Reporter Central Kitsap
FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2012 | Vol. 27, No. 49 www.CENTRALKITSAPREPORTER.com | 50¢
Pot moratorium to blaze on for six more months
By KEVAN MOORE kmoore@soundpublishing.com
Greg Skinner/staff photo
Karen Olson of Blackjack Valley Farms connects a milking machine to Mrs. Piggy, a Guernsey milk cow, Wednesday morning. Olson’s farm recently won a Kitsap Food Chain rebate grant to install a new energy efficient refrigerated milk tank.
County helps local producers with ‘food chain’ efficiency Energy conservation grants awarded to local farms and others By GREG SKINNER gskinner@soundpublishing.com
Every day Karen Olsen milks her small mixed herd Holstien and Gurney cows at her South Kitsap farm. To keep her raw milk product the best and freshest for Kitsap County and other local markets, she works hard to cool the milk from 98 degrees to 45 degrees in 20 minutes. Olsen gets it done at her Blackjack Valley Farm the old-fashioned way, milk cans set into bins of water loaded with ice. She acts at the “agitator” stering the milk for even cooling. “You want to get the milk as cold as you can as fast as you can,” she
said. Kitsap County is not a big producer agriculturally, but the Kitsap Food Chain program seeks to cut energy costs and the carbon footprint to grow and delivering local food to local markets. In effort to make Kitsap County’s “food chain” more energy effecent and affordable the Board of Kitsap County Commissioners Monday approved a series of grants to local food producers. Blackjack Valley Farms seeks to reduce its energy costs for its small dairy to daily cool 333 pounds of milk with ice using a mixture of residential and commercial equipment. A new 40-gallon cooling tank designed specifically for milk is expected to save money and time, said Kitsap County Resources Conservation manager Autumn Salamack. A total of $47,708 in of federal stimulus grants were awarded to
eight local companies out of the nine requesting rebates for energy efficient upgrades. The local program assessed 11 companies, of which nine moved forward with recommended upgrades and eight were awarded rebates for projects. Local companies receiving energy audits included Minder Meats in Bremerton and Monica’s Waterfront Bakery in Silverdale. “[We’re] really excited to see that number of applicants,” Salamack said. The monies will be awarded after the Kitsap County Conservation District verifies the work has been done. Two examples of projects made possible by the federal grants include the Blackjack Valley Farms project in Port Orchard and Pheasant Field Farm in Central Kitsap. Pheasant Field Farms will See FOOD CHAIN, A11
The City of Bremerton is set to extend a moratorium on medical marijuana collective gardens for another six months. The city first instituted a six-month moratorium in September and then again in February The current moratorium is set to expire Aug. 31. Allison Daniels, from the city’s Department of Community Development (DCD), said this week that she and other staffers are looking to other cities and counties for some direction on what has been a complicated issue. “Some cities are adopting codes and paving the way for every everyone else and other cities are continuing to adopt moratoriums,” Daniels said. “We’d like to get this off our desk and have the decision be made.” That decision, though, likely won’t come for another six months. Daniels said that cities such as Seattle, Tacoma, Shoreline, Port Orchard and Kent are struggling to come to terms with conflicting state and federal laws, but have taken various steps to move forward rather than continuing to pass moratoriums. In 2011, the Legislature passed a bill updating medical marijuana laws. Gov. Chris Gregoire vetoed portions of the bill, but left alone its governing of collective medical marijuana gardens. The advice city leaders continue to get from Bremerton City Attorney Roger Lubovich is that federal law makes marijuana illegal in all cases. Daniels said that dealing with permitting, zoning and other issues has been a priority in the last six See HOMELESS, A8
months, but more time is needed to see “what other cities are doing and what kind of litigation is out there so that we can have a complete plan to present to the council.” Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent, though, said that the moratorium “snuck up on us” because DCD was dealing with shoreline issues, moving forward with South Kitsap Industrial Area planning and other issues. “Time got away from us and we said, ‘Oh my gosh, we haven’t done enough research to complete zoning of medical marijuana grows,” Lent said. “We didn’t have enough time. That’s why we decided to put this off and extend it. To determine if there could be permitting, zoning and how it would be regulated.” In addition, Lent said that Lubovich, who is out of town for a couple of weeks, has consistently cautioned the council about creating local rules for a federally prohibited substance. “(Lubovich) has always said that marijuana is a federal offense,” Lent said. “So, even if the state says gardens are OK, the feds could arrest them for growing marijuana.” Lent acknowledged that the city has collective gardening, such as at Blueberry Park, but noted that growing vegetables to eat is different than growing marijuana because the latter is federally prohibited. “We’re very urbanized and it can be tough to carve out areas or determine if a yard would need to be a certain size,” she added. “When people wanted chickens, we allowed them to have them, but we also had people that didn’t want See MORATORIUM, A13