Bill Lucey of The Huffington Post featured InvestigateWest [and Seattlepostglobe] in an article about nonprofit investigative journalism in an age of declining for-profit newsrooms.

Lucey, a former South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter, began the interview by asking what it was like to watch the Seattle Post-Intelligencer close.  To be frank, it was horrible.  

But I've replaced that memory with a year of hard work... (more)

More here at InvestigateWest

  The P-I stopped publication almost exactly a year ago.

  (Photo and purse by Linda Thomas)

Students in Seattle, Bellingham, Olympia, Portland, Berkeley and in college towns across the nation Thursday raised voices and waved protest signs against rising tuition and fees that threaten access to higher education.

It was called a "National Day of Action." It was bigger on some campuses, where hundreds turned out, and smaller on others, like Bellingham, where only about 20 students turned out. At Seattle Central, a protest banner read: "MONEY FOR JOBS AND EDUCATION, NOT WAR." Nationally, tens of thousands of students protested. (more)

 more at

With a couple of Washington and Oregon state cheese recalls fresh in our memories this month, and a history of fatal E. coli poisoning that swept through a Washington state fast food chain in the 1990s, we should pay attention to a new report that food-borne illnesses such as E. coli and salmonella cost this country $152 billion annually in health care and other losses.

The report, from the Pew Charitable Trusts, is much higher than the earlier figure of $35 billion reported by the Agriculture Department in 1997. The government estimates that 5,000 of those who become ill die.

New food-safety legislation would give the federal Food and Drug Adminstration new powers to enforce food safety laws and prevent food contamination. (more)

more at InvestigateWest

Further reading:

Now it's red pepper you need to watch out for

An almost invisible path of food poisoning

If a school is failing, how do you fix it? Can you fix it without admitting anything is wrong with the teaching? How about the leadership? The district administration? The parents or the students? Whose fault is it anyway?

Schools on a list of the state’s lowest performing schools are in line to get some big federal dollars. President Obama this week announced he has $900 million in new federal grants available to school districts willing to take aggressive steps to fix their struggling institutions, or close them. That $900 million is on top of $4 billion in federal grants in the “Race to the Top” fund aimed at improving education nationwide. That program will make about $50 million available to Washington schools judged to be among the lowest 5 percent in student achievement. (more)

The recent death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau  has focused attention once again on the issue of whales in captivity.

Many Washington residents don’t know the happy ending to the tragic story of whaling captures in Puget Sound that once netted dozens of whales for SeaWorld performances.

It was the intervention of former Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro, then aide to Republican Gov. Dan Evans, that helped put a stop to the brutal captures that split apart whale families and pods and resulted in the collateral damage deaths of dozens of marine animals. Munro witnessed one of the captures in which aircraft and explosives were used... (more)

Killer whale Tilikum during a 2009 performance at Seaworld in Orlando. (Photo courtesy Loadmaster, a.k.a. David R. Tribble, via Wikimedia Commons)

MORE INFO

To The Point: Should Whales and Dolphins Be in Aquatic Parks or the Open Ocean?

It’s a big accomplishment for InvestigateWest.

Our Olympic gold.

We’re happy to announce we’ve been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation to continue to do the hard-hitting, regional investigative work we’re becoming known for. It’s gold, and of Olympic quality, because in this economic climate, it’s that hard to come by. (more)

New legislation making it easier to detain and treat mentally ill people who pose a danger to themselves or others has passed the state House of Representatives.

The only question is, why did it take so long, and why is passage in this admittedly tough economic year far from certain?

InvestigateWest reporter Carol Smith wrote about this problem  in 2008 after the stabbing of  Shannon Harps by a mentally ill man who had cycled in and out of the judicial system for decades. Her work also examined the inability of the family of Isaac Zamora to get him the mental health care he desperately needed.

(more)

Last month we reported on a bill that would expand a successful coastal derelict fishing gear removal program into Puget Sound. Currently, there are thousands upon thousands of pounds of derelict fishing gear sitting on the bottom of Puget Sound. Among the gear are lost recreational and commercial crab pots. These unclaimed crab pots continue to fish for up to two years, killing as many as a million crabs per year. By law, crab pots are required to be equipped with a release cord, but even lawful crab pots can continue to catch crabs after they are lost. Supporters argue that removal of lost gear is another step towards reclaiming Puget Sound.

Since the bill’s proposal, primary sponsor Rep. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island, has been working with groups to address some of the issues with House bill 2593.

A major change to the bill are the penalties... (more)

After readers weighed in on my post the other day about a provocative piece in favor of genetically modified crops in the journal Science, I have learned that the lead author of the Science piece has ties to pro-GE agribusiness.

It turns out that Nina Federoff, while now employed as the top scientist in the State Department, was previously on the scientific advisory board of Evogene, an Israeli agricultural biotech company, and on the board of directors of Sigma-Aldrich, a firm offering chemicals that are used in genetic engineering research, among other applications.

Read full blog post here at InvestigateWest

Earlier post at PostGlobe:

As climate change threatens food supply, should we reconsider genetically engineered food?

Further reading:

More herbicide use reported on genetically modified crops (Christian Science Monitor)

Rules on modified corn skirted, study says

Monsanto GMO ignites big seed war (NPR transcript)

GE Corn causes...

They’re calling these 2010 Winter Olympics the “green games,” but is it “greenwash” instead?

