Some doubting Thomas had thought it’d never come, but it’s come by gum, Spring has finally sprung…as these snaps from Capitol Lake show:
Capitol Lake cormorants
Consider the Lilies of the field
Posted Sentries
Capitol Campus Heating Plant
Keep Off The Grass
Shepherds walking their owner
An unexpected visitor drops by:
The Bluebird of Happiness
Huffington Post reports Environmental Fracking Disaster
Thousands of gallons of fracking fluid have spilled following an accident at a natural gas well in Pennsylvania, WNEP reports.
The Chesapeake Energy well in Bradford County lost control late Tuesday night.
The well blew near the surface, spilling thousands and thousands of gallons of frack fluid over containment walls, through fields, personal property and farms, even where cattle continue to graze.
Francis Roupp, deputy director of the county emergency management agency, told AP that there were no injuries, and that although fluids have reached a small stream, “no adverse effects” have been reported.
Roupp suggests a cracked well casing could be the culprit behind the fracking spill, but that certain details won’t be known until the situation is under control.
Pennlive.com reports that seven families have been evacuated as a result of the spill.
The chemicals used in fracking fluids have been a contentious subject, as many energy companies have long guarded them as a “trade secret.” A recent report released by three House Democrats says that millions of gallons of potentially hazardous chemicals and known carcinogens, such as methanol, have been injected into wells across the country by energy companies using the controversial fracking method.
Developing reports of the fracking spill in Pennsylvania come at a time when the fossil fuel industry is facing intense public scrutiny, as today marks the one-year anniversary of the Gulf oil spill.
Dick Taylor, owner (along with his wife, Marlene Taylor) of Shelton’s Taylor Insurance Co., is running for the Port of Shelton Commissioner spot against incumbent Jack Miles. Jack has become well known to the community as one of the few officials willing to listen to residents and stand with them in their hour of need opposing the Port’s welcome of the notorious Adage proposal.
More thoughts about Jack’s candidacy and why residents should support it can be found at: Should a DUI disqualify Commissioner Jack Miles from reelection?
It’s important for voters to know who they are voting for. While Jack has become well known, Dick Taylor is perhaps less familiar to voters. A glaring example is the misinformation posted on another community blog (hosted by the notorious Shawnie ‘Darthe’ Vedder) naming Mr. Dick Taylor as associated with ‘Taylor town’ and ‘Taylor Shellfish’. Dick Taylor has no ownership/involvement with either…although that’s hardly an endorsement.
The fact is, Dick Taylor is the ONLY alternative to Jack, and will be unless someone else decides to enter the race. Mr. Taylor is eagerly supported by Commissioner Jay Hupp (and associates) though reveals a distinct lack of perspicacity about current Port of Shelton controversies when questioned. Although Dick Taylor, a local business owner, has had prior experience as an elected official and chamber of commerce director, he seems decidedly uninformed about what many in the community have taken time to learn regarding how their Port is being run and its inevitable impact on residents. Mr. Taylor is beyond the age most folks look to for retirement. During a recent interview, he seemed tired and unfocused. His knee-jerk support of Adage was likely the primary basis for the encouragement he’s received from Jay Hupp & associates.
If you like Jay Hupp, you’ll prefer the candidate Jay supports, i.e. Dick Taylor. If you like a candidate who listens to constituents and has proven to have the courage to stand with the community regarding controversial issues, Jack Miles deserves your support and your vote for Port of Shelton Commissioner.
There’s an annual summer belly dancing festival held on a July weekend at the West Seattle Hiawatha public park:
7-16&17-11, Sat: 10am-8pm, Sun: 11am-5pm.
It’s well worth joining the festivities where colorful performers of every level entertain the throngs of appreciative performing arts fans.
Hiawatha Community Center
2700 California Ave SW
West Seattle, WA
10:00am to 9:00pm
Mediterranean Fantasy Festival
The Spell Of Belly Dance — More Women, In Search Of The Spiritual
Although the musical accompaniment is non-traditional, Copper Clock is a good example of how dynamic this art form can be as it continues to evolve over the centuries.
Copper Clock, Belly Dancing at Northwest… by DrumCircular
Belly Dance Performer @ Hiawatha Park
Thousands of innocents languish in prison (or even Death Row) after having been victimized by a justice system deluded in its own hubris and scornful of applying the full measure of meaningful Due Process in pro se litigant cases.
Getting It Wrong: Convicting the Innocent
Clarence Thomas: Cruel but Not Unusual
In Washington State (according to the State’s Administrator to the Courts) of all felony cases filed in all its counties those that actually go to trial result in acquittals only 1/2 of 1% of the time. One might conclude either law enforcement officials are geniuses in ferreting out the guilty…or, we have a hanging jury pool prone to convict and intimidated into abandoning constitutionally justifiable jury nullification principles.
