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Columbian Newspaper
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Fires threaten towns, close Interstate 84 in eastern Oregon as heat wave continues
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Firefighters in the Pacific Northwest scrambled Tuesday to contain two fires that were threatening several small towns in Oregon, and a key stretch of interstate connecting Oregon and Idaho was shut down as flames advanced. |
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‘We were built for this moment’: Black women rally around Kamala Harris
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Four years ago, a Zoom meeting to build support for Kamala Harris as the Democratic vice presidential nominee attracted just 90 participants. On Sunday night, an estimated 90,000 Black women and allies logged on at the same time to support her brand-new presidential campaign. |
The Chronicle - Centralia
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Oregon's underwater forests are vanishing. Can they be saved?
On a chilly May morning at a sandy beach 15 miles southwest of Coos Bay, marine ecologist Sara Hamilton poured hot water from a thermos into her thick wetsuit, neoprene dive boots and gloves. Snorkeling mask and fins in hand, she made her way toward the jutting headland of Cape Arago State Park, across slippery rocks draped in seaweed, mussels and barnacles and crevices teeming with green sea anemones. Hamilton eased herself into the ocean, a frigid 49 degrees that day, followed by several colleagues who braced themselves on surf-drenched rocks. But the waves crashed too high, sending the team into shallower waters before they floated and dove down. A lush, towering kelp forest had sprung up under the waves in this cove in each of the past three summers, providing refuge to juvenile rockfish and salmon, shrimp, whales and countless other creatures. But it was unclear if it would regrow this year or become the latest casualty of an upended marine ecosystem that could herald the future impact of global warming on Oregon’s coast. For millennia, underwater forests of seaweed or large brown algae stretched from the seafloor to the ocean’s surface, forming canopies, much like trees, and providing food, shelter and hunting grounds to countless animals. Bull kelp, the predominant species found along the southern third of Oregon shores, is one of the world’s fastest growers — rising at a rate of up to 10 inches per day and reaching heights of up to about 100 feet, establishing itself as the sequoia of the seas. Kelp has helped protect the coastline from storms and supported local fisheries, tribal fishing and cultural practices. But over the past decade, according to new data, Oregon lost more than two-thirds of that kelp canopy. Kelp’s troubles on the West Coast started in 2013 when a mysterious illness began to decimate sunflower sea stars, the sole predators of purple sea urchins in Oregon. In turn, the purple urchins — small, spiky orbs that are native to the coast but previously dwelled in the crevices of tide pools, passively feeding on pieces of drifting kelp — had a bonanza population spurt. Warmer water didn’t cause the stars’ disease, but scientists say the starfish died faster because of it. They have concluded that the Blob, an extreme heat wave in the Pacific Ocean that in 2014 raised temperatures between 4 and 10 degrees above average and lasted for more than 700 days, exacerbated both the star die-off and the urchin explosion. Without sunflower sea stars – considered the largest and fastest of the starfish species, able to grow up to 24 arms and easily outrun prey – hordes of purples took over underwater forests. They overgrazed the kelp, forming “urchin barrens,” lifeless zones covered with hungry purple urchins and not much else. The problem was not unique to the Pacific Ocean; purple urchins overran kelp forests across the globe, from Tasmania to Norway. On the West Coast, a collapse was first identified in northern California in 2019 when a study chronicled the abrupt decline of kelp there by more than 90% in 2014. Similar warning signs emerged in southern Oregon: the wads of snake-like tangles that had once washed up on beaches were becoming scarce and the dense floating mats of kelp along the shores had nearly vanished – and with them, the fish and animals that had once lived and hunted there. Despite the red flags, action to probe the extent of kelp’s loss and to stave it off has been slow. Oregon’s craggy, exposed shoreline and murky waters meant few divers had been taking stock of underwater conditions. And because the state doesn’t allow commercial harvesting of kelp, wildlife officials had neither the mandate nor the funding to regularly survey or monitor the situation. In the void, a nonprofit launched in 2019 in the small coastal town of Port Orford, about 60 miles north of the California border, bringing together local fishermen, researchers, tribal members, university students, recreational and commercial divers. The Oregon Kelp Alliance had a singular focus: to sound the alarm and take immediate action to protect Oregon’s underwater jungles. Previously, “the ocean felt alive, smelled alive and looked alive. The kelp was doing its job as a foundation species, supporting this vibrant ecosystem. The water was clearer. There were a lot of fish, marine mammals, birds and whales, right there, all around you,” said the group’s founder, Tom Calvanese, a fisheries scientist and former commercial urchin diver. “Fast forward to now,” he added, “the ocean without kelp doesn’t feel vibrant anymore, it doesn’t have much activity, much life.” Over the past five years, the Kelp Alliance has gained momentum, expanding up and down the coast. It’s secured more than $4 million in federal, state and private funding to conduct, in partnership with the state, a coast-wide survey of kelp and launch several scientific research and restoration projects aimed at saving kelp habitat, controlling purple urchins and bringing back sunflower sea stars. Later this summer, the group will publish a kelp status report and a comprehensive restoration plan that aims to rehabilitate Oregon’s underwater forests, although similar efforts in California so far have yielded only modest success. The soon-to-be-released report, shared early with The Oregonian/OregonLive, quantifies for the first time the amount of damage the state’s kelp forests sustained between 2010 and 2022. In all, more than two-thirds of Oregon’s kelp canopy disappeared from the southern shores. That’s nearly 900 acres, or the equivalent of 680 football fields. The repercussions of those massive losses are just starting to emerge. The state’s commercial red sea urchin harvest is down by half from a decade ago. The recreational red abalone fishery permanently closed in December. And