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Now at Cascadia Magazine: How the US Navy dumped toxic copper into Sinclair Inlet
Cascadia Magazine is proud to publish an investigative feature by Seattle journalist John Stang looking at how the US Navy dumped tons of copper-laden paint and barnacles into Puget Sound. In 2017 the Navy scraped the hull of decommissioned aircraft carrier USS Independence, leaving the barnacles and paint chips at the bottom of Sinclair Inlet. Stang reports on the coalition of environmental groups, the Suquamish tribe, and the state of Washington that are suing the Navy to stop the practice, prevent it from doing it again, and cleaning up the polluted site at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton. Give the full article a read this weekend.
“The Navy ignored [the state’s] concerns and repeatedly downplayed the potential impact,” says Mindy Roberts of the Washington Environmental Council, “assuring federal, state, and tribal regulatory agencies that impacts from the hull cleaning would be minimal. The Navy’s assurances are wrong.”
Read the full story here. Support for this article was provided by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
And if you appreciate great journalism like this at Cascadia Magazine, please contribute to our Spring Fund Drive at our donate page.
What the hell happened in the Oregon legislature?
The walkout by Republicans in the Oregon legislature and the climate bill is seems to have killed, has attracted global news attention, with the New Yorker noting that Democrats had made compromises and assembled the necessary votes before the GOP fled. Willamette Week has a document signed by Republicans pledging they would not flee the capitol after they did it the first time — and of course violated that pledge when they denied a quorum for the climate bill. Republicans may return to the capitol soon OPB reports, and the whole mess has some wondering if longtime Senate president Peter Courtney should step aside.
The harsh realities of Seattle’s aging homeless population
David Kroman does some fantastic reporting at Crosscut about a quiet but tragic crisis taking place in Seattle: increasing numbers of the homeless population are over 50 and dealing with a barrage of medical ailments. Among those profiled is Hughes Daniels, who is dealing with a color tumor while living in shelters. Others face cancer, stroke, and many have died without shelter. “It made a lot of us kind of question of what we’re doing,” said one health care worker. “It’s just heartbreaking.”
Protecting a rich ocean ecosystem off Vancouver Island
The Narwhal looks at plans at the federal level in Canada to vastly increase protection for seafloor areas off the coast of Vancouver Island to 139,700 square kilometers. The conservation zone would be Canada’s largest, and ban mining in the area of volcanic vents that’s home to a diverse array of unique species–what some describe as an “underwater Yellowstone.”
A tour of Vancouver’s LGBTQ history
The Tyee has a great profile of Glenn Tkach, who leads the “Really Gay History Tour,” a three-hour guided tour of Vancouver’s LGBTQ history, including the bombing of a queer bookstore in 1987– up to the more optimistic and welcoming climate of today.
A great musical about LGBTQ youth, Filipino culture, and…octopuses
At Seattle Magazine, read Niki Stojnic’s review of “The Last World Octopus Wrestling Champion,” a fantastic new musical by Justin Huertas now showing at ArtsWest in Seattle– a production that combines mythology, adventure, and coming-of-age queer love (it runs through July 28). Read an interview with Huertas at Crosscut. (And yes, octopus wrestling apparently was a real thing in the Puget Sound area back in the day.)
Poetry by Erika Brumett
At Crab Creek Review, you can read Seattle-based poet Erika Brumett’s “Pasage” about an uncanny series of sounds in the underground passageways leading to the University of Washington medical center:
“Were they jays? Swallows, or finches? Dark-eyed
juncos, robins maybe? Hitchcockian–
that walk to ICU—though the tunnel
of birds—toward my father’s room.”
Read the full poem here.
That’s this evening’s collection of news, arts & culture from across the Cascadia bioregion. Have a good weekend! (Oh and in the interest of full disclosure, one of the stars of Last World Octopus Wrestling Champion, Corinna Lapid Munter, was a friend of mine in elementary school!) –Andrew Engelson
Photo credits: hull of USS Kitty Hawk by Nia Martin