http://www.indymedia.org/ when it went live to cover the event. Tom Voorhees was a major part of creating the space, providing equipment and setting up a broadcast production space. I saw he could use some help and we got to be good friends. He introduced me to Whidbey Island and by the following summer I had moved up here. In the time I’d been gone from the Northwest Kitsap County had grown from 40,000 to 240,000, the population of the State of Wyoming. Island County had about 40,000 when I moved here.
March 26, 2001 Bill Moyers broadcast “Trade Secrets” on my Brother John’s birthday. As he had died at 41 leaving four children because he tightened the bolts on a nuclear reactor on board a USSN submarine and the paper booties provided had not protected him. Learning from Bill Moyers how a million documents proved that chemical corporations had lied and colluded threw the years on my brother’s birthday, the combination made me very angry. I spoke with Marianne Edain of Whidbey Environmental Action Network about the program the next day. She told me that they had tried in 1985 to stop Island County from applying herbicides to all County roads and were only able to get No Spray signs for those who didn’t want it near their property. Additionally the State puts a huge amount of herbicides on the highway that ran the length of the island. Living in cities for twenty years I had no idea this was happening. This was just too much. She also said that the deadline for submitting comments to Island County Public Works was in six days. I got busy.
For the next five years I spent most of my time working on this issue, first with the County and then with the State. I compiled 175 pages of peer review scientific studies documenting the endocrine disruption aspects of the multiple herbicides used to control roadside vegetation and the danger of the “inerts”. Later I learned that between the County and State 10 thousand gallons of herbicides had been applied to the Whidbey and Camano Islands in the previous decade. This doesn’t include personal & lawn care use.
I wrote a cover letter, a three page abstract and a three page bibliography of the studies assembled and submitted in the 175 pages. I included the transcript of “Trade Secrets” for proof that whatever the chemical corporations said about their products could not be trusted. I knew the Commissioners would not read what I submitted so I went weekly for the next year educating them and asking questions in my 10 minutes of comment time. Several organizations joined in the fight and a new one was created, Whidbey/Camano Island No Spray – WINS. A year later April 1, 2002 No Spray was passed and the County changed how they did roadside vegetation control.
I learned several things in this process: RoundUp® causes males of multiple species to be feminized, i.e. lower sperm counts, erect penile dysfunction, testicular atrophy and elimination of male genitals; multiple herbicides are causative in non-Hodgkin lymphoma, asthma, Lymphoma, congenital anomalies, miscarriages, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), depression and violent behavior in children. I experience additional severe reactions including bleeding out of the ends of my capillaries, i.e. petechia.
The “Trade Secrets” which often make up to 97% of the formulation are much more harmful than the “active” ingredients. These are misnamed “inerts”. Denmark banned RoundUp® from their Country because it migrated rapidly into the drinking water, i.e. the aquifer. The “inerts” are never tested for; the synergistic combinations have not been tested for, especially with other herbicides. Most often several types are used.
March 2002 I met with Doug McDonald, Secretary of the Washington State Department of Transportation – WSDOT, spoke with him about the above issues, the 174 pages of science, showed him the 2,000 signed petitions to Stop Herbicide Spray and told him it would cost less in the long run to not spray. WEAN and I sent in copies of all the above in time for submission of comments to WSDOT’s yearly vegetation control plan. Thus began a long frustrating process educating WSDOT. More about that at near the end of this blog.
Governor Gregoire put forth the Puget Sound Partnership call to restore and make Puget Sound healthy by 2020. I immediately wrote to her and said that the goals could never be met to clean up Puget Sound as long as the State agencies (WSDOT, Dept. of Agriculture and Dept. of Ecology) was spending hundreds of thousands, probably more, on herbicides and pesticides up stream from Puget Sound that ran downhill into watersheds, aquifers, streams, rivers and as stormwater run off directly into Puget Sound.
The majority of the near shore waters around Whidbey Island are designated as habitat for Chinook salmon, listed as endangered species. To harm a fingerling Chinook salmon or its habitat is subject to a $15,000 to $25,000 fine per fish. This is not being enforced.