Mason County is rife with abuse cut from the same warp and weave. A series of articles will be presented here criticizing those responsible including (but not limited to) District Court Judge Victoria Meadows, and Detective Rhoades of the Mason County Sheriff’s office.
In the analysis, judges prone to cannibalizing the proceedings rather than allowing the litigants to try the case will be examined. Deputies and detectives falsifying police reports, lying to support personnel, and refusing to gather/document exculpatory evidence will be reported. Judicial arrogance/misconduct will be cited.
This effort takes a measure of courage much as the kind exemplified in the WHO’S GOING TO BELL THE CAT fable. After all, what attorney is going to publicly criticize a sitting judge given the certainty of retaliation? (See http://amicuscuria.com/wordpress/?p=1383) What judge is going to condemn abusive law enforcement officials knowing he/she must stand for reelection to remain on the bench? How many voters know anything about how our elected judges perform their duties when the local newspaper fails to report most of what occurs in the Superior and especially the District courtroom? What citizen is going to challenge the Sheriff’s suitability to hold office when that official maintains a TANK…reportedly (according to one deputy) to serve warrants!?…and where (according to recent deputy prosecutor Monty Cobb) the use of tasers by police isn’t even considered the use of force by our judges? The public, like hogs crowded into the chute at the slaughterhouse, has been assembled…and any pig objecting will be summarily brought to the head of the line.
Salient questions surrounding meaningful due process denied to pro se litigants, dominating hearings rather than allowing the litigants to try the case, allowing the mentally ill to testify without permitting that testimony to be challenged based on the incompetence of the witness, altering/tampering with official court records, attempts to influence outcomes after having been removed by affidavit, abuse of powers of contempt, etc. will be asked.
Local residents willing to come forward with similar/documented accounts of malfeasance/misfeasance are encouraged to contribute to this effort to hold those most powerful officials in charge accountable in order to promote the democratic process by informing the electorate.
At $20/ticket, the professional flamenco performance held at the TESC recital hall Saturday evening (4-16-11) @ 8:00pm was an exceptional bargain, the artistry was simply stunning. It included Savannah Fuentes and Veronica Barrera as dancers, Enrique Chavez ‘El Peru’ as percussionist, Vincinte Griego ‘El Cartucho’ as vocalist, and Gerardo Alcala’ on classical guitar. The performers were warmly generous and the evening rewarding in an intimate informal venue. The dancers had the graceful beauty and physique of accomplished athletes: sinewy, lithe, exquisitely coordinated, dramatic, and captivating. The recital hall was nearly sold out, the audience spellbound.
Professional Dancer raised in Seattle brings Flamenco to the NorthWest
A Florid dance performance captures a spellbound TESC audience
Ms. Barerra has a thousand watt smile that lit up the stage. Veronica, originally from Argentina, has been studying the Flamenco art form for the past 20 years, with interruptions to birth two daughters and gain four academic degrees. She began her studies with Dame Libby Komaiko of the Ensemble Español in Chicago and has since studied with notable flamencos like, Ciro, La Tania, Belen Maya, and Timo Lozano. She has performed in Olympia and Seattle for the past ten years with Amorfo Flamenco and Carmona Flamenco. In 2004 she had the privilege of performing in the Seattle Opera’s production of Carmen.
Vocalist and dedicated flamenco artist studied at TESC
Demanding and serious while remaining invitingly warm toward his audience, Vicente Griego “El Cartucho” from Dixon/Embudo, New Mexico has devoted his life to the study of cante flamenco, the art of flamenco singing. In 1992, Vicente began touring the US, Canada and Latin America, with the Jose Greco II Flamenco Dance Company, where he was mentored by Caño Roto singer, Alfonso “Veneno” of Madrid, Spain. Vicente remains a pupil of acclaimed guitarist, Chuscales and continues to accompany internationally renowned companies such as; Yjastros, Juan Siddi Flamenco Company, Carola Zertuche’s Teatro Flamenco, Martinez’ Pueblo Viejo, Fanny Ara, Jesus Montoya y Pureza Flamenca and Encuentro.