recreational nearshore fishing has dwindled on the southern coast. Researchers with the Kelp Alliance have estimated, based on a global assessment of kelp ecosystem values, that the 900 acres of lost kelp canopy is costing Oregon $23 million to $53 million every year. This includes the value of shrinking local fisheries as well as the ocean’s lessened ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Underwater kelp forests are key to combating climate change – they can sequester up to 20 times more carbon per acre than land forests. How rising temperatures will impact kelp moving forward is unclear, although it typically does better in cooler waters that provide more nutrients. The state’s coastal surface waters warmed an average of half a degree per decade from the mid-20th century to the 2000s, according to the most recent state-funded analysis published in 2010. But the alliance’s report concludes that, unlike in other parts of the world, long-term ocean warming is likely not a cause of kelp’s decline in Oregon even as short-term heat waves played a significant role. While kelp is susceptible to heat – it experiences decreased growth and reproductive success when temperatures regularly reach 61 degrees and can die or fail to reproduce when the water warms past about 64 degrees – those thresholds have been rarely reached along Oregon’s southern shores. In fact, researchers noted that surface water temperatures at two locations, off Port Orford and at Charleston, near Coos Bay, have declined very slightly over the past 30 years. Complicating matters, a few areas, including Cape Arago State Park near Coos Bay, saw gains in kelp cover for reasons researchers don’t yet understand. Hamilton, the marine ecologist, has monitored kelp at Cape Arago for the past three years with a drone and by diving or snorkeling there about a dozen times. Every year, the underwater forest has regrown, making it one of Oregon’s bright spot outliers, with a 25% increase in canopy cover. She’s cautiously optimistic that, despite an abundance of purple urchins already on scene, it will come back this summer. Snorkeling through cloudy water at the cove this spring, the research team spotted signs of hope, anchored to the seabed. Hamilton broke the surface and yelled: “Baby kelp!” But she remains worried about the future. “There’s a theory known as tipping points. If you push a system closer and closer to a point where all of a sudden the urchins take over, they can quickly switch the kelp forest to an urchin barren,” Hamilton said after the snorkeling excursion. “We have these sites that still seem relatively healthy. We don’t know if they’re close to tipping. We don’t know if they can sustain those populations of urchins long-term. It fuels our sense of urgency and anxiety.”
FEELING KELP’S LOSS The disappearance of kelp – amid the rise and dominance of purple urchins – is being felt all along Oregon’s southern shores. This spring in Port Orford, Calvanese, the Kelp Alliance founder, and his friend Dave Lacey, a boat captain, steered a small boat out of the tiny port toward a rocky headland known as The Heads. They circled just below at Nellies Cove, a sheltered bay. The cove is ground zero for Oregon’s kelp restoration efforts. It’s where Calvanese, Lacey and others first began to notice signs of dramatic change. The two men, both transplants from the East Coast, recalled paddling or kayaking together just past the breakwater with their fishing poles to where a dense mat of kelp encircled the shores. Lacey, the head of a local tour company, would bring groups of recreational fishing enthusiasts. They would park their kayaks right on the edge of the kelp forest and fish over it. “We never got skunked here. We always caught fish, always,” Calvanese said. Then, about six years ago, the kelp canopy disappeared – and with it, the fish at Nellies Cove. “It got so bad, we stopped doing kayak fishing tours,” Lacey said. “We used to pull in about $10,000 every summer. Now that’s totally gone. We just gave up on it. I didn’t want to take people’s money and not catch any fish.” Calvanese, who manages Oregon State University’s field station at Port Orford, also began fielding calls from commercial urchin divers alarmed by kelp declines on nearby reefs. They took him by surprise. He had worked for an urchin diving crew while finishing his graduate degree and had seen first-hand the thick forests stretching for hundreds of acres under the waves. He realized the stakes were high. Port Orford, population 1,149, is dependent on fishing. With kelp forests dwindling, both the commercial nearshore fishery – rockfish, cabezon and greenling – and the red urchin fishery could be threatened, not to mention recreational fishing and tourism. Calvanese wanted to see the underwater changes for himself, so he dove in Nellies Cove. What he found shocked him and brought tears to his eyes, he said. The entire sea bottom was covered in purple urchins actively foraging for food. Where a thriving kelp forest had once grown, bountiful with juvenile and adult fish, he now couldn’t spot a single kelp. The fish, too, were mostly gone. A few hundred yards from that spot in Nellies Cove, commercial urchin diver Tom Butterbaugh anchored his boat, the F/V Good News, surveying the area this spring for red urchins to harvest. Urchin diving in Oregon is a dangerous job, and Butterbaugh has been searching for them under water for 24 years. Unlike the small and skinny purple urchins that have no commercial value, red urchins are harvested throughout the world for their roe — also called uni — which is considered a delicacy, especially in Japan. The business was once lucrative. Now, it’s less so. Most of the red urchins in Oregon are either gone or their roe isn’t well developed because they have to compete for food with the masses of purple urchins. Butterbaugh remembers good kelp years and bad kelp years, but it’s never been as bad as it is now, he said. He estimates he has lost over 90% of red urchin picking territory in recent years, most of it at nearby Orford Reef – the hardest-hit area for kelp decline – where he had typically harvested for six months annually. “The feeling of loss, the frustration, the helplessness when we can’t get the urchins is constantly there,” he said. “‘Where are we going to go? We already went there.’ Our [harvest] counts are getting lower and lower. Maybe this will be the year that the kelp comes back. We thought it was going to come back last year. And look at Depoe Bay, the kelp is amazing, but the urchins are skinny anyway.” The only reason he’s still in business is because the domestic market for red urchins has grown. A decade ago, he picked urchins for 50 to 80 cents per pound. Now, depending on the season and whether there’s competition from divers in Mexico or Chile, the price is up at $2 to $4. “It’s been thin ice for urchin divers,” Butterbaugh said. “The only thing keeping us afloat are the higher prices. If we lost market value, we’d go out of business.” Concern is also growing over the future of the commercial groundfish industry in Port Orford. Kelp forests act as nurseries for juvenile rockfish and other groundfish – providing shelter, food and a place to grow – so the drastic decline of kelp beds is bound to have an impact, said Port of Port Orford Commission president Aaron Ashdown. Although local fishermen have yet to see changes in fish availability, he said, that’s likely because rockfish are some of the longest-living fish. “We might not see the negative effects of this kelp die-off until a decade or two goes by because of how long it takes for these fish to grow up,” Ashdown said. “But by then, we could see the collapse of certain species.” For the Coquille Indian Tribe, too, the decline of underwater forests has been wrenching, spelling the disappearance of tribal foods and practices, said Shelley Estes, an enrolled member of the tribe, which has inhabited Oregon’s southwestern coast for thousands of years. “Our elders said the kelp was our ‘canoe superhighway,’” said Estes, who is on the tribe’s resiliency climate task force. “Our people ran canoes up and down the coastline. That’s where we felt safe. Kelp protected us. It absorbed the shocks of the waves coming onto the shore.” One of the early victims of the disappearing kelp is red abalone, a large ocean snail that grazes on kelp and is a traditional source of nourishment and spiritual protection for the tribe. Abalone shells are also used in smudging – cleansing rituals that use burning herbs to clear out negative energies – and to make tribal regalia. Without kelp, the abalone, whose populations were already in decline prior to kelp’s collapse, have starved. The tribe can no longer harvest them and must purchase their shells on Amazon. “As a tribal member, I’m alarmed,” Estes said.
PATH TO RESTORATION Restoring kelp along Oregon’s southern shoreline may require an assortment of strategies, including, crucially, removing most of the purple urchin – somehow. The Kelp Alliance initially focused on hand removing and composting purple urchins or smashing them with hammers on the seabed – under a permit from the state – at sites including Nellies Cove, Macklyn Cove in Brookings and Haystack Rock in Pacific City. But those efforts, as in California, have had limited impact thus far, due in part to limited funding that paid for only short-term removal actions. One challenge is that purple urchins can persist in a hungry zombie state for well over a year, easily outlasting the annual cycle of bull kelp and lying in wait to devour baby algae before it has a chance to regrow. As a result, scientists say, it’s extremely difficult to flip barrens back into kelp ecosystems – it requires continually removing most if not all urchins in an area. Short of that, studies and surveys have shown that urchin removal can be effective when it happens at larger, semi-discrete sites or focuses on barrens surrounded by healthy kelp. Restoring kelp forests coast-wide by removing urchins by hand is clearly not feasible. Case in point: At Orford Reef – where Butterbaugh traditionally dove for red urchins – state biologists in 2019 documented 350 million purple urchins sitting on the seabed, a 10,000% increase over a five year period. The reef, once the state’s largest underwater kelp forest, spanning about 1,655 acres or just under half the size of the city of Astoria, saw a 95% decline in kelp, the largest in Oregon, according to the new data. “We realized we could not smash our way out of this crisis,” said Calvanese, the Kelp Alliance’s founder. The group is now launching a new $2.5 million restoration initiative that ties targeted urchin removal with kelp revegetation. Divers in Oregon will remove urchins at six sites along the coast and then “seed” kelp via spore bags and other cultivation methods. The sites include not only urchin barrens such as Nellies Cove but also areas that have abundant kelp canopy yet are overrun with urchins, such as Cape Arago. Separately, the group is mounting a kelp mariculture project in the waters around Port Orford. It will grow bull kelp on vertical mooring lines off the ocean bottom and out of reach of hungry urchins. The kelp will be used to make animal feed or fertilizer – a boost to the local economy – and spores will be saved for the kelp revegetation at restoration sites. The group is also working with local seaweed farms to collect purple urchins to fatten them up in land-based tanks with the hope to make them commercially viable. Ultimately, said Calvanese, restoration can stave off the complete disappearance of kelp along the West Coast by protecting a network of small sites that can maintain kelp’s genetic diversity and eventually repopulate urchin barrens. “If we can restore and maintain these oases where we continue to produce kelp spores then we have a chance to regrow from there,” he said. “We can also protect the remaining kelp we still have and not just watch it shrivel up.” MORE: Does kelp restoration work? But to make kelp’s comeback viable at scale, Calvanese and others are betting big on returning the sunflower sea stars – purple urchins’ only predator in the state – to the ocean. Marine ecologists Aaron Galloway and Sarah Gravem, with the University of Oregon and Oregon State University, have been able to show that the sunflower sea stars could potentially regulate purple sea urchin populations and, as a result, restore and maintain healthy kelp forests. Their study published last year indicates that sunflower sea stars don’t discriminate between fully grown healthy urchins and starved, nutritionally poor urchins similar to those that dwell in urchin barrens. In fact, during experiments the sea stars ate more skinny, hungry urchins than healthy ones, likely because it takes a shorter amount of time to digest them, Galloway said. Modeling also showed that, at the densities of sea stars before the wasting disease, there were enough stars to stop urchins from turning kelp forests into barrens. With those results in mind, the scientists, who are both members of the Kelp Alliance, are working toward a captive breeding program in Oregon, with the end-goal being reintroduction to the wild. That reality is now a step closer as Oregon has seen an increase in the sightings of sunflower sea stars, meaning researchers can start collecting them for local experiments and breeding. Earlier this year, Galloway secured approval for a permit to collect 20 in Oregon waters to launch the endeavors. He’s working closely with a lab in Washington that was the first to successfully breed the animals. Eventually, Galloway said, he hopes to breed and release thousands of sunflower sea stars into Oregon waters and see how they behave in urchin barrens. It’s