I began fishing off a dock, row boating and swimming in Puget Sound at age nine. Lakes I fished on during the 1960’s that were clear to the bottom are now cloudy. At eleven I got in a lot of trouble because a friend and I rowed to Blake Island before it was a State Park and you could see the bottom of Puget Sound a long way from shore. No more. Crabs are gone or deformed off Whidbey and Blake Islands. World wide we have fifty years of fishing left maybe less as what bait fish feed on is dying. The cycle of life is breaking down at the bottom of the food chain. Hood Canal, the Gulf of Mexico and many other places are now Dead Zones often from pesticide runoff. Corporate farms up stream of the Mississippi get government welfare to use pesticides and these pour into the Gulf of Mexico’s Dead Zone.
As an example, the Save the Salmon Plan in Island County depends on the uninformed property owner to save the Salmon but does not provide educational material on how to do it and no way to let the property owners know of their responsibility. Unless the Puget Sound Partnership comes up with a better plan than what was tried in the Chesapeake it too will fail. We will need a lot of people getting involved, making a commitment and putting in place enforcement methods to make it happen if Puget Sound is to be saved. Knowing how industry and business works I’m not optimistic but I will continue to work for the application of ecological wisdom in policies and processes involving drinking water, i.e. wells sourcing from healthy aquifers and wetlands, chemical free streams, rivers and a healthy Puget Sound.
What you can do. Link to my web page at http://www.tmgandhi.com/ and read my comments to the Puget Sound Partnership. Check out their web page at http://www.pugetsoundpartnership.org/ and the comments submitted to their plan. Kathy Fletcher of People for Puget Sound submitted comments signed on to by a number of organizations. She is a part of the Partnership advisory committee, check out their web page at http://www.pugetsound.org/. Additionally: Shared Strategy for Puget Sound is at http://www.sharedsalmonstradegy.org/; Puget Sound Action Team is at http://www.psat.wa.gov/; http://www.sustainablenorthwest.org/; Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides is at http://www.ncap.org/; Washington Toxics Coalition at http://www.watoxics.org/; and the Orca Network at http://www.orcanetwork.org/. Also check out the Broken Promises series in the Seattle P-I by Lisa Stiffler and Robert McClure at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/specials/brokenpromises.html .
These are some of several organizations working for a healthy Puget Sound. Several key issues will come up in January’s legislative session and letters from informed folks will help. Write letters to the Editors and inform your local newspapers; ask your local Public Radio and Television to cover these topics. Share what you have learned with friends and family during the upcoming holidays. Tell the Governor and PS Partnership to implement the comments submitted by a coalition of organizations working with People for Puget Sound. Get a copy of the comments submitted by a group of scientists that have been working with the issues of stormwater management for years and know the current Plan falls far short of what it will take if it is to succeed. I found their comments via the Seattle P-I in their Broken Promises series.
Secretary Doug McDonald has already claimed that what WSDOT is doing is adequate and that they are serious about controlling stormwater run off. They are far from where they need to be on this issue. Contact Doug at macdond@wsdot.wa.gov and tell him WSDOT needs to stop using herbicides to control roadside vegetation, especially if your County is No Spray. They also need to include comments from Washington Toxics that they decided was too complete and comprehensive to be included in their illegally done and inadequate Environmental Impact Study on the use of toxic chemicals. WSDOT did not address the endocrine disruption aspects of the herbicides in the process of creating the EIS that only included studies done by Chemical Corporations. It’s on their web page as an example of how they are looking out for the health of people and aquatic life. They are not. The EIS was requested by Doug after receiving my material but it never addressed the issues raised by the scientific studies I had submitted.
If this cause is not your then find your own and make a difference in our world so our seventh generation will have a quality, healthy common future. Use the power of your purse and tell stores that sell herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and other toxic chemicals that you will take your business elsewhere until they sell only salmon friendly products. Stop using Tide, and other phosphate based detergents. Switch to earth friendly cleaning products. Stop using products with perfumes in them as they are created from hydrocarbons and are harmful to life and people with asthma. A salmon can smell one part per trillion.