Percussionist Extraordinaire Herrera provides the musical foundation
Fluid Classical Motion with a Stacatto beat
The parallels between the BioMassacre industry and greedy corporations willing to lay waste to communities and the environment, such as Halliburton, are stunning. The tip of this lethal iceberg can be viewed in the following article and video clips:
By Michael Rubinkam and Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Associated Press
‘Fracking’ for natural gas also splits towns and families
Ron Hilliard came back from church one Sunday to find hundreds of plastic $5, $10, $20 and $100 bills hanging on his fence in Flower Mound, Texas — Ron Hilliard came back from church one Sunday to find hundreds of plastic $5, $10, $20 and $100 bills hanging on his fence in Flower Mound, Texas — another message from townsfolk angry at him for signing a lucrative natural gas drilling lease on his suburban Dallas property.
By LM Otero, APProtestors holds signs accross the street from a working natural gas well in Flower Mound, Texas in November.Across the country, in Damascus, Pa., drilling advocate Marian Schweighofer awoke one morning to the word “LORAX” — from the Dr. Seuss book about environmental destruction — spray-painted on the road near her family’s 712-acre farm.
Hilliard and Schweighofer are both living with the rancor erupting in communities nationwide over the volatile issue of producing gas by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
This technique — used with horizontal drilling — allows rich stores of natural gas to be extracted from once out-of-reach, dense shale formations more than a mile underground. Intense drilling is under way in the Barnett Shale of Texas, the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania, and other shale regions around the country.
As tens of thousands of Americans become energy magnates in their own backyards, tens of thousands more worry about environmental dangers. The industry insists the process is safe, for people and the environment.
This energy boom has turned neighbor against neighbor, split towns and families in bitter disputes, and touched off sharp debates over the sudden emergence of gas companies and their 14-story drilling rigs, some rising in the middle of neighborhoods.
One side touts the jobs and prosperity drilling brings, allowing businesses to flourish and farmers to hang on to their land. Gas leases have made millionaires of some property owners. Regions long struggling economically are suddenly flush.
On the other side are those who either won’t gain anything or fervently believe the wealth isn’t worth the risk. Alarmed by toxic spills, scattered drill site explosions and tainted drinking water, they fear a decline in their property values and quality of life.
“Those who own their mineral rights are happier than a pig in mud,” says Flower Mound resident Chris Tomlinson, who is making thousands of dollars a month from the gas wells on his land. “Those who don’t, want it to go away.”
Fracking opponents complain the industry has taken environmental and safety shortcuts in their zeal to reap the vast stores of gas once locked tight within the shale.
The acrimony is not likely to subside soon. Even with some 26,000 wells drilled in 16 states through the end of 2009 — more than half in Texas — the shale gas revolution is still relatively young .
Most wells have been drilled in the past decade, particularly in Pennsylvania’s white-hot Marcellus Shale region and in the Barnett Shale of Texas, where the new extraction techniques were perfected and the boom began in earnest in 2006. Hundreds of thousands more wells could be drilled in coming decades, according to drilling companies and energy officials.
In Texas, a state so inextricably linked to drilling that an oil derrick adorns the license plate, the feuding in Flower Mound has been extraordinary.
A rural community about 30 miles northwest of Dallas, it had just over 15,000 residents in 1990 but exploded into an affluent and politically influential suburb of 70,000 by 2009. Relative newcomers drawn by its quality of life filled large brick homes in manicured subdivisions and send their children to highly ranked schools. By and large, they don’t own their mineral rights — and many were outraged when gas wells began popping up near their neighborhoods, sometimes just a few hundred feet from schools and day care centers. Today, more than 40 wells are extracting gas in town.
On the other side are the longtime residents, farmers and ranchers who own their mineral rights and stand to make a lot of money on gas leases and royalties.
“It was pretty much neighbor against neighbor. People just turned on people … and it’s left some pretty nasty divides here in town,” says Tomlinson.
Ron Hilliard’s decision to have two wells drilled on his land, a half-mile from a Starbucks, two schools and hundreds of homes, brought vandalism, anonymous phone calls and insulting blog posts and columns. He finally complained to police.
“I owned my mineral rights,” Hilliard says defiantly. “So I’m not doing anything wrong.” Hilliard, owner of a wholesale lumber business, would not disclose what he was paid for the lease or gas royalties.
Truck traffic on largely suburban roads in the Flower Mound area has increased significantly and the community has endured at least three major spills of thousands of gallons of production liquids.
The Environmental Protection Agency suspects fracking may have contributed to water well contamination in Denton County — where Flower Mound and another drilling town, Dish, are located— and other Barnett Shale drilling areas.
The issues in Flower Mound simmered for months, then boiled over at a January 2010 city council hearing on a proposed plant to treat toxic fracking wastewater. About 600 people showed up, many against the plant, but the council set the plan in motion anyway.
That galvanized anti-drilling forces. After a bitter campaign, the town’s pro-drilling mayor, Jody Smith, was ousted and an anti-drilling slate swept into office.
