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CONTINUED FROM A1 girls starts. “If we can get these boys Wednesday’s route is a to be aware of this, they will change from past years tell their friends they need when the march ended at to be aware, respect girls the Northwest Maritime and not pressure them.” Ramsey said a lot of Center. The city is making the organizations send teams, Cotton Building available such as those from the Food Co-op, Hadlock Building for free, Ramsey said. Registration forms can Supply, the Boeing Blue be picked up at Dove House Bills, Jefferson Healthcare at 1045 10th St., and Jef- and Port Townsend High ferson Healthcare at 834 School. “A lot of people have Sheridan St., in Port Townsend, and Hadlock been affected by this in Building Supply, 901 Ness’ their lives,” Ramsey said. “It’s a bad thing when Corner Road, Port Hadlock. the numbers increase but it’s good that people are not ‘Walking’ shoes keeping it secret and comParticipants who sign up ing forward,” she added. on the day of the walk will The event is held nationnot be guaranteed shoes or wide in April, National Sexshirts if they are not pre- ual Assault Awareness month, but it is put on later registered. As of last week, about in Port Townsend because 120 people had registered, of the weather, Ramsey about half from Port said. For more information Townsend High School. “The high school boys call Dove House, 360-385are taking it very seriously,” 5292. Ramsey said. ________ “It’s good they are getJefferson County Editor Charlie ting involved because that’s Bermant can be reached at 360where the inclination for 385-2335 or at cbermant@ date rape and pressuring peninsuladailynews.com.
YMCA: Pool CONTINUED FROM A1 will determine if the project is sustainable operationally One of the issues will be and then move forward to determine whether the with a fundraising study to current pool at Mountain determine how much money View should be rehabili- can be raised and from tated or a new one con- what source. structed, she said. Among the questions is a United in goal determination of a favored “The YMCA, the JeffCo location to construct a tra- Aquatic Coalition and Jefditional YMCA facility, with ferson Healthcare are the choice among adding on united in the goal to work to the current facility at for a healthier community Mountain View Commons, and provide programs and using a portion of the ath- services accessible to all,” letic field or locating within said Kyle Cronk the chief the Port Hadlock/Irondale executive officer of the urban growth area. Olympic Peninsula YMCA in Port Angeles. Want YMCA to stay “This project is a collabo“We’d like to see the ration of three organizaYMCA stay in Mountain tions who share a commitView and continue to use ment to the health, fitness, this space, signing a long and safety of all county term lease,” said Port residents,” said Earll MurTownsend Development man, JeffCo Aquatic Coalition president. Director Rick Sepler. “But we will use this ________ data to see if constructing in Jefferson County Editor Charlie Irondale makes more sense.” Bermant can be reached at 360Following the data-gath- 385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@ ering process the partners peninsuladailynews.com.
CONTINUED FROM A1 complying last year with requests to detain people “But we will not hold suspected of being in the and have not held anyone United States illegally. for the benefit of ICE or ICE spokesman Andrew Border Patrol,” Benedict Muñoz said the agency will said. continue to work “cooperatively with law enforcement Jefferson policy partners” as it identifies Jefferson County Sheriff removal of “convicted crimiTony Hernandez has kept a nals.” similar policy. ________ “Unless there’s criminal The Associated Press contribcharges, we’re not going to uted to this report. do an ICE detainer,” Hernandez said. Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be He added: “We’re not reached at 360-452-2345, ext. immigration officers.” 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsula King County stopped dailynews.com.
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CONTINUED FROM A1 The shuttering of the ambitious project — which, as the nation’s first gridconnected commercial-scale wave park, was to have 10 buoys supplying power to about 1,000 homes — is the latest setback for the nascent wave energy sector in the United States, which remains in the experimental stage. Although some renewable energy technologies — conventional hydropower, solar and wind — have reached commercial viability and can compete in some markets with fossil fuels, the emerging water-based approaches called marine hydrokinetic technologies are far from meeting that mark. Tidal power, which captures energy from currents moving in one direction at a time, as opposed to the wave-based technology of the Ocean Power buoys, is further along, said Paul Jacobson, ocean energy leader at the Electric Power Research Institute. One reason, he said, is that tidal power — such as a Snohomish County Public Utility District project in Admiralty Inlet across from Marrowstone Island [see accompanying box] — is easier to engineer and has been able to adapt expertise from the conventional hydroelectric industry.