unclear whether this will work, he admits. Though several research centers and aquariums around the U.S. are now racing to breed the stars, which the federal government last year proposed to list as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, no one has attempted such a release thus far. “It’s a dream for us,” he said. “If we put a bunch of them at a reef or declining kelp forest, will it cause a recovery? Will the stars eat the urchins or will they just leave and go somewhere else?” Because that’s a long-term endeavor, Gravem said, the state needs to urgently step up to regularly monitor, manage and restore kelp forests, similar to how it manages land-based forests, grasslands and estuaries. “For a long time, we’ve been hesitant to intervene in the ocean. It’s so big and we thought that it would rebound if we just left it alone,” Gravem said. “But it’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s not rebounding on its own. If anything, it’s getting worse because of climate change. So we need to … start helping it along.” ©2024 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit oregonlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. |
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Washington state lawmakers decided to tax the rich, but poll shows voters aren't so sure
By a 2-to-1 ratio, Washington voters support a measure to repeal the state's new 7% capital gains tax, according to a new poll of likely voters. But almost a third remain undecided about the repeal measure, Initiative 2109, leaving plenty of room for movement on the high-stakes issue between now and Election Day, experts said. "This is a pretty fluid race," Ben Anderstone, a Seattle-based Democratic campaign consultant, said of the WA Poll, which was conducted by SurveyUSA and commissioned by The Seattle Times, KING 5 and the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public. In place since last year, the tax applies to the sale of long-term capital assets, such as stocks, bonds and business interests, and is levied on profits above an inflation-adjusted floor, currently $262,000, up from $250,000. Real estate sales are exempt. The first $500 million in revenue from the tax goes toward education, with any surplus put toward school construction. Supporters of the tax, however, note that the poll didn't mention a major downside of a repeal — its effect on state finances. The online survey of 708 likely voters found that if the election were held today, 46% would vote to roll back the tax, 23% would oppose a repeal and 31% weren't certain, according to the July 10-13 survey by SurveyUSA.
Capital gains repeal poll results Enacted in 2021, the tax was challenged in court and upheld by the state Supreme Court in 2023. Collections started in 2023 — payments are due April 15 — and totaled $786 million for the year, though revenues this year were down to $433 million as of May 15, according to state Department of Revenue data. The repeal effort is led by Redmond-based Let's Go Washington, which began gathering signatures for a ballot measure last summer. The group, founded by Redmond businessman Brian Heywood, is also backing ballot initiatives to repeal Washington's carbon tax credit system and its long-term care insurance program. The repeal effort is funded by a number of individuals and business groups, including the Washington Bankers Association, the Puget Sound chapter of National Electrical Contractors Association and the Building Industry Association of Washington. It has received more than $7 million in contributions and loans, according to the state Public Disclosure Commission. Opposition to the repeal effort is led by Seattle-based No on 2109. The organization has the backing of labor and community organizations, including the National Education Association and the Washington Federation of State Employees, as well as multimillionaire Nick Hanauer's Civic Ventures. It has raised just under $1.5 million, PDC records show. The poll found both striking disparities among some demographic groups. For example, of men who were likely to vote in November, 57% said they would vote to repeal the tax, but only 34% of women did. Those making $80,000 or more a year favored a repeal, 49% to 21%, while those making less than $40,000 backed the measure 36% to 27%. Republicans favored the repeal 54% to 14%, but Democrats and independents were at 44%-26% and 45%-24%, respectively. Voters with a high school education or less favored the repeal 51% to 17% — while voters with four or more years of college were 46% to 24% in favor of repeal. Interestingly, geography played less of a factor than it often does on other political issues in Washington. Voters from Eastern Washington favored repealing the tax 48% to 24%. But Western Washington voters were 45%-21% in favor of the repeal, while even in the Seattle metro, repeal was ahead 45% to 23% — a pattern that might reflect the fact that wealth crosses party lines, Anderstone speculated. "You do lose some Democrats on this issue, because there's a bunch of rich Democrats in Washington state," he said. Supporters of the tax say the poll was flawed because respondents may not have realized how repealing the tax would hit education funding. In the survey, respondents were asked simply "on Initiative 2109, which would repeal the 7% state capital gains tax on stock and bond sale profits over $250,000, are you ... certain to vote yes, certain to vote no" or "not certain?" Lexi Koren, a spokesperson for the No On 2109 campaign, said that language lacked the specificity of the official ballot title, which also notes that the tax is levied on "individuals who have annual capital gains of over $250,000." The survey didn't include the initiative's so-called public investment impact disclosure statement, which, under a 2022 state law, must describe a measure's financial impacts. That language remains in flux due to litigation. Republicans sued to remove impact statements from three voter initiatives, and the case is before the state Supreme Court, which, it is hoped, will rule in time for the statements to be included on the ballots. According to a state Department of Revenue estimate, repealing the tax would cost the state $693 million in fiscal 2024, $913 million in fiscal year 2025 and anywhere from $941 million to $1.09 billion between fiscal year 2026 and fiscal year 2029. An October survey found that when impact language was included, versus when only the ballot title was used, opposition to I-2109 rose by 19 percentage points, to 56% against, 31% in favor and 12% undecided. The poll, by Change Research, included 1,206 likely November 2024 voters and was run Oct. 7-11 and commissioned by Service Employees International Union Local 775 and Washington Conservation Action. In an April survey, which also noted that 2109 would "decrease funding for education, early learning and