WELLNESS GUIDE Check out our directory of health and wellness for 2013 inside this edition
Sounder The Islands’
San Juan Islands’
Serving Orcas, Lopez and San Juan County
WEDNESDAY, December 26, 2012 n VOL. 45, NO. 52 n 75¢
Top stories
FROM
A directory of wellness & fitness practitioners & services in the San Juan Islands
Health & Wellness Guide 2013
www.islandssounder.com
2012
A Year in Review The following top stories of 2012 are based on staff picks, website statistics and reader feedback.
#1 SJC voters help
make history
San Juan County voters came out in strong numbers to cast their opinions this election season. Turnout was 89.39 percent – the highest in Washington state. County Auditor Milene Henley said that the three significant charter propositions, three council member elections, a local citizen initiative about GMOs, and the state referendum on same-sex marriage all helped to turn out the vote. She also suggested that the marijuana initiative may have further encouraged a high voter turnout. Island voters played an important role in passing those measures. It was a sweeping triumph for Initiative Measure 2012-4 with 62 percent of the vote. The measure, proposed by organic farmers and others in San Juan County, makes it unlawful to propagate or grow plants or animals in San Juan County which have been genetically modified and provides for penalties and destruction of such organisms. The results were close for Referendum 74, legalizing gay marriage: 54 percent of Washington voters approved the measure while 46 percent rejected it. In San Juan County, the measure was overwhelmingly approved: 71 percent to 29 percent. Referendum 74 allows gay couples to marry and preserves domestic partnerships for seniors and the right of religious organizations to refuse to perform or recognize any mar-
riage ceremony. The law went into effect on Dec. 6. Washington voters also passed Initiative 502 to legalize recreational use of marijuana. The initiative passed with 55 percent statewide approval and an overwhelming 68 percent support in San Juan County, the largest margin in the state. A similar measure passed in Colorado, making Washington and Colorado the first two states to allow recreational marijuana.
#2 Charter Review changes approved
Only some bells and a few of the whistles remain. On Nov. 6, San Juan County voters unhinged major planks of the county charter and, in an 180-degree about face, put a decisive end to the reign of a six-person council and its appointed administrator. No single issue dominated the Sounder opinion pages, or cast a longer shadow over 12 months of the year, than did the review of the county home rule charter or the subsequent changes recommended by the Charter Review Commission. Battle lines arose quickly, and firmly, with many former freeholders, architects of the six-person council, administrator and district-only elections, contesting both the process and the ideas of the CRC. In the other camp, a host of former elected county officials came out in favor of the CRC-endorsed changes. In the end, voters opted to jettison many of the changes that they themselves ushered in six years earlier, re-bundle as before the executive and legislative branches of county government, and reconstitute the council into three fulltime legislators.
Scott Rasmussen/staff photo
Islanders protesting the proposed coal terminal during a public hearing in Friday Harbor on Nov. 3.
#3 Islanders protest
coal terminal
Friday Harbor High School’s Hall Gym has seen plenty of sizable crowds in its day. But probably none so large, or as vocal, or as single-minded as the 400 or so-plus people who showed up Nov. 3 to let their opposition to the prospects of super-sized cargo carrying shipments of raw coal through the San Juans be known. Convened by state and federal officials, the meeting was part of the information gathering element for a mandatory environmental impact statement for the controversial Gateway Terminal Project. Proposed by Seattle-based SSA Marine, the terminal, which, if approved, would be built in the industrial area of Cherry Point, just north of Bellingham. It would be an export facility for coal
mined in the midwest, carried by rail through Washington, and then shipped through the Salish Sea and Juan de Fuca Strait to markets in Asia. At full capacity the terminal would be capable of shipping 48 million tons of coal, with as many as 450 giant cargo ships transiting each year through the San Juans. Given the environmental risks, islanders banded together in saying “No to Coal.”
#4 Solid waste gets overhaul
After voters in 2011 rejected the county council’s proposed property tax parcel fee to fund solid waste operations, the council thought about carrying out its threat to close the three county dumps on Orcas, San Juan and Lopez Islands. The Lopez Island Solid
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