But electricity generation from the ocean’s waves is more complex, and only a few projects are in the planning stages, despite the vast potential, even outside the best areas like the West Coast and Alaska. “The cost is still greater than the alternatives, even other renewables,” Jacobson said. “The expectation is that the cost will come down, but we’re not there yet.” Indeed, wave energy has at least a decade before it can compete with fossil fuels and other renewables in major markets, said Bill Staby, chief executive of Resolute Marine Energy, a start-up that is working on a demonstration project in a remote village in Alaska. “Scale is not working in our favor yet,” he said, comparing the current state of wave energy with that of wind when different technologies were being tested before the industry settled on the current three-blade, horizontal axis structure in use now. “Then they can start manufacturing them in large numbers and they get
Tidal power project continues off PT THE SNOHOMISH COUNTY Public Utility District has received federal approval for plans to place two large turbines in Admiralty Inlet between Jefferson County and Whidbey Island. The pilot project has been in development for years, and it’s likely to be a few more years before the turbines are installed. The project is a test to see if using tides that rush through the inlet between the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound to generate electricity is technically, commercially and environmentally viable, said Craig Caller, an assistant general manager for the PUD. It would be the first time tidal power turbines in the Sound region would be connected to the larger electricity grid. So far, Snohomish PUD has raised about $13 million in federal Department of Energy grants, which is expected to cover about half the cost of the project. The test area is 200 feet deep in Admiralty Inlet, less than a halfmile off the west shore of Whidbey Island and not far Fort Casey State Park and the Coupeville cheaper and cheaper and there you have it,” he said. Ocean Power’s project was to be an important step in jump-starting that process. Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal a company growing in ambition despite failing to raise enough money from private investors to complete even the first stage of its multiyear endeavor. The company’s stock price also took a beating, an indication of a lack of broad confidence in the market. Still in the early stages of its growth, the field is full of competing technologies, and the type of clear winner that investors look for has yet to emerge. “The question of which technology is best is still wide open,” said Belinda Batten, a professor of
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Not enough data Right now there isn’t enough data to make even an educated guess as to tidal power’s viability, said Dave Aldrich, Snohomish PUD board president. “It’s in its infancy. It’s about where wind technology was decades ago,” Aldrich said. The Jamestown S’Klallam tribe is among tribes that have opposed the project, saying the turbines posed a risk to fish and fishing nets and would force the state to close the area to fishing. Federal energy regulators said the turbines posed no risk to the tribes’ fishing rights. The [Everett] Daily Herald mechanical engineering at Oregon State University. Ocean Power’s buoy in Oregon relies on what Batten said was now older, first-generation technology. The device absorbs energy created from the up-anddown movement of the ocean, while some devices that use newer technology also gather energy from the waves’ various other movements.
Oregon frustration Ocean Power’s departure is particularly frustrating for supporters in Oregon, with its ideal coastal waters and hospitable political climate. Along with other sources of renewable energy, hydroelectric power produced 70 percent of the state’s net electricity last year, according to the United States Energy Information Administration. The Oregon Wave Energy Trust, a nonprofit, state-financed group, spent $430,000 in state lottery
What now? Despite the Oregon project’s failure, Busch and Batten are undeterred in their pursuit of wave energy. Batten is also the director of the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center, a collaboration between Oregon State University and the University of Washington that receives money from the Energy Department and is seeking to build a dedicated test site for wave energy devices. That would allow companies to more quickly test and prove their technologies, instead of needing to navigate a complex permitting process or secure financing for large, expensive projects. In the meantime, questions linger about Ocean Power and its buoy, including the fate of the license that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted and a timeline for cleaning up the abandoned project. Busch is a professed optimist, but he shared, in a slow, Texas drawl, the question that still nagged at him. “Just imagine if we’d actually gotten that thing in the water — what would that have been like?” he said of Oregon’s hope to become the nation’s wave energy pioneer. “We were so darn close.”
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landing for ferries from Port Townsend. The utility is to operate the turbines for three to five years, during which time it will study the turbines’ actual performance versus the expected output, maintenance requirements, underwater noise and response of nearby fish and marine mammals. Gathering that data will determine whether the utility proceeds with a commercial deployment.
money helping Ocean Power navigate the process of seeking a permit. The group’s executive director, Jason Busch, was one of the project’s biggest supporters. “This state has the best wave resources in the country,” Busch said, “so whatever the problem with the project was, it had nothing to do with the site.” The Oregon project also follows an increasingly familiar story line in renewable energy, of another country transplanting a promising endeavor seeded by American taxpayers — in this case helped by a former United States government official. Cash-starved, the company brought in Lockheed Martin as a partner in its deal with the Australian government, announcing only weeks earlier that it had hired a retired Marine Corps major general, David R. Heinz, as a vice president. Heinz knew Lockheed well, having been dismissed from a position overseeing the contractor in a fighter plane program plagued by cost overruns. Ocean Power did not respond to several phone and email messages seeking comment.
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Bellingham Police Sgt. Donald Almer, left, stands with his son, Dawson, and his wife, Laura, after he was given the law enforcement medal of honor by Gov. Jay Inslee, right, and Attorney General Bob Ferguson, second from left, Friday during a ceremony at the Capitol in Olympia. Almer was honored for his actions in stopping an armed robbery suspect vehicle in 2013.
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