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04/10/2007: "Large Turnout For Second Marine Workshop"

(San Juan Island workshop at the SJI Yacht Club)

The second of four Marine Stewardship Area Workshops put on by the MRC ( Marine Resource Committee was held Saturday on San Juan island. The workshop opening remarks were given by Karen Vedder, and if there was some disagreement during the course of the meeting as to what was, or was not, most important to protecting the marine environment, everyone seemed to agree that Vedder had given voice to the reason a marine stewardship plan was worth their review (Read Vedder’s “Host Remarks” )

The next workshop will be on a Saturday, April 14, 9 am to 1 pm on Lopez (Center for Community and the Arts); and the final one will be held on Orcas (Madrona Room at Orcas Center, Saturday, April 21; 9 am -1 pm). The first workshop was held on Shaw Island, and according to Councilman Kevin Ranker and FH Port Commissioner Barbara Marrett, there was a large turnout from Shaw and Waldron’s residents. Ranker put the number as “somewhere around 100 participants”.

The meeting on San Juan also drew a large number of participants, who represented a strong cross-section of islanders. The public was asked to visit a number of “Listening Posts”, and then to discuss the ”threats and strategies” the Draft Marine Resources Area plan has thus far identified. The public was asked to comment on a number of questions, and to list their “priorities” by the use of colored stick-it dots to rank the importance of the strategies from “least supported” (red dot), to the “most supported” (green dot).



The questions ranged from "build upon joint tribal-community events, such as …tribal canoe groups” to “work to develop criteria for facility siting (barge landings, marinas, docks.”; and really just about anything that one might think of that does, or could, impact the marine environment.

There was one surprise for the organizers, when more red dots (least supported) showed up on one of the Global Warming/Climate Change questions -that was repeated twice (once in the Salmon, and once in the Seabirds discussion guide) . The facilitator was so sure the public had mistakenly placed red dots to indicate “stop” global warming, instead of following the directions that red indicated the least support, that he pointed out the error to the group, only to be quickly told that, “No, we understood”, but some had felt it was a “waste of our efforts to address it”, and that their time would be better spent on more mundane matters that the County might have a meaningful impact on.

(MRC participant Jim Slocomb gets a good-natured “Red Dot” ranking)

The two areas that attracted the most green dots (“most supported”) were protecting habitat, and educating the public; and in the open floor discussion that followed the ranking process, one of the participants, Attorney Bill Appel, suggested that the MRC outreach to the business community should include an economist, to show that “Green” can be profitable.

When asked what conclusions were drawn from the event, some of the responses from the floor were “there is a high level of concern” about marine resources, and that “solutions are not easy”; it was also observed that some of the responses seemed to ”conflict with each other” -this in acknowledgement that the repeated global warming strategies had received a different ranking depending on what the discussion was about..

According to the MRC, once all of the input from the three workshops has been analyzed, the MRC will report back to the public. It was suggested that the draft Marine Stewardship Area Plan be a “living document” that will reflect new and relevant information as it becomes available over time.

If the public input will result in any changes to the draft document -that is the result of over three years work by the MRC- will not be known until the MRC reviews the information. In any case, the final work product is scheduled to go the County Council in June of this year for their review, and for their possible adoption..