child care, and school construction," respondents were 62% against the measure, 32% in favor and 6% undecided. The survey was commissioned by Defend Washington, which opposes the Heywood-backed initiatives. Voter attitudes "really shift because of this [impact] information," Koren said. Compared with surveys that omit that information, "it's a different universe." Repeal proponents were heartened by this latest polling data, in part because it seems to point to a large number of potentially persuadable voters. "The 31% that are not certain — that's the chunk we're looking to reach," said Let's Go Washington spokesperson Hallie Balch. "From here till ... the election, it's just an education campaign." The financial impacts they'll emphasize will be what they see as the tax's negative effects on "entrepreneurs and innovators and small businesses in the state," Balch added. Anderstone, the consultant, said both campaigns will likely spend the remaining months trying to "frame the measure for voters." Advertising and media coverage will be key factors in that framing, Anderstone said, but he agreed that the financial impact of repealing the tax "is a big one." The survey ran through July 13, but was completed before "a gunman opened fire on former President Trump at a ... campaign event Saturday," SurveyUSA noted. ___ |
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Washington poll: State carbon market, energy regulations face tough road before November election
OLYMPIA — A new statewide poll suggests the state's carbon-pricing program and recently passed energy regulations could be in trouble this November. If two initiatives are approved by voters, they could imperil some of the state's leading environmental policies. Initiative 2117 would shut down the state's carbon-pricing system that launched last year and has raised over $2 billion from the state's largest greenhouse gas emitters. Initiative 2066, which has not yet qualified for the ballot, would explicitly protect the use of natural gas and threaten recently passed energy regulations and laws. In the new WA Poll, among 708 likely voters, 48% said they were certain to vote in favor of the initiative to repeal the carbon market. Respondents also supported the two other GOP-backed ballot initiatives — Initiative 2109 to repeal the state's new capital gains tax and Initiative 2124 to allow people to opt out of a payroll tax to fund WA Cares — by margins ranging from 14 to 25 percentage points, signaling a major threat to a slate of recent policies on the environment, taxes and aging passed by majority Democrats. Washington Democrats have held a trifecta, with control of the governor's mansion and the state House and Senate, for nearly seven years. November's ballot battle over the initiatives will test how popular their signature legislative victories are. On the carbon market measure, 34% said they were certain to vote no — the highest "no" faction of any of the four initiatives tested. Eighteen percent were uncertain. Among the initiatives polled, repeal of the state's carbon-pricing program had the narrowest lead.
WA ballot initiative on carbon market In 2021, legislators passed the Climate Commitment Act, which requires the state's largest polluting businesses and institutions to pay for their climate-warming emissions and puts a statewide cap on emissions that will ratchet down to near zero by 2050. In 2016 and 2018, ballot measures to get carbon taxes into state law failed. Polling that asked voters whether they would vote to reverse regulations that discourage natural gas use and require utilities to provide natural gas to customers had the most support among the four initiatives polled. Among 708 likely voters, 54% said they were certain to vote for it, and 21% said they were certain to vote against it. A quarter were uncertain. The initiative would roll back portions of a law meant to help Puget Sound Energy, the state's largest utility, chart a transition from natural gas, and it would threaten energy-efficiency mandates that effectively require heat pumps to be installed in lieu of fossil-fueled appliances. The Secretary of State's Office is in the process of checking signatures that the supporters of the natural gas initiative turned in earlier this month to get the measure on the ballot. Supporters turned in more than half a million signatures. The WA Poll is sponsored by The Seattle Times, KING 5 and the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, and the responses were weighted to the U.S. Census American Community Survey demographics. Although the early results suggest trouble for supporters of the underlying climate and environment policies at stake, pollsters from SurveyUSA noted that opposition to ballot measures has tended to increase as elections get closer and "no" campaigns ramp up, exposing voters to advertising, endorsements, opinion essays and voter guide materials.
WA ballot initiative on natural gas Opponents of both initiatives also pushed back on a pessimistic interpretation of the poll results, saying that respondents were not asked using the verbatim ballot title language and that most voters are still not fully informed on the full impacts of passing the initiatives. Mark Prentice, spokesperson for the No on 2117 campaign, added that the carbon-pricing initiative is also likely to include information about the impact of the measures on the state budget, which he said would make voters more inclined to vote against the initiative. Pending a decision from the state's Supreme Court, the language is likely to be included on voter ballots. Prentice acknowledged that defeating the initiative would be a "tough race," but the campaign intends to show voters the initiative would result in more pollution and traffic and less investment in clean air and water and transportation. According to the No on 2117 campaign, over 300 organizations including tribal nations, businesses, unions and environmental groups have joined the coalition. They include Amazon, Microsoft, the Washington State Democrats and Conservation Northwest. The campaign has raised $12.8 million so far. Critics of the state's carbon market have portrayed it as a cash grab by the state and say that it has led to higher prices for utilities, fuel and other consumer goods. "I've never seen any evidence that what they're going to do is ... going to have a positive impact in reducing the amount of carbon dioxide," said Brian Heywood, the founder of Let's Go Washington, which is backing the initiatives. Regarding the natural gas initiative, Caitlin Krenn, the climate and clean energy director with Washington Conservation Action, which opposes the initiative, also said the poll results likely reflect "a lot of misleading information about the policy" from the signature-gathering effort. Supporters of the natural gas initiative have framed recent energy