If you have any questions, e-mail me at tmarie@whidbey.net.
Until next time, Theresa Marie Gandhi
I returned to the Northwest in 1998 just as soon as my eldest granddaughter finished requirements for high school graduation in Rawlins, WY. I’d been living near Oak Creek in Sedona when I returned to Kitsap County to help my family as my forty-one year old brother was dying of cancer. Then I shared a Rawlins apartment with Christina, my granddaughter, as her mother drove a tractor trailer back and forth across the country.
I came back to Kitsap County, Washington to help my mother with the process of my dad dying from cancer. The day after the funeral my sister and I flew to Arizona to drive back with my stored belongings, visit my family in Wyoming and pick up my poodle, Shaktipaw to come with me back to Bremerton where I’d gotten an apartment.
In Rawlins I worked as a radio host on regular programming and produced my own show. Back home in Kitsap County I produced and hosted “Kitsap Views” live on the radio. I was just in time for the November 30, 1999 World Trade Protest and volunteered at http://www.indymedia.org/ when it went live to cover the event. Tom Voorhees was a major part of creating the space, providing equipment and setting up a broadcast production space. I saw he could use some help and we got to be good friends. He introduced me to Whidbey Island and by the following summer I had moved up here. In the time I’d been gone from the Northwest Kitsap County had grown from 40,000 to 240,000, the population of the State of Wyoming. Island County had about 40,000 when I moved here.
March 26, 2001 Bill Moyers broadcast “Trade Secrets” on my Brother John’s birthday. As he had died at 41 leaving four children because he tightened the bolts on a nuclear reactor on board a USSN submarine and the paper booties provided had not protected him. Learning from Bill Moyers how a million documents proved that chemical corporations had lied and colluded threw the years on my brother’s birthday, the combination made me very angry. I spoke with Marianne Edain of Whidbey Environmental Action Network about the program the next day. She told me that they had tried in 1985 to stop Island County from applying herbicides to all County roads and were only able to get No Spray signs for those who didn’t want it near their property. Additionally the State puts a huge amount of herbicides on the highway that ran the length of the island. Living in cities for twenty years I had no idea this was happening. This was just too much. She also said that the deadline for submitting comments to Island County Public Works was in six days. I got busy.
For the next five years I spent most of my time working on this issue, first with the County and then with the State. I compiled 175 pages of peer review scientific studies documenting the endocrine disruption aspects of the multiple herbicides used to control roadside vegetation and the danger of the “inerts”. Later I learned that between the County and State 10 thousand gallons of herbicides had been applied to the Whidbey and Camano Islands in the previous decade. This doesn’t include personal & lawn care use.
I wrote a cover letter, a three page abstract and a three page bibliography of the studies assembled and submitted in the 175 pages. I included the transcript of “Trade Secrets” for proof that whatever the chemical corporations said about their products could not be trusted. I knew the Commissioners would not read what I submitted so I went weekly for the next year educating them and asking questions in my 10 minutes of comment time. Several organizations joined in the fight and a new one was created, Whidbey/Camano Island No Spray – WINS. A year later April 1, 2002 No Spray was passed and the County changed how they did roadside vegetation control.
I learned several things in this process: RoundUp® causes males of multiple species to be feminized, i.e. lower sperm counts, erect penile dysfunction, testicular atrophy and elimination of male genitals; multiple herbicides are causative in non-Hodgkin lymphoma, asthma, Lymphoma, congenital anomalies, miscarriages, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), depression and violent behavior in children. I experience additional severe reactions including bleeding out of the ends of my capillaries, i.e. petechia.
The “Trade Secrets” which often make up to 97% of the formulation are much more harmful than the “active” ingredients. These are misnamed “inerts”. Denmark banned RoundUp® from their Country because it migrated rapidly into the drinking water, i.e. the aquifer. The “inerts” are never tested for; the synergistic combinations have not been tested for, especially with other herbicides. Most often several types are used.
