Island happenings
July 29 issue was full of colorful news
The July 29 issue of the Beachcomber made for some fine reading. Best issue in a long time!
Greg Wessel’s suggestions for next year’s Strawberry Festival were great. Why should Fremont get all the attention?
The calendar project to raise some money for the schools is wonderful and soooooo Vashon. I have only two words for Laura Wishik’s grumpy response: Lighten up!
All India Café is closing — not a surprise. Maybe the Chamber of Commerce could produce a pamphlet of advice for people who want to open restaurants on Vashon. Advice No. 1: Lousy food is the major reason restaurants fail. No. 2: If you want to run an ethnic restaurant on Vashon, don’t underestimate the sophistication of the Vashon-Maury palate.
Let’s hear it for day tourism. The big sign greeting cars exiting the ferry could say “Welcome to Vashon. Spend Your Money, Then Go Home.”
— Mary Lynn Buss
Glacier
If not Vashon, where will gravel come from?
Our sailboat Sea Change has accompanied the Snohomish Tribe’s Blue Heron in the West Coast Tribal Canoe Journey for many years. The journey began this year at the Lummi Nation’s reservation across the water from Lummi Island. This year we were joined by the canoe, Raven, paddled primarily by Muckleshoot members.
As Sea Change and the canoes followed the shoreline of Lummi Island, we came upon a gravel and rock quarry owned by Anacortes-based Roland Culbertson. It was a shock to see the beautiful, wooded island so badly damaged by the removal of huge amounts of hillside. It was like an open wound.
Of course, as a Vashon Islander, it brought to mind the Glacier gravel mine on Maury Island. I was horrified to think of similar environmental degradation happening here. I googled Lummi Island Rock Quarry and found two photos of the quarry one year apart that show how quickly the damage has spread, and I became even more alarmed for Maury Island.
However, I had another thought: If not on Vashon or Lummi, then where will the gravel come from for all the infrastructure projects we hope to gain from the Obama Administration’s stimulus package? I am one who hopes for good construction jobs to help out the many unemployed. But at what cost to the environment? Any construction project has to have gravel. Do I care what mountain or what island is destroyed to fulfill the need? Or do I just care about my island?
Perhaps there is some very poor township, Indian reservation or offshore country that would welcome selling its land or mountaintop so our island and waters don’t have to be destroyed. That’s not a solution I’m comfortable with. As we came to the end of the journey, I found myself in a real quandary with more questions than answers.
— Kate Hunter