regulations as a precursor to a full ban on natural gas and have argued that natural gas, which is mostly methane, is essential to keep utility bills affordable. "People do not want Olympia to ban natural gas, and legislators need to think twice, or maybe three times, before they pass harmful legislation that makes citizens pay the price," Heywood said when the initiative signatures were turned in. Opponents of the initiative have repeatedly emphasized there is no ban on natural gas and utilities are currently already required to provide it. "Nobody is coming to rip natural gas lines out of buildings. That's not what's happening," Krenn said. Krenn said Initiative 2066 would "repeal or undermine a lot of areas of Washington state policy" that are "commonsense energy-efficiency policies." The initiative would also prevent families and businesses from accessing state and federal incentives that help people install heat pumps, she said. At least two poll respondents said that while they answered "certain to vote yes" or "certain to vote no" to the survey, they did not fully understand the initiatives and intend to do more research before voting in November. Mark Morris, a former truck driver in Lacey, Thurston County, studying to become a social worker, approved of both initiatives in the survey but hasn't had time to fully understand them. "I'm generally for anything that helps the environment and helps keep large facilities more accountable for what they're actually doing," he said. Steve Takahashi, a retired insurance attorney in Queen Anne, said he was under the impression there is a natural gas ban and could not remember how he responded on the survey. Takahashi said he would be supportive of a natural gas ban if experts say it is bad for the environment and if some restaurants were exempted. The 61-year-old, who typically supports Democrats, said that while his immediate reaction to the carbon-pricing program has been one of "disappointment" due to higher gas and utility prices, he will likely support it in November. "Typically, when the real election comes around and I get my paper ballot in the mail, I actually sit down and do research and I usually tend to vote more for the progressive position," he said. Support for repealing the carbon-pricing program was more popular among Republicans, 56% of whom favored the initiative. Forty-seven percent of Democrats supported it and so did 44% of independents. ___ (c)2024 The Seattle Times Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. |
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Tacoma woman arrested for refusing tuberculosis treatment is cured
A Tacoma woman who was arrested last year for repeatedly refusing treatment for tuberculosis has been cured, according to the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. The department worked for over a year to persuade the woman to isolate and seek treatment. In February 2023, the health department went to the Pierce County Superior Court for the 16th time to seek an arrest warrant, a rare "last resort" health officials can take to protect the public. A judge issued a warrant for the woman's arrest in March 2023, ordering Pierce County sheriff's deputies take her to the county jail for isolation, testing and treatment, the health department said last year. Deputies arrested the woman in June 2023 to be isolated and treated in a negative pressure room at the jail. "At that point, she realized how serious her situation was and decided to treat her illness," the health department said. Later that month, Pierce County Judge Philip Sorenson released the woman with conditions, including isolating at home under court supervision. The woman took medication, regained her health over time and tested negative for TB multiple times. The woman is cured, which means TB no longer poses a risk to her health, and she is not at risk of infecting others, the department said. This case was only the third time in the past 20 years health officials sought a court order to detain someone who is potentially contagious and refusing treatment for TB. Pierce County has about 20 cases of active TB per year. State law requires health care providers to report all active cases to the health department. According to the department, "nearly all patients we contact are more than happy to get the treatment they need to help protect themselves and our community." TB is an infectious disease that usually affects the lungs. It also can affect lymph nodes, bones, joints and other parts of the body. TB can be deadly but is curable with medication. Most TB infections are latent or dormant (about 100,000 people in King County have latent TB infections), meaning a person has no symptoms and cannot spread the disease, according to health officials. Active TB is much harder to spread than the cold or flu, health officials said. For an infection to occur, it typically takes repeated and prolonged exposure in a confined indoor space. The number of people infected with TB rose globally in 2022 for the first time in years. Worldwide, 1.5 million people die from TB each year, making it the leading infectious killer, above COVID-19, HIV and AIDS, the World Health Organization said. ___ (c)2024 The Seattle Times Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. |
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When Boeing balked at new jet, Airbus moved. Now the A321 will 'make an awful lot of money'
FARNBOROUGH, England — It might have been an all-new Boeing jet, a 757 replacement, flying over the Farnborough Air Show on Monday. Instead it was a new Airbus plane, an extra-long-range derivative of the hot-selling A321neo, the A321XLR. That Boeing never replaced the 757 was “a huge mistake,” said Bjorn Fehrm, an aviation analyst with Leeham.net. It would have been a “smack-on better competitor to the XLR.” But with Boeing’s pullback, the XLR stands alone. Boeing’s similarly sized 737 Max 10, which is not expected to enter service until 2026, cannot fly so far. Airbus’ A320 jet family now offers airlines a choice of seat capacity and range right up to the scale of a 757, which Boeing stopped building two decades ago. “We’re giving airlines a machine for any scenario,” said Gary O’Donnell, head of the XLR program, in an interview. After delivering more than 3,400 of its A320/A321neo jet family, Airbus still has unfilled orders for more than 7,000, of which 5,000 are variants of the A321neo alone. This latest XLR model, which won European Union Aviation Safety Agency approval to fly passengers only on Friday, already has more than 500 orders. It’s due to enter service with Iberia this fall, flying between Madrid and Boston. Longtime aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia of AeroDynamic Advisory said that, until the next generation of aircraft comes along in the late 2030s, “Airbus gets to make an awful lot of money.”