March 2002 I met with Doug McDonald, Secretary of the Washington State Department of Transportation – WSDOT, spoke with him about the above issues, the 174 pages of science, showed him the 2,000 signed petitions to Stop Herbicide Spray and told him it would cost less in the long run to not spray. WEAN and I sent in copies of all the above in time for submission of comments to WSDOT’s yearly vegetation control plan. Thus began a long frustrating process educating WSDOT. More about that at near the end of this blog.
Governor Gregoire put forth the Puget Sound Partnership call to restore and make Puget Sound healthy by 2020. I immediately wrote to her and said that the goals could never be met to clean up Puget Sound as long as the State agencies (WSDOT, Dept. of Agriculture and Dept. of Ecology) was spending hundreds of thousands, probably more, on herbicides and pesticides up stream from Puget Sound that ran downhill into watersheds, aquifers, streams, rivers and as stormwater run off directly into Puget Sound.
The majority of the near shore waters around Whidbey Island are designated as habitat for Chinook salmon, listed as endangered species. To harm a fingerling Chinook salmon or its habitat is subject to a $15,000 to $25,000 fine per fish. This is not being enforced.
I began fishing off a dock, row boating and swimming in Puget Sound at age nine. Lakes I fished on during the 1960’s that were clear to the bottom are now cloudy. At eleven I got in a lot of trouble because a friend and I rowed to Blake Island before it was a State Park and you could see the bottom of Puget Sound a long way from shore. No more. Crabs are gone or deformed off Whidbey and Blake Islands. World wide we have fifty years of fishing left maybe less as what bait fish feed on is dying. The cycle of life is breaking down at the bottom of the food chain. Hood Canal, the Gulf of Mexico and many other places are now Dead Zones often from pesticide runoff. Corporate farms up stream of the Mississippi get government welfare to use pesticides and these pour into the Gulf of Mexico’s Dead Zone.
As an example, the Save the Salmon Plan in Island County depends on the uninformed property owner to save the Salmon but does not provide educational material on how to do it and no way to let the property owners know of their responsibility. Unless the Puget Sound Partnership comes up with a better plan than what was tried in the Chesapeake it too will fail. We will need a lot of people getting involved, making a commitment and putting in place enforcement methods to make it happen if Puget Sound is to be saved. Knowing how industry and business works I’m not optimistic but I will continue to work for the application of ecological wisdom in policies and processes involving drinking water, i.e. wells sourcing from healthy aquifers and wetlands, chemical free streams, rivers and a healthy Puget Sound.
What you can do. Link to my web page at http://www.tmgandhi.com/ and read my comments to the Puget Sound Partnership. Check out their web page at http://www.pugetsoundpartnership.org/ and the comments submitted to their plan. Kathy Fletcher of People for Puget Sound submitted comments signed on to by a number of organizations. She is a part of the Partnership advisory committee, check out their web page at http://www.pugetsound.org/. Additionally: Shared Strategy for Puget Sound is at http://www.sharedsalmonstradegy.org/; Puget Sound Action Team is at http://www.psat.wa.gov/; http://www.sustainablenorthwest.org/; Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides is at http://www.ncap.org/; Washington Toxics Coalition at http://www.watoxics.org/; and the Orca Network at http://www.orcanetwork.org/. Also check out the Broken Promises series in the Seattle P-I by Lisa Stiffler and Robert McClure at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/specials/brokenpromises.html .
These are some of several organizations working for a healthy Puget Sound. Several key issues will come up in January’s legislative session and letters from informed folks will help. Write letters to the Editors and inform your local newspapers; ask your local Public Radio and Television to cover these topics. Share what you have learned with friends and family during the upcoming holidays. Tell the Governor and PS Partnership to implement the comments submitted by a coalition of organizations working with People for Puget Sound. Get a copy of the comments submitted by a group of scientists that have been working with the issues of stormwater management for years and know the current Plan falls far short of what it will take if it is to succeed. I found their comments via the Seattle P-I in their Broken Promises series.