Bob Mackin of The Tyee takes a look at just how green the games are in an interesting report examining everything from the games’ efforts to conserve and reuse energy, to its one grass-covered roof to its ballyhooed carbon offsets for travel. Good intentions, he decides, but he seems really irked by the fact that the Games got environmentalist and CBC presenter David Suzuki to award a medal – the bronze – before the games even began.

"That’s right, retired university professor Suzuki gave... (more)

As millions went without insurance, as the unemployed struggled to pay COBRA premiums, as the sick became uninsurable, as thousands died because they didn’t have health insurance, well, you guessed it… profits rose at the five largest health insurance companies in America.

And not by a little.

Profits rose 56 percent over 2008, according to a new report prepared by  Health Care for America Now, a coalition of liberal advocacy groups and labor unions. Industry reps criticized the report’s approach, noting that 2008 was a bad year financially and that skewed the 2009 comparisons. But they aren’t arguing with the findings that showed combined profits of $12.2 billion and astronomical growth in profits. (more)

That slimy green layer sitting on top of a lake isn’t just ugly, it can be deadly. Algae has been blooming in lakes and streams all over Washington state. Algae consumes oxygen, creating a detrimental environment for marine life. Some forms can also produce toxins, such as anatoxin. Anatoxin is a neurotoxin that can kill marine life, animals, and cause various health problems for humans. Beth Cullen with the Washington State Lakes Protection Association, testified  before the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources:

Anderson Lake in Jefferson County, which is a popular recreation lake, especially for fishing, has the dubious distinction of holding the the highest anatoxin levels in the world.

The lake was shut down for the first time in 2006 after two dogs died hours after swimming in the lake.

Rep. Timm Ormsby, D-Spokane, has proposed legislation that would limit one of the nutrients feeding algae: phosphorous. House Bill 2744 would reduce phosphorous in lawn fertilizers....

Something is happening out there.

While unemployment remains high and the economy down, folks are not looking inward and holding tight to their wallets. They’re passing school levies. They are thinking about the importance of the next generation of kids, other peoples’ kids, for the most part.

Ballots were counted all over the state yesterday, and all over the state yesterday the results were pretty much the same. School levies passed. In Seattle. In Vancouver. In Yakima. In Everett and Edmonds... (more)

It’s time to stand up for education funding.

What with a judge telling the state it’s been failing in its constitutional duty to fund K-12 education, and college students and staff across the state walking out of the classroom to speak out against budget cuts in higher ed, it’s heady stuff.

“State funding is not ample, it is not stable, and it is not dependable,” said King County Superior Court John Erlick in his ruling that the state has failed in its duty to provide for the education of school children.

He ordered the Legislature to determine the cost of a basic education, then pay for it. (more)

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is important, but a big focus in the next few years should be methane, because it traps heat in the Earth’s atmosphere much more efficiently than CO2, say Robert Watson, former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Mohamed El-Ashray, a senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation. And methane converts to carbon dioxide after 10 or 12 years — compared to CO2’s residence time in the atmosphere that’s measured in hundreds of years.

Methane’s quite a bit easier to control, too (for now). So, to buy time to invent better ways to reduce CO2 emissions, focus on methane, Watson and El-Ashray argue:

"If we need to suppress temperature quickly in order to preserve glaciers, reducing methane can make an immediate impact..." (more)

Read more here at InvestigateWest

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Below are images of receding South Cascade Glacier in Washington, courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey:

Go here to see an animation...

A proposal to increase the tax on petroleum, pesticides and other chemicals is being floated in Olympia as a way to raise as much as $250 million to clean up polluted stormwater. But so far, support the for the idea among leading lawmakers appears lukewarm at best.

Environmentalists are pushing the idea, which would mostly tax oil refineries to clean up stormwater runoff, the largest source of pollution to Puget Sound and other waterways in the state. The measure would sink money into the general fund initially to help meet the state’s $2.6 billion budget shortfall, with stormwater pollution getting a bigger share in future years.

As key as stormwater cleanup is to the health of Puget Sound, the measure faces an uncertain future. Business groups think the tax is anti-jobs and business. (more)

Sitting on the floor of Puget Sound are thousands of pounds of derelict fishing gear. Lost fishing gear in a large body of water doesn’t really sound like a big deal at first, but when looked at a bit more closely the effects can be shocking.

“Derelict fishing gear in Puget Sound is a problem. There is an estimated – maybe – 15,000 crab pots that have been lost in the last 5 years in Puget Sound,”  Rep. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island, told the Agriculture and Natural Resources committee earlier this week, in support of House Bill 2593.

If passed, the measure would direct the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to solicit a $2 donation every time a recreational fishing license is purchased.

Read more here at InvestigateWest

 In a vote closely watched by other states with budget woes, Oregon voters Tuesday chose to impose corporate tax hikes and an income tax increase on the wealthiest of taxpayers to prevent mammoth cuts to public education and other state services.  Multnomah County — home to Portland — went heavily for the measures, but support was also strong in more conservative parts of the state.

 In Washington state, some lawmakers grappling with a $2.6 billion budget gap and talking about taxing muffins and soda pop no doubt are looking longingly south this morning. (more)

Living sustainably means more than recycling. It also means cutting back on all that stuff that lands on those railroad cars that get sent to landfills in central Oregon from Seattle or barged across the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii.

Striking a blow for citizens who want to do their part, the Seattle City Council Thursday passed a resolution urging the Legislature to create a Do Not Mail junk mail registry akin to the Do Not Call registry for home phones. Yes, it will probably take federal action to get results. But it’s also true that you have to start somewhere. So take a stand, Seattle!

The resolution would keep catalogs, ads, