December 9 - 15, 2021
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Community Newspaper of Blaine and Birch Bay HHHECRWSSHHH Postal Customer
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ISSUE
Man pleads guilty in deadly I-5 crash, page 5
Cross-border traffic ticks up
CBP detects fake credentials, page 6
PRSRT STD U. S. Postage PAID Permit NO. 87 Blaine, WA 98230
Blaine and Birch Bay road updates, page 13
Holiday Harbor Lights brightens downtown
By Grace McCarthy
(See Canadians, page 3)
s Blaine residents celebrate the annual Holiday Harbor Lights festival and Christmas tree lighting December 4. The fun-filled day started with Blaine-Birch Bay Park and Recreation District 2’s Holiday Lights Obstacle Dash and ended with a festive evening of hot cocoa, caroling, a horse-drawn carriage, Santa Claus coming to town and more. View photos on page 10. Photo by Ruth Lauman
Board to consider a revised redistricting plan By Ian Haupt The Blaine school board will vote on a new redistricting plan during its regular meeting at noon Tuesday, December 14 that has Birch Bay community members “fantastically pleased.” In a special meeting December 7, the school board discussed a second draft for districting boundaries after Birch Bay Chamber of Commerce secretary Doralee Booth and Friends of Birch Bay State Park board member Pat Jerns voiced their concerns over Birch Bay’s lack of representa-
tion in the unincorporated, 10,115-person area. The new plan was drafted after superintendent Christopher Granger worked with Booth, Jerns and other Birch Bay community members to address their concerns in the redistricting process. The proposed plan would give Birch Bay two of its own districts, Blaine two of its own and one split amongst them. It will also leave board president and representative for director district 4 Charles Gibson without a district. The first proposed plan kept all board members in their respective districts but
Scientists see positive results from European green crab trapping in Drayton Harbor By Grace McCarthy Scientists are hailing this year a success for European green crab removal in Drayton Harbor, but say they need to keep up the work to manage the invasive species’ numbers. A team of scientists from Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife; Northwest Straits Commission and University of Washington’s Washington Sea
Grant started closely monitoring local waters after discovering European green crabs in Drayton Harbor in 2019. The invasive species is known for its damaging effects on native habitat and species such as shellfish, native crabs and eelgrass. The crabs were found late in the 2019 trapping season, which runs late spring until mid-October, causing scientists to quickly consider Drayton Harbor one of the most concerning locations along Washington’s
inland shorelines. This year, scientists added a trapping site at the mouth of Dakota Creek after catching an inordinate number of crabs there near the end of 2020. The scientists caught 43 crabs there this year, the most of any other trapping site, said Allie Simpson, ecosystem project coordinator at Northwest Straits Commission. The other traps (See Crabs, page 4)
also stretched the district boundaries long and thin across the school district, which as Booth said, did not give the Birch Bay community “a sense of place.” According to 2020 U.S. Census data, 58 percent of children – persons under 18 years of age – in the school district reside in Birch Bay, and 80 percent of children under 5 years of age reside in Birch Bay. Through 2021 tax contributions, Birch Bay residents also contribute 36 percent of the school district’s funding, while Blaine con(See School, page 2)
INSIDE
Traffic at the Peace Arch border crossing, vehicles with B.C. license plates filling up at gas stations and parcels being retrieved are signs of returning normalcy to Blaine in the past week. But businesses reliant on Canadian customers say they’re unsure what the future holds as the number of Canadian travelers remains lower than before the border closed to nonessential traffic in March 2020. Brant Baron, owner of Mail Boxes International, said he was delighted to see packages that waited over 1.5 years on his store’s shelves to be taken home. “It’s all somewhat of a blur,” he said. “It’s like being reunited with an old friend or family member.” Baron said last week was the first time the parcel store has had more packages leaving the store than being delivered since the border closed to nonessential travel March 2020, thanks to the Canadian government’s decision to drop the Covid-19 test requirement on November 30 for fully vaccinated Canadians traveling into the U.S. for fewer than 72 hours. Numbers still aren’t near where they would be during a typical holiday season, but Baron said this is OK for right now. Baron said he’s only added back Saturday hours and still closes his store early on weekdays because he has been unable to find staff. “You have the tension of wanting to do everything to help your members get their packages out the door with the reality that we won’t be able to stretch our workers,” he said of employees currently working 50-60-hour weeks. Although there’s been a dramatic increase in packages picked up, Baron said there’s still a lot of trepidation as to whether the U.S./Canada border will remain open with the new Omicron variant and people are still adjusting to using the ArriveCAN app needed to cross the border. “We still have a long way to go until we get the volume back up,” Baron said. “And
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