Secretary Doug McDonald has already claimed that what WSDOT is doing is adequate and that they are serious about controlling stormwater run off. They are far from where they need to be on this issue. Contact Doug at macdond@wsdot.wa.gov and tell him WSDOT needs to stop using herbicides to control roadside vegetation, especially if your County is No Spray. They also need to include comments from Washington Toxics that they decided was too complete and comprehensive to be included in their illegally done and inadequate Environmental Impact Study on the use of toxic chemicals. WSDOT did not address the endocrine disruption aspects of the herbicides in the process of creating the EIS that only included studies done by Chemical Corporations. It’s on their web page as an example of how they are looking out for the health of people and aquatic life. They are not. The EIS was requested by Doug after receiving my material but it never addressed the issues raised by the scientific studies I had submitted.
If this cause is not your then find your own and make a difference in our world so our seventh generation will have a quality, healthy common future. Use the power of your purse and tell stores that sell herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and other toxic chemicals that you will take your business elsewhere until they sell only salmon friendly products. Stop using Tide, and other phosphate based detergents. Switch to earth friendly cleaning products. Stop using products with perfumes in them as they are created from hydrocarbons and are harmful to life and people with asthma. A salmon can smell one part per trillion.
If you have any questions, e-mail me at tmarie@whidbey.net.
Until next time, Theresa Marie Gandhi
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Welcome to HerStory and a poem
November 19, 2006
Posted by Theresa Marie K. Gandhi
Welcome to my first blog: http://tmgandhi.blogspot.com/ that you can get to via my just launched web page: http://www.tmgandhi.com/. I hope that you will check here often. I live swing shift hours and often work on my computer after 7 PM.
On my web page are two e-books. Love’s Trails and Trials: Knowing Enlightenment! This is a compilation of poems about finding enlightenment, knowing the Presence of God, clarifying my vision and mission and sharing with the reader about how specifically you too can do the processes, i.e. trails and the get through the heartaches, i.e. the trials. After four years of college, the fifth year I did an individual contract that lasted four years being trained to become an ordained Christian Spiritualist Minister. At the time I thought it was for my own enlightenment but after meeting Mother Teresa at Oxford in April 1986 at the Global Survival Conference as the only female Religious leader out of one hundred who met with 100 Parliamentarians and 20 members of the International Press Corps I decided to go ahead and be ordained. My teacher was a Bishop with the Universal Church of the Master chartered in 1908 in Oakland, CA.
I had plans to become a United States Senator, but gave up an internship from a program at the University of Washington to work for Senator Warren Magnusson. It would have taken me across the country for a year from my children who were in grade school. I just couldn’t do that. I did get a law made in 1988 that made October 2, 1988 a National Day of Recognition of Mahatma Gandhi by getting 51% of the House and Senate to be co-sponsors.
At the time I was married to a relative of Mahatma Gandhi and worked at the Gandhi Memorial International Foundation – GMIF. Getting the legislation signed into law got us a photo opportunity with the President in the Oval Office.
Photos with Mother Teresa, in the Oval office with President Reagan and with Shirley Temple Black at the San Francisco unveiling of a statue of Mahatma Gandhi are on my web page, come and take a look.
My other e-book at this time is Truth: a Code of Being. It has a number of poems about my truth on what I see happening in the world. As my webmaster reformatted the chapbook seven poems slipped out and are not a part of the e-book. What follows is one of them, To Seek Truth is to Seek God’s Mind (most of my poems are shorter than this one and some are longer). If you buy the e-book and ask I will send you a file with the seven poems. One of them that didn’t get in is Oprah and Truth and you can find that on my web page.
My letters to the editor are published often and I post to a local list serve here on South Whidbey Island. Most often I will be posting here about current affairs and issues that threaten the survival of our seventh generation. Other e-books, articles and links will be added to my web page through time but for now my webmaster, Debra Malmos, http://www.ifull.com/ has other work she has to focus on.
To Seek Truth is to Seek God’s Mind!
A buckaroo a Texan cowboy dude
with the stroke of a pen –
with the aim of a gun
he’ll smoke ‘em out - no doubt what he’ll do.
