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August 12-13, 2011
Port Angeles-Sequim-West End
YOUR FRIDAY/SATURDAY WEEKEND PLANNER OUTDOORS:
OUTLOOK: Partly sunny all weekend
FUN TIME:
HOT HOT HOT:
Think pinks when fishing
Jefferson County Fair weekend
PA Heritage Days Steam Ball
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Peninsula Spotlight
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Bonus magazine to your health! THIS WEEKEND EDITION of the Peninsula Daily News features Spry, the monthly magazine to enhance your health.
Inside today!
Keith Thorpe (2)/Peninsula Daily News
Pickets supporting the Service Employees International Union march across from Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles on Thursday.
Union pickets walk their side of dispute at OMC Health benefits, staffing levels at issue, they say
‘Keep up fight,’ Van De Wege tells unionists
By Rob Ollikainen
By Rob Ollikainen
Peninsula Daily News
Peninsula Daily News
PORT ANGELES — Union members picketed to draw attention to their demands about staffing levels and the cost of health care Thursday at Olympic Medical Center. Nearly 70 members of Service Employees International Union Healthcare 1199NW and their supporters held signs and shouted for guaranteed staffing levels and better health care benefits in their contacts. More workers picketed throughout the day on their breaks. Their message was directed to Chief Executive Officer Eric Lewis and the seven publicly elected commissioners of Hospital District No. 2, none of whom were present for the rally across the street from the main hospital. “We need you to step up and take steps to settle a fair contract by agreeing to our key issues, which are affordable health care and guaranteed staffing,” said Margaret Cary, an emergency room nurse and chief negotiator for SEIU. Turn
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PORT ANGELES — State Rep. Kevin Van De Wege addressed pickets at Olympic Medical Center on Thursday, telling them they’re “fighting for their rights and for a fair contract.” “That’s important for the hospital. It’s important for Port Angeles, said Van De Wege, D-Sequim, to Service Employees International Union Healthcare 1199NW workers and supporters at an organized picket. Van De Wege, whose 24th District covers the North Olympic Peninsula, is also a unionized firefighter and paramedic for Clallam County Fire District No. 3 in Sequim. He said he has a lot in common with the hospital employees who are trying to secure better health Rep. Kevin Van De Wege, D-Sequim, care benefits and guaranteed staffspeaks to pickets outside Olympic ing levels in their contracts.
Medical Center on Thursday.
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New toxin shuts bay to shellfish Record level for U.S. affects Sequim shore By Tom Callis
Peninsula Daily News
SEQUIM — The state Department of Health closed Sequim Bay to shellfish harvesting this week after three people became ill from a marine toxin never seen before in unsafe levels in shellfish in the United States. The ban for both recreational and commercial harvesting of all types of shellfish in the bay began Monday, and a recall for all commercially sold shellfish from the area during the past two weeks also went into effect, the department said Thursday. The Health Department has accounted for all recalled shellfish, and it is not on the market, officials said. Diarrhetic shellfish poisoning — also called DSP — causes nausea, vomiting and other flu-like symptoms that can begin within a few hours of eating tainted shellfish and last up to three days. It comes from a toxin produced by a type of plankton long-known to live in high concentrations in Sequim Bay, said Frank Cox, marine biotoxin coordinator with the Health Department. But why it has taken this long for the toxin, prevalent in parts of Europe and recently found in British Columbia waters, to cause illness here remains unclear, he said.
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Port Angeles Farmers Market ‘rapid’ shopper survey slated By Diane Urbani
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Peninsula Daily News
Paz
PORT ANGELES — It’s like an ecosystem under The Gateway pavilion, where everybody affects everybody else. And like its counterparts around the country, the Port Angeles Farmers Market has “a lot of love — and we’re hoping the money will follow,” said Colleen Donovan, a member of the team that will conduct a quick study of Saturday’s market. Donovan, a researcher with Washington State University’s Small Farms Program, will query and count the shoppers who come through the market from 10 a.m.
until 2 p.m. in what’s called a “rapid market assessment.” This is an effort to provide market manager Cynthia Warne, as well as the 29 vendors who make the Saturday scene, with data that will help them prosper.
Revenues sensitive “There’s no fat on the bone” in terms of farmers-market revenue, Donovan said in an interview from her Ellensburg office Thursday. The Port Angeles Farmers Market has been going since the mid-1970s, and for much of that time, its vendors have struggled to expand their clientele, fighting
the perception that organic produce is too expensive and the North Olympic Peninsula too chilly for local food through the winter. Port Angeles’ market, however, is full of tough growers — and a diverse menu of vegetables, fruit, herbs, grass-fed beef, local cheeses and seafood. And this market is one of only a few in Washington state that run year-round. The others are in far more urban places: Pike Place, Ballard and the University District in Seattle, West Seattle and OlymDiane Urbani de la Paz/Peninsula Daily News pia. Amie Albaugh assembles a bouquet from her Sequim farm Turn to Market/A4 at a recent Port Angeles Farmers Market.
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