Fundamentally similar, but changed everywhere O’Donnell explained that Airbus’ seemingly simple decision to add an extra built-in fuel tank to provide the additional range required extensive engineering, “fundamentally changing pretty much all of the aircraft in order to stretch it for that extra distance.” He said 80% of the structure is upgraded for strength to support the extra weight of the aircraft. “The parts are fundamentally the same. They’re just slightly thicker to take the extra loads,” O’Donnell said. That means the XLR can go down the same assembly line as the other A321neo models. Yet the wheels, tires and brakes are new; the main landing gear is a new design; the nose landing gear is reinforced; the movable flaps on the wings are reinforced. And because the big extra fuel tank built into the lower rear fuselage blocked a clear path for cables from the cockpit, Airbus converted the rudder on the vertical tail fin to a fly-by-wire part that moves through an electronic signal, not a physical cable connection. The rudder had been the only movable surface in this jet family that was not fly-by wire. The changes became much more extensive when EASA demanded more fire protection measures around the extra fuel tank. Structure was added to the jet’s belly to absorb crash loads and pads to protect the belly if it slid along the ground. The base of the tank was coated with a rubber lining that would hold off fuel spill in the case of a puncture. The fuselage skin around the tank was changed to a stronger aluminum-composite laminate. An air gap between the belly fairing and the tank slows heat transfer from an external fire. At the start of last year, Airbus took two flight test planes out of the sky and added all these newly designed fire safety elements for certification. EASA was satisfied and Airbus worked in tandem with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to clear the design. “The FAA are on board all the way,” O’Donnell said. “So we would expect the FAA to follow with a reasonably short time after the EASA certification.”
A 757 replacement The genesis of all that work was an effort by Airbus to counter the threat of Boeing developing an all-new jet in this market segment. After delivering just over 1,000 of its 757 narrowbody jets, in 2004 Boeing abandoned production of its largest and longest-range single-aisle aircraft. You’ll still find them flying, carrying Seattleites on seven-hour flights to Iceland and on to Europe. By 2018, Boeing was publicly discussing designing a 757 replacement, a newer, more efficient jet that would be a bit bigger and even longer range — sized to fill a niche between current narrowbody 737 Maxes and the small widebody 787. In an effort to stave off the threat of what Boeing was calling the New Midmarket Airplane, or sometimes the Middle-of-the-Market airplane, and reduce its market, Airbus at the Paris Air Show in 2019 launched the A321XLR. But by then, Boeing was newly engulfed in crisis after two deadly crashes grounded its remaining narrowbody, the 737 Max. Boeing balked and never launched the New Midmarket Airplane. Airbus was left with no competition to its A321neo that now looks stronger than ever with the XLR added to the lineup. At a preshow interview with trade magazine Aviation Week, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said the company will delay launching a replacement for the A320/A321 jet family so that it won’t be ready for airlines to fly until near the end of the next decade. He said that will provide “time to make money” from the immense A320/A321 backlog of orders.
Airbus survives a stumble The amazing success of the A320/A321neo jet family has survived one enormous setback on a par with some of Boeing’s stumbles. Last year, engine maker Pratt & Whitney discovered that contaminated powdered metal was used in production of some critical parts inside its geared turbofan engines, causing cracking inside one of the engines airlines can choose when buying an A320neo. This has turned into a multibillion-dollar disaster for Pratt & Whitney’s parent RTX, formerly Raytheon. More than 3,000 engines have been removed from airplanes already delivered for inspections and rework that take almost a year. RTX projects an average of 350 airplanes to be on the ground through 2026, with much higher numbers this year. In April, more than 530 A320neos, a third of the delivered airplanes, were grounded. This is of course also a disaster for those airlines, though RTX is paying compensation. But Airbus seems to have escaped relatively unscathed. RTX since early this year is delivering clean engines to Airbus, so it doesn’t affect newly built aircraft. So orders have kept rolling. The damage has been more to Pratt & Whitney’s reputation than to Airbus’. Because the A320neo offers an engine choice, the other engine maker CFM International is reaping more orders for its LEAP engine, which is also the sole engine that powers Boeing’s Max jets. Boeing suffered immense financial damage when its under-construction 787s had to be reworked because of fuselage gaps so small the ones in service were never grounded. In contrast, Airbus’ luck held and it shook off this major quality lapse that harmed its customers. Sales of the A321 continued to soar.
Is the XLR a game changer? John Plueger, CEO of influential Los Angeles-based airplane lessor Air Lease Corp. sees the XLR as offering airlines new capabilities that may “take a bite out of the widebody jet market” that serves international air travel. This narrowbody plane, the type a low-cost carrier might buy, can fly not just transatlantic but with “greater penetration into both continents, both in Europe and the United States” Plueger said. He said lessors like to buy planes that they can lease to multiple customers and the customer base of the A321neo is unmatched. “It makes the Max 10 more of a niche aircraft,” Plueger said. Andy Cronin, CEO of another lessor, Dublin-based Avolon, has ordered 100 A321neos, some of which he will take in the XLR version. Cronin said “the bulk of the market will continue to be the midrange stuff, rather than people going for the ultralong range.” Still, he said, the XLR fits well, extending the network possibilities. Fehrm of Leeham.net is more effusive about the XLR’s prospects. “It will change the face of long-range flying,” he said. “Low-cost carriers, which typically fly single-aisle jets only, can now buy an XLR, same pilot rating, same engines, same maintenance, same everything” as an A321neo. “Suddenly, they can fly real long range,” said Fehrm. American has ordered 54 XLRs and United 50. Both have announced plans for fancy, lie-flat business class seats for long-haul flying of up to nine hours in an XLR. ©2024 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. |
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Nearly all Washington Democrats in Congress endorse Kamala Harris for president -- but not Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez
WASHINGTON — In the hours after President Joe Biden on Sunday announced he would end his re-election bid, elected Democrats swiftly coalesced around his vice president. By Monday afternoon, nearly all Washington Democrats holding federal or statewide office had endorsed Kamala Harris as their party's nominee for president. After weeks of mounting pressure on Biden from his own party to withdraw from the race in the wake of a disastrous debate performance that laid bare longstanding concerns about his age, the flood of endorsements for Harris appeared cathartic for Democrats who could suddenly turn their focus to the future. Donors seemed to share their enthusiasm, as the newly Harris-led campaign reported raising more money in the first 24 hours of her candidacy — $81 million — than Biden had raised in the first three months of the year. It's the most money raised in a single day in the 2024 campaign and the Harris campaign claimed it was the single-day record in U.S. history. Sen. Patty Murray, a powerful member of congressional leadership, pledged to "do everything I can to help elect Kamala Harris as our next President" and called the vice president "exactly the woman we need to prosecute the case against Donald Trump, save American democracy, lead the fight to restore abortion rights, and build an economy that puts working people — not billionaires — first." Sen. Maria Cantwell posted a photo on X of her friend's young daughter watching Harris taking the oath of office as the first woman to serve as U.S. vice president, with the caption, "In it to win it." "Kamala Harris is a fierce advocate for working-class Americans, for reproductive rights, for investing in our nation and every citizen," Cantwell wrote on the social media platform. "The contrast between her and Donald Trump couldn't be more clear and consequential on our environment, our fiscal health, and our democracy." Rep. Adam Smith of Bellevue, one of the first and most vocal congressional Democrats to call for Biden to leave the race, endorsed Harris less than an hour after Biden announced his decision. Smith cited Harris's experience as a prosecutor, California attorney general, senator and vice president and said he had witnessed her leadership at the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of world leaders in Germany where Harris spoke in each of the last three years. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and state Sen. Mark Mullet, the top Democrats running for governor, both endorsed Harris on Sunday. Ferguson said in a statement that he was "excited that Democrats can now rally behind" Harris, who he said "can unify our party and country." At the Republican National Convention that began a week earlier, GOP speakers also claimed that the nation would unite behind their nominee, former President Donald Trump. "She is a prosecutor who has put away criminals," Ferguson said, repeating a common Democratic line of attack against Trump, whom a jury found guilty in May of felony charges related to hush-money payments to influence the 2016 election. "She's exactly the fighter we need to take on a convicted felon in November and win, and I am proud to offer her my endorsement and support." Gov. Jay Inslee, the man Ferguson is running to succeed, and every other Democratic governor in the country had endorsed Harris by Monday. A handful of those governors are considered likely running mates for Harris, including Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Roy Cooper of North Carolina. The only Democratic member of Washington's congressional delegation who had not endorsed Harris as of Monday was Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a centrist who represents a district won by former President Donald Trump in 2020. The first-term congresswoman from southwest Washington had gone farther than other Democrats in criticizing Biden, calling for the president not to drop out of the race but to resign from office. Democrats like Gluesenkamp Perez who face tough re-election races have been among the quickest to distance themselves from Biden, fearing that the president's unpopularity would hurt their own chances to win over skeptical voters. Rep. Suzan DelBene of Medina, who leads House Democrats' campaign arm, said in a statement endorsing Harris, "Elections are about choices, and the choice before voters could not be clearer." Rep. Kim Schrier, another so-called Democratic "frontliner" in a competitive district that stretches from Wenatchee to the Seattle suburbs, said in a statement, "Uniting our party in support of Kamala Harris for president is the best way to make sure Donald Trump never sets foot in the White House again." Rep. Rick Larsen of Everett, who was among Biden's most vocal defenders as other Democrats called for a new standard bearer, endorsed Harris in a post on X that juxtaposed Democrats' accomplishments under Biden with Trump's conviction in New York City and GOP positions on abortion and health care. "I like our odds," Larsen concluded. Since it became clear that Trump would win his party's nomination for the third straight time — despite having lost the 2020 election and fomenting a riot at the Capitol by his supporters when he didn't accept that reality — Democrats have argued that democracy itself is at stake in the 2024 race. That position made Biden's insistence on running again increasingly untenable as polls showed Trump on track to win decisive swing states. "The stakes of this election could not be higher," Rep. Derek Kilmer of Gig Harbor said in a statement. "I believe Vice President Harris can — and must — win at the ballot box in November." In their endorsements of Harris, Democrats have continued to praise Biden's record and his decision to eventually leave the race. Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Seattle, who leads nearly half of House Democrats as chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Biden "has been the most progressive and effective President on domestic and economic policy in my lifetime." "Vice President Harris has proven time and time again that she can prosecute the case against Donald Trump and campaign vigorously for Democrats down the ballot," Jayapal said in a statement. "She will mobilize and energize our base to re-engage and ensure that we turn out every single voter across the country and deliver victory in November." Some Democrats and donors to the party have called for an open convention, suggesting that a different candidate may fare better against Trump. But by Monday evening, virtually every prominent Democrat whose name had been floated as a potential alternative to Harris had endorsed her. Harris, whose parents immigrated to the United States from India and Jamaica, would be not only the nation's first female president but also its first commander-in-chief of Asian and Afro-Caribbean origin. Rep. Marilyn Strickland of Tacoma, who is the first Black and Korean lawmaker to represent Washington in Congress, endorsed Harris in a brief statement that called her "the most qualified" to succeed Biden as president. Officially selecting the party's nominee for president won't happen until a roll call vote of the roughly 4,000 delegates chosen through primaries and caucuses earlier this year. That could take place before or during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which begins Aug. 19. ___ (c)2024 The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.) Visit The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.) at www.spokesman.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. |
NYT Politics
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JD Vance Hits the Money Circuit After Joining Trump’s Ticket
Presidential running mates are always responsible for bringing in cash, but Mr. Vance, who has old ties to Silicon Valley, appears to be leaning into the role heavily.
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Bob Menendez Will Resign From Senate, Avoiding an Ugly, Intraparty Battle
Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was facing a possible expulsion vote after his conviction on federal corruption charges last Tuesday.
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