A cowboy Prez who speaks his mind
in cowboy lingo with American pride
in reaction to reaction to reaction to need
we go to war with so many in need.
The gloves are off, the planes do fly
with American forces and British fly guys
to avenge a horror forever to live
in humanity’s mind’s eye
we crossed a bridge
from adolescent Republic to a state of mind.
Formed of images burned into mind
as thousands of people vaporized
no bones, no shoes, no bodies, no parts
for grieving loved ones to have a part
but driven deep twin boxes of trade
brought down with box cutter blades.
How to heal this state of mind
from where came the hate
that killed that day?
What is the why and how can we know
what is truth and what is lie-full?
Contradictions from the White House, our Prez
from a reading about a goat when told
his face went blank, long minutes passed
then he flew from danger a credible Prez
not headed to DC but landing at Barksdale
to step to ground to wag a tail
then to Omaha – Strategic Air Command
nuke proof with a General on hand.
Saying the “terrorists” sent threats
with copies of code
to let them know it was as it was told.
Air Force One a target that day
but wait 10 days and its spun back
no threat, no codes – not that way that day
and barely a story of how he ran away.
But on with the war I can’t be against
or my words seditious and I should hush.
Don’t criticize the Prez or his team that wars
until it’s over this thing called war.
To not speak for me is to lie down to die
I can’t stop my knowing
there’s more surprise.
A pacifist heart a pacifist mind
a Gandhi name and a state of mind.
I’ve studied wars histories
censored stories and more
always seeking truth and harmony where
there was conflict, how can we go
on to harmony before there’s no where to go
that’s not downwind of fear, rage and hate
without understanding and truthful debate
denied and shunned and truth not told.
Before courage knows which way to go
wisdom and insight based on knowing what
how and why are we hated and why it’s our biz
to figure it out, do we make it worse
or will we figure it out before it gets worse?
Suppressing truth as politically incorrect
mandating silence with force of law
to silence dissent and give no way to go
into the public to discuss which way to go
is extremely dangerous
as the ways and the means
are the nut - the kernel of which way we go.
If when we get there and we’ve lost
what we fought for then we have lost
our selves an inch at a time.
To grow as a people
each mind needs to see
that manufactured fear, rage and hate
brings death to our shores.
Find out the why, the root, the nut
of where it started and let’s re-think
our level of participation in the public rink.
Get with your community
Tribal nation and close ken
study what is and be for sure
to look for truth not from
corporate media’s gates
but through windows of media
with more than one mind.
To seek out truth is to seek God’s mind.
© Copyright Theresa Marie K. Gandhi October 22, 2006
http://www.tmgandhi.com/
turtle8@whidbey.net
Posted by Theresa Marie K. Gandhi
Welcome to my first blog: http://tmgandhi.blogspot.com/ that you can get to via my just launched web page: http://www.tmgandhi.com/. I hope that you will check here often. I live swing shift hours and often work on my computer after 7 PM.
On my web page are two e-books. Love’s Trails and Trials: Knowing Enlightenment! This is a compilation of poems about finding enlightenment, knowing the Presence of God, clarifying my vision and mission and sharing with the reader about how specifically you too can do the processes, i.e. trails and the get through the heartaches, i.e. the trials. After four years of college, the fifth year I did an individual contract that lasted four years being trained to become an ordained Christian Spiritualist Minister. At the time I thought it was for my own enlightenment but after meeting Mother Teresa at Oxford in April 1986 at the Global Survival Conference as the only female Religious leader out of one hundred who met with 100 Parliamentarians and 20 members of the International Press Corps I decided to go ahead and be ordained. My teacher was a Bishop with the Universal Church of the Master chartered in 1908 in Oakland, CA.
I had plans to become a United States Senator, but gave up an internship from a program at the University of Washington to work for Senator Warren Magnusson. It would have taken me across the country for a year from my children who were in grade school. I just couldn’t do that. I did get a law made in 1988 that made October 2, 1988 a National Day of Recognition of Mahatma Gandhi by getting 51% of the House and Senate to be co-sponsors.
