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Serving Orcas, Lopez and San Juan County
WEDNESDAY, January 1, 2014 VOL. 47, NO. 1 75¢ islandssounder.com
Clear-cutting prompts ‘stop work’ order on SJ
End of an era
by STEVE WEHRLY Journal Reporter
Soccer coach Chama Anderson, who helped bring Orcas a state championship title, has stepped down The following was submitted by students Amy Albright, Tommy Allgaier, Cyrus Amour, Cameron Aragon, Ryan Flint, Danny Hodges, Nick Hodges, Emily Toombs and teacher Edee Kulper from the Orcas Christian School. Many of you know Chama Anderson. For those of you who don’t, we’ve calculated that she has touched the lives of at least 10 percent of us here on Orcas as a girls soccer coach – but she is no ordinary coach. “I was born into a team,” says Anderson, who is retiring from the team after founding it seven years ago. One of seven children, she lived in Chicago until age four, and then in Indiana up through college. As a child in a family of nine, with parents doing their best to raise a big family, she and her siblings’ purpose in “the team” was to help each other out, especially their younger sister with cerebral palsy. Anderson’s family loved sports. They moved to a certain part of Indiana specifically for the Olympic-size pool there. She grew up swimming on teams with her family and says that, “by the end of the summer my hair was almost blond from the chlorine – my fingers and my feet were rubbed raw from the bottom of the pool.” In high school, she played basketball and soccer. She also played college soccer at Indiana University. Directly out of university, Anderson moved to Portland and then Orcas to be a nanny and a farmer. Later in Seattle, while playing soccer in a Division 1 Washington State League, she became a coach for the first time for a parks and recreation team of seven- and eight-year-olds. She was intrigued by meditation and also trained to be a massage therapist. She worked what she knew of meditation into her coaching style. “My meditation teachers have also worked doing mental fitness with the Green Berets and Olympic athletes,” she said. “So watching them do that and hearing their stories about that, then I thought, ‘Oh, let me try it with seven- and eight-year-olds.’ Before practice started I would have them close their eyes, put their hands on their hearts, and just breathe for 30 seconds. And
Chris Gill/WestBoundary Photography
The Orcas Vikings soccer team hoists its trophy after winning the state championship title in 2009.
before each drill I’d have them close their eyes, visualize what they were going to do, and when they were ready, they would go do the drill. We did a lot of coming back to their heart and breathing.” Anderson specifically remembers a rambunctious boy who always seemed busy while the other kids were doing the breathing exercises. But to her surprise, one day at a game while all the other kids were running around at halftime, she noticed he was sitting quietly with his hand on his heart. “It was so beautiful to see him utilize this at that moment,” Anderson said. “For what-
SEE SOCCER, PAGE 6
An emergency order to “immediately stop all clearing and grading activity” was posted Dec. 17 by the San Juan County Code Enforcement Officer at the False Bay property purchased earlier this year by Dave and Nancy Honeywell. The 40-acre property was formerly the Mar Vista Resort, one of the larger contiguous waterfront properties on Haro Strait on the west side of San Juan Island. The Honeywells, winners of a nine-figure Powerball jackpot in February of this year, purchased the property in early spring. According to an April 15 residential pre-application, the Honeywells intend to build a new home and rehabilitate and remodel some of the former resort cabins and caretaker house. Some former cabins would be removed and parcel boundaries would have to be changed to conform to current land use code requirements, according to the application. The site visit was conducted in June by Annie Matsumoto-Grah of the Community Development and Planning Department, which prepared a three-page report dated July 1. That report discussed two environmentally sensitive areas on the three parcels comprising the former resort, laying out for the Honeywells various environmental and development restrictions that must be met, including required plans and permits. Because “[t]he shoreline and waters offshore of the parcel contains protected marine habitat areas,” the report asserts that “a full storm water management plan must be submitted” and “[r] emoval of trees within the shoreline jurisdiction area can be done only with a CD&P-approved tree removal plan.” Neither the stormwater management plan nor the tree-removal plan were apparently provided to the county and the state, nor could any other permit applications or documents be located in a search of county databases by the
Journal and Sounder. The emergency order specifies four possible code violations: clearing and grading within the shoreline area without benefit of permits; converting land to a non-forestry use without benefit of an “approved Class IV General Forest Practice Permit that has received SEPA review”; failing to manage shoreline activity to minimize adverse impact to surrounding land and water uses; and "[c] onducting land-disturbing activity greater than one acre without benefit of an NPDES permit" issued by the state Department of Ecology. Local arborist Casey Baisch said that the Honeywells consulted him this fall and that he agreed to “limb and trim some fir trees” and clean up bushes and other scrub growth — “nothing that would require a permit.” Baisch said he was shocked to return to the property after a few weeks to find that “more than a few willows, alders and other trees” had been removed. Stephanie Buffum, executive director of Friends of the San Juans, was irate when she saw photographs of the area. She
SEE CLEAR-CUT, PAGE 6
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