Just Eat Your Clams and Shut Up!

DOE and DOH Public Meeting Report 12/15/10

Submitted to Shelton Blog by Tom Davis

On December 15, Washington State Department of Ecology, along with Washington Department of Health, held a meeting at Shelton City Hall to announce the findings of their investigation into how much Dioxin is in Oakland Bay shellfish.

In fact, the focus of the entire meeting was aimed at assuring the public that eating shellfish harvested from the bay is just dandy. Sure, it has a bit of Dioxin in it, but, hey, who doesn’t these days. According to the report, you’d have to eat 260 shellfish every day before you were allowed to even think it was Dioxin that was killing you.

But what about the accumulative effects of Dioxin climbing up the food chain? Sorry, not the focus of the report. And what about the 550,000 tons of pollutants that will be flowing into our waterways from storm water run off each year if the Adage biomass incinerator is built. Nope, can’t do nothin’ about that, either.

Wondering who commissioned this report, I turned to my handy, 2010 Master Advisory Board Membership List (I’ll send you a copy for $49.95, plus handling). Ah, here it is: Oakland Bay Clean Water District Advisory Committee. Let’s see, there are 36 members on the committee; David McEntee (The Simpson PR guy); Patti Case (Green Diamond); Lind Ring-Erickson and Ross Gallagher (those names seem to ring a bell); Steve Bloomfield (also known as the clam-pirate), and a bunch of names I’m not familiar with. Well, that was a dead end- no obvious conflict of interests there, at least not by Mason County standards.

See, in order to have a conflict of interest in Mason County you’d have to hold the position of County Commissioner AND be a State Senator AND own a lot of timberland AND be instrumental in bringing biomass energy to the community in which you live and work…uh, wait a minute, no, that can’t be a conflict, we already have one of those. Oh, yeah, you’d have to be the President of the Washington State Pilots Association AND, at the same time, be the Executive Director of a Washington Port that oversees the future of an airport…oops, no, we already have one of those, too. I got it: if you were the sole principal of a business consulting firm with clients that hire you to promote biomass energy in a certain community AND you’re a Port Commissioner in that community AND you now have the authority to make biomass energy a reality in that very same community…oh, crap, what’s the use. Forgetaboutit! Just eat your clams and shut up!

SHELTON BLOG NOTE:

The public has until January 21st to submit comments or technical questions concerning the Oakland Bay study to:

Ecology Project Manager, Joyce Mercuri
360-407-6260 or Joyce.Mercuri@ecy.wa.gov

Also address health concerns to:

State Health Official, Len O’Garro
360-236-3376 or Lenford.O'Garro@doh.wa.gov

To learn about the Oakland Bay Sediment Study:
http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/tcp/sites/oaklandBay/oaklandBay_hp.htm
www.masoncountyprogressive.net Mason County Progressive