SOUNDER THE ISLANDS’
Werewolf of Eastsound:
Serving Orcas, Lopez and San Juan County
WEDNESDAY, November 9, 2011 n VOL. 44, NO. 45 n 75¢
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Darling of San Juans’ oil safety An NPR reporter profiles Julie Knight, the director of Islands’ Oil Spill Association by ASHLEY AHEARN Special to the Sounder
Julie Knight is the beating heart of oil spill preparedness in the San Juan Islands. As director of the nonprofit IOSA (Islands’ Oil Spill Association), she regularly convenes a motley crew of folks living in the archipelago of islands in Puget Sound that stand to lose everything if a major oil spill were to occur. These volunteers gather to run practice drills in the waters surrounding the San Juan Islands and this past weekend, I was lucky enough to tag along. When I first meet Julie she’s standing on the shore of Fisherman Bay on Lopez Island talking to roughly 30 people from all corners of the San Juans. She’s small and fit with a wavy strawberry-blond lion’s mane framing her face and sparkling turquoise eyes. The grass behind her is strewn with maps and supplies. She’s neatly cut up apples and cheese and put them in Ziploc bags along with various other snacks for each of the four
teams that will be going out on the water today. Mother hen meets drill sergeant. The folks gathered come from all different walks of life. There are men and women, teenagers and retirees, hippies with beards and Hawaiian shirts, people who are new to the islands and folks who have worked and lived here all their lives. There is also a team from MSRC (Marine Spill Response Corporation) and another from the ConocoPhillips refinery in Ferndale, Wash. Knight brings them all together under the IOSA banner for regular drills like this and, to a person, they’re smiling and happy to be here. The plan is for each team to go to one section of the bay and stretch boom (those yellow floating curtains that corral oil in the water) across the mouths of the ecologically fragile inlets and side channels here. If a spill were to happen, Knight wants to know how much boom will be needed
Ashley Ahearn/contributed photo
Julie Knight during an IOSA oil spill response drill on Lopez Island. Knight is director of the non-profit. for each section, where it can be attached and how fast the team can deploy it. “Alright, everybody ready?” Knight asks. “Let’s go.” She and I go back to her black chevy blazer (she often forgets to close the doors) and drive over to another inlet of Fisherman bay where about 1,000 feet of boom is neatly stacked on a trailer. Knight clambers up on the pile of boom like a sailor, nimbly untying the rope holding it down. The other team members arrive by boat and come up from the shore as she
measures out the boom, section by section, and gives it to each team to drag down the rocky beach and out onto the water. She’s like a seamstress, tailoring the lengths of boom to the needs of each team and the section of the bay they’ll be protecting. Indeed, Knight is making a custom-fit oil response plan for this bay, as she has for sections of coastline all around the San Juan Islands. And as the yellow lengths are dragged by me I can’t help but feel guilty, standing there with my microphone and camera, because I’m
not helping. “Can you count the lengths of boom for me?” Knight asks. “Uhhh … I’ll do my best,” I respond, suddenly desperately nervous about letting this woman down. “Each section is 100 feet, so every time you see one of those steel connectors, count it,” she said. The boom stretches out rapidly as 10 or 15 people pull it away to the boats. I’m holding the microphone, snapping pictures and anxiously counting away on my fin-
SEE KNIGHT, PAGE 6
Community Foundation: partners in giving workshops and training to help strengthen local charities. More recently the foundation has begun to assess the overall health of the community, seeking to understand which local charities are best meeting needs and which could use more support. While a grants committee selects each year’s OICF grant recipients, OICF’s 15 board members are responsible to steer the foundation’s course. As executive director, Canty supports the board and ensures it has enough information to make decisions.
This coming week is National Community Foundation week and Nov. 17 is National Philanthropy Day. The Sounder is recognizing these events with a feature of Orcas Island’s community foundation. by MEREDITH M. GRIFFITH Staff reporter
Orcas Island supports at least 110 nonprofits with a population of roughly 5,700. The national average is around four nonprofits per 1,000 people, Orcas Island Community Foundation director Hilary Canty tells the Sounder. “Orcas Islanders are remarkably philanthropic, in terms of both time and money,” Canty said. “We have no central government or town council, so we look to each other for support and a safety net. That requires a tremendous amount of volunteer effort.” OICF offers support and training to all 110 of these nonprofits, and manages endowment funds for 44 of them.
Meredith M. Griffith/staff photo
L-R: Kate Long, administrative assistant, and Hilary Canty, executive director of OICF. In 2010 the foundation held gross assets of $5,452,448, or $957 per capita, compared to $366 held by the Seattle Community Foundation. That year $312,246 was disbursed to charities. The foundation was started 16 years ago to provide a central structure for charitable giving to other nonprofits, and consistently offers
Charitable giving to nonprofits Donors can give to local charities of their choice through OICF. “Donors know if they come to us, we’ll be able to tell them that the nonprofit is in good standing: it has an active board; its bylaws are up to date; it has filed its tax returns,” said OICF board president Diane Berreth. “We can assure potential donors that their funds are going to a
SEE OICF, PAGE 6
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