At the time I was married to a relative of Mahatma Gandhi and worked at the Gandhi Memorial International Foundation – GMIF. Getting the legislation signed into law got us a photo opportunity with the President in the Oval Office.
Photos with Mother Teresa, in the Oval office with President Reagan and with Shirley Temple Black at the San Francisco unveiling of a statue of Mahatma Gandhi are on my web page, come and take a look.
My other e-book at this time is Truth: a Code of Being. It has a number of poems about my truth on what I see happening in the world. As my webmaster reformatted the chapbook seven poems slipped out and are not a part of the e-book. What follows is one of them, To Seek Truth is to Seek God’s Mind (most of my poems are shorter than this one and some are longer). If you buy the e-book and ask I will send you a file with the seven poems. One of them that didn’t get in is Oprah and Truth and you can find that on my web page.
My letters to the editor are published often and I post to a local list serve here on South Whidbey Island. Most often I will be posting here about current affairs and issues that threaten the survival of our seventh generation. Other e-books, articles and links will be added to my web page through time but for now my webmaster, Debra Malmos, http://www.ifull.com/ has other work she has to focus on.
To Seek Truth is to Seek God’s Mind!
A buckaroo a Texan cowboy dude
with the stroke of a pen –
with the aim of a gun
he’ll smoke ‘em out - no doubt what he’ll do.
A cowboy Prez who speaks his mind
in cowboy lingo with American pride
in reaction to reaction to reaction to need
we go to war with so many in need.
The gloves are off, the planes do fly
with American forces and British fly guys
to avenge a horror forever to live
in humanity’s mind’s eye
we crossed a bridge
from adolescent Republic to a state of mind.
Formed of images burned into mind
as thousands of people vaporized
no bones, no shoes, no bodies, no parts
for grieving loved ones to have a part
but driven deep twin boxes of trade
brought down with box cutter blades.
How to heal this state of mind
from where came the hate
that killed that day?
What is the why and how can we know
what is truth and what is lie-full?
Contradictions from the White House, our Prez
from a reading about a goat when told
his face went blank, long minutes passed
then he flew from danger a credible Prez
not headed to DC but landing at Barksdale
to step to ground to wag a tail
then to Omaha – Strategic Air Command
nuke proof with a General on hand.
Saying the “terrorists” sent threats
with copies of code
to let them know it was as it was told.
Air Force One a target that day
but wait 10 days and its spun back
no threat, no codes – not that way that day
and barely a story of how he ran away.
But on with the war I can’t be against
or my words seditious and I should hush.
Don’t criticize the Prez or his team that wars
until it’s over this thing called war.
To not speak for me is to lie down to die
I can’t stop my knowing
there’s more surprise.
A pacifist heart a pacifist mind
a Gandhi name and a state of mind.
I’ve studied wars histories
censored stories and more
always seeking truth and harmony where
there was conflict, how can we go
on to harmony before there’s no where to go
that’s not downwind of fear, rage and hate
without understanding and truthful debate
denied and shunned and truth not told.
Before courage knows which way to go
wisdom and insight based on knowing what
how and why are we hated and why it’s our biz
to figure it out, do we make it worse
or will we figure it out before it gets worse?
Suppressing truth as politically incorrect
mandating silence with force of law
to silence dissent and give no way to go
into the public to discuss which way to go
is extremely dangerous
as the ways and the means
are the nut - the kernel of which way we go.
If when we get there and we’ve lost
what we fought for then we have lost
our selves an inch at a time.
To grow as a people
each mind needs to see
that manufactured fear, rage and hate
brings death to our shores.
Find out the why, the root, the nut
of where it started and let’s re-think
our level of participation in the public rink.
Get with your community
Tribal nation and close ken
study what is and be for sure
to look for truth not from
corporate media’s gates
but through windows of media
with more than one mind.
To seek out truth is to seek God’s mind.
© Copyright Theresa Marie K. Gandhi October 22, 2006
http://www.tmgandhi.com/
turtle8@whidbey.net
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