It’d be great if Mason County Commissioners resolved to do the following:
Sea-Tac to Honolulu
1) Commit to preserving residents’ environment, air quality, quality of life, children, and refrain from behaving like a 3rd world county sucking up to rapacious corporations intent on destroying the environment for profit.
Vance Creek Bridge logjam
2) Remove the massive log jam 100′ upstream from the Vance Creek bridge before the bridge is wiped out during the next major flood event as it almost was a few years ago.
Failing Hunter Creek bridge in Skokomish Valley
Failing Weaver Creek bridge in Skokomish Valley
3) Repair the 2 failing Skokomish Valley bridges that have been reduced to a single lane before residents are cut off from Highway 101. If/When either collapse, residents will be devoid of fire protection or any emergency services whatsoever. Mason County will be liable (in that event) for resulting life/property loss. School buses, septic tank and heavily laden logging trucks currently cross these bridges as the only paved route.
S. Fork Skokomish Avulsion site
4) Elevate the Skokomish Valley Road in the ‘dips’ (~4.5 miles from Hwy 101) with sufficient culverts beneath to allow valley residents to exit via Eells Hill road during major flooding. This area is in the process of an avulsion where the Skokomish River and Vance Creek are returning to their old bed at the foot of the south wall of the valley. The current bed is sedimented with gravel bars having an elevation higher than the roadbed itself.
Indefinite Clear Cut Moratorium needed
5) Impose a moratorium (right along with the existing building moratorium in the Skokomish Valley) prohibiting clear cutting in the upland watershed of the valley including DNR lands as well as any/all private & public lands.
Woodland mushrooms fight off the freezing cold
6) Return height restrictions to what they were before their 2005/2006 modification by Jay Hupp and Tim Sheldon in paving the way for companies such as Adage to bring BioMassacre to Mason County.
Jack Frost visits the Skokomish Valley
7) Enforce Mason County’s no smoking ordinance on all persons (including corporate ones) on public property such as the Shelton Port District, etc. This must include all sources of smoke pollution, not merely tobacco and cigarettes. Smokestacks must be included under the ordinance.
Skokomish Valley air looking West
8) Install air monitoring equipment in downtown Shelton.
S. Fork Skokomish evening looking West
9) Install air monitoring equipment at the MCRA facility designated for area youth.
S. Fork Skokomish snow milt quiet eddy
10) Sample existing Dioxin contamination on parcels surrounding Shelton Harbor, the epicenter of Dioxin in Oakland Bay sediments ranging as high as 175 ppt to 902+ ppt slightly below the surface along with establishing a regular future schedule for doing so.
11) Sample existing Dioxin contamination in Mason County’s food chain, not just area clams/shellfish.
12) Establish a minimum 1-year moratorium on the processing of any permit application for BioMassacre facilities, as Thurston County has done, in order that laws may be passed taking into account the best currently available science.