Less than 15 miles away is the town of Dish, population about 200, where Mayor Calvin Tillman raised a national ruckus about gas drilling. The Dish area now has about 60 drilling wells, gas production pads and rigs, 12 pipelines, a treating facility and a compressor station.
Cancer-causing benzene, sometimes in levels considered dangerous to human health, were reported last year by Texas environmental regulators who took air tests in the Dish area. Residents believe at least one domestic water well was contaminated and that gas operations killed horses on a ranch not far from the compressor — a claim the gas companies dispute.
Tillman, whose home is about a quarter-mile from the compressor, was afraid for his two sons’ health. Bad drilling odors coincided with nightly spikes in air emissions from the compression station, Tillman said on his blog, and were so bad that both of his youngsters were often awakened in the middle of the night with severe nosebleeds.
By February, Tillman decided to leave the community in which he had invested time, money and his heart. It was tough, he said.
“But it would be a whole lot tougher if my kids came down with some strange illness in five years,” he said.
Slowing the tide in New York
New York, sitting atop the vast Marcellus Shale, has enacted a drilling moratorium that holds the wealth at bay while new regulations are drawn up. New Yorkers — some wary, some perhaps jealous — watch as landowners in Pennsylvania, Texas and other states get rich while regulators struggle with explosions, spills and tainted water.
“People that don’t own the land are saying, ‘Let’s slow down and learn from the mistakes of other places,’” said Matthew Ryan, mayor of Binghamton, N.Y., in shale country about 70 miles northwest of Damascus. “Those that own land are anxious to ‘drill, baby, drill.’”
Binghamton hosted the EPA last September for the last of four national hearings to get public input on the environmental and public health impacts of fracking as the agency prepares for a national study on drinking water impacts.
EPA said 3,500 people crowded its hearings in Denver, Fort Worth, Texas, Canonsburg, Pa., and Binghamton. In New York, opponents carried signs saying “Kids can’t drink gas,” while supporters, including union workers eager for jobs, chanted “Pass gas now!”
“If you get a gathering of people together, there’s tension and raised voices,” says Ryan, who favors a more cautious approach that he believes would ensure strong enough regulations to protect public health and the environment.
Division in Pennsylvania
In rural Pennsylvania, where nearly 3,000 gas wells have been drilled in the Marcellus Shale since 2005 and tens of thousands more are planned, the tension is leaving deep fissures in once tight-knit communities.
Schweighofer, a 54-year-old mother of five, founded the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance, more than 1,300 landowners who negotiated a master lease with New York City-based Hess Corp. to drill for natural gas in Pennsylvania’s scenic northeastern tip.
She got several death threats from anti-drilling residents or activists — one woman declared she was “gonna shoot you with my thirty-aught-six” and a man advocated in an online post that “one well-placed bullet” be put in Schweighofer’s head. Schweighofer began sleeping with a gun at her bedside.
“We’re farmers,” she said. “I’m not used to standing out and having folks holler at me, and saying evil things. I’m just not used to that.”
One member of her group, 70-year-old Mike Uretsky, says some neighbors don’t talk to him since he signed the lease. Yet, the retired New York University professor says he understands where the other side is coming from.
“Everybody’s interested in safety, aesthetics, community, quality of life,” he said. “The interpretations of those things, and where the boundaries are, differ from one person to another. The frustrating thing is people can’t sit down and talk and say, ‘Hey, how do we work together?’”
The northeastern Pennsylvania village of Dimock, population 1,400, is another prime example of the split over drilling.
State regulators blame Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas for contaminating residential water wells with methane gas. Some Dimock residents were able to light their tap water on fire — just as Colorado homeowners did in a dramatic scene in the Academy Award-nominated HBO documentary “Gasland,” about the effects of fracking.
Some homeowners with fouled water have become high-profile anti-drilling activists, suing Cabot and taking their case to media outlets worldwide.
Two years of negative publicity brought them a backlash.
When Pennsylvania regulators ordered Cabot to spend $12 million to provide municipal water to the 19 affected homes, pro-drilling residents and businesses banded together as “Enough Already” and circulated a petition that 1,600 water line opponents signed. State regulators relented and settled with Cabot for $4.1 million, enough to pay the homeowners twice the value of their ruined homes.
The homeowners feel sandbagged by the community.
“You want to feel like a really lonely, lonely person?” asked Scott Ely, one whose water well was ruined. “Move to Carter Road,” the gravel lane in the rural, forested area where most of the contamination was found. He said people he’s known his whole life have turned against him.
“They think we are money-hungry … we’re chasing the almighty buck,” he said of the settlement money. He and the other homeowners had not asked for money and were content with the plan to have clean water piped to them after nearly two years of bathing, washing, cooking and cleaning with trucked-in supplies. “We didn’t want this.”
Dimock attorney Bill Aileo, who helped lead the petition drive, believes the benefits of drilling have been lost in an isolated case of contamination.
“I don’t think anybody’s abandoned them. I think they’ve become somewhat detached from reality,” he said.
About 60 miles away, across the New York state line, business at Grady Avant’s Narrowsburg coffee shop plummeted after a false rumor circulated that he and his partner had signed a gas company lease. He opposes drilling.
His regulars — largely opposed to drilling — stopped coming. People shot him dirty looks and some called to complain.
“It took weeks for us to undo most of it,” he said, but eventually, business returned to normal.
Since then, Avant, 39, has helped start FrackAlert, a group that seeks to shift the debate to the larger political arena “to ease local tensions,” he said.
“People have to treat each other better,” he said, “or otherwise there will be no community when everything is done.”
Belfair Water District manager Dave Tipton dislikes satisfying requests for official documents.
Over 35 years ago, citizens of Washington State found their voice, in what was possibly their finest hour since Washington was admitted to the Union of sister states, when they overwhelmingly voted for an initiative worded in the strongest language possible requiring transparency in government.
The introduction to the statute explains the reason for the PDA: “The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.”
Suit Prompts Mason County to Re-Examine PDA Procedure
Since the voters’ overwhelming support of this initiative was recorded, the State’s legislature has endeavored to emasculate/kill its impact with the death of 1,000 cuts, i.e. dozens upon dozens of amendments to it eliminating whole ranges and entire categories of government documents subject to citizen review. Nevertheless, the courts have consistently upheld the initiative’s provisions, fining scofflaw agencies to discourage non-compliance as the law’s language intended. Political science analysts have applauded the law’s introduction of ‘sunshine’ into government and the democratic process.
Belfair Water District manager Dave Tipton
But District Manager Dave Tipton sneers at the law as he answers questions regarding a lawsuit filed by Bonnie Pope and Greg Wagget alleging non-compliance by the Belfair Water District in responding to their records requests. “This is a huge abuse of the antiquated law that allows people to demand information for no specific reason and then sue if they do not get it. I would encourage every voter to contact their legislators to demand this law be changed now,” he says. Presumably Mr. Tipton would prefer aggrieved citizens be limited to holding their breath until they turn blue…or that Jay Hupp be placed in charge of responding to such requests?
A History, Analysis, and Notable Cases/Requests invoking PDA authority
An odd mix of sophistry or pseudo rhetoric and hypocrisy greets citizens when they read the arguments advanced by the City of Shelton vs. the Port of Shelton in their conflict over the proposed re-zoning of 160 acres for new homes just south of Sanderson Field.
The Port of Shelton (champion of corporate interests adverse to the surrounding community) shamelessly advances the rationale that such a rezoning would be a burden on future residents there, inviting possible lawsuits against the Port for noise pollution from aircraft…this in the wake of the Port’s stonewalling local residents (while sneering and allowing Adage to terrorize Mason County citizens) based on many of the same considerations community activists cited in opposing the sweetheart deal the Port gave Adage and is now wearing as custard on its face. If one were to take the Port at its word, they’d have citizens believe they genuinely care about the environment, quality of their life, and noise pollution they mights be subjected to if the multi-million dollar housing development were to proceed. Residents are left to wonder how this position is consistent with the Port’s “business/industry at any cost” mantra in the thick of the Adage controversy.
Just as disingenuously, the City of Shelton argues it has invested heavily in studies to protect such home buyers from the possibility of fearful noise pollution emanating from Port property/activities. The fact the City has failed to monitor the obvious air and water pollution emanating from Simpson facilities in its downtown harbor operations for decades (resulting in a hotbed of Dioxin contamination and air quality unfit for children) appears to have escaped their notice. It’s like watching Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan argue over which one will rape your daughter.
Double Talk from the City & Port of Shelton
Ultimately, the City’s position for rezoning is the more persuasive, despite its moral bankruptcy and genuine indifference to the community, residents, their health, and quality of life. The residential development of the disputed 160 acres will, indeed, bring economic diversity and jobs to a community richly deserving it. The alternative proposed by the Port would only maintain the status quo benefiting a handful of pilots exploiting a resource supported largely by taxpayers…taxpayers viewed with hostility by the Port.
While it’s in the community’s best interest to support this goal, watching the City of Shelton officials advance the ball is a little too much like sleeping with the enemy. Citizens would very much like a candidate on their side to apply for the position of Mayor before the filing deadline for the upcoming mayoral election.
“A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.” -Friedrich Hayek-