Island Guardian

Friday, May 4th

SJ Conservation Dist. & PW Improve Lagoon & Beach

ig_SJICD_BeachPlant-1 (77k image)
(Juan Islands Conservation District Photo by Danna Nicole Kinsey)

San Juan Islands Conservation District (SJICD), in conjunction with San Juan County Public Works (PW), has completed a three-year effort to improve water quality in the Port Stanley Lagoon on Lopez Island. Installation of a new, hydraulically-operated tide gate at the lagoon outlet in June 2006 restored daily tidal flow into the lagoon for the first time since the early 1960s. With the completion of the project, SJICD and PW expect to see not only improvement in the lagoon water quality, but also improved wildlife habitat and a reduction in flooding during severe winter storms.

The project replaced an existing tide gate and replanting of vegetation on the disturbed beach. The original flood gate to the lagoon was installed in the 1960s to block tidal flow into the lagoon, but as a result, the lagoon gradually filled with sediment so that it became so shallow that by late summer only a stagnant puddle remained.

In addition, without continuous tidal flushing, the tide gate’s outfall pipe on the beach sometimes filled with sand, preventing winter storm runoff from draining properly. At the request of the lagoon owners, the Mattson Family, SJICD received a US Fish and Wildlife Service (DFW) grant in 2003 to complete an engineering study to evaluate ways to restore some degree of tidal exchange while improving the winter drainage and flooding situation.

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Thursday, May 3rd

Deer Resistant Gardening

Westcott Bay Institute is happy to announce the first of their 2007 Workshops – Deer Resistant Gardening with Colleen Howe. This class will be held Sunday, May 6, 2007, from 12:30pm to 3:00pm.

The class will introduce various deer resistant plant families. Students will observe these plants in an actual garden setting. Elementary design concepts will be covered to help students place these plants into their own landscapes.

Please contact the Westcott Bay Institute at 360-370-5050, or through our website: www.wbay.org for more information or to register.

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Sunday, April 29th

Fed’s Give Permits For Study Of Tidal Energy

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has issued preliminary permits to Snohomish County to conduct an investigation into the viability of using tidal energy in San Juan Channel (and six sites outside of SJC) to generate electricity.

As previously reported in The Island Guardian, The Snohomish Public Utility District (SPUD) has proposed hundreds of turbines in tidal currents in the waters of San Juan County, but the recent issuing of permits limits the work to feasibility studies, which, according to SPUD, will amount to a paper study only.

What are the changes that SPUD will eventually installed hundreds of turbines in the waters of Washington? In what appears to be a prescient opinion, Gordy Peterson’s column “Poker Face” appears to have correctly predicted the real motive for conducting the study, which is, to prove tidal energy is not as cost effective as wind generated power.

In a letter to San Juan County and the other “stake holders”, Steve Klein, General Manager of SPUD, states that “Wind power continues to be the primary source of renewable generation, but the most promising remaining sites are in eastern Washington”, and due to the costs of transmission from there to here, they will evaluate “other forms of renewable energy may exist in our own backyard”, while acknowledging that “wind energy continues to remain an important part of the region's renewable portfolio”.

The likelihood that hundreds of turbines floating in salt water will be found to be more economically viable than turbines standing in the grasslands of eastern Washington, seems a bit unlikely; but that is, after all, the ostensive reason for the study.

Related to all of this is a call for public comment from FERC on the question of how permits for tidal energy -and other water related proposals- are processed. Find out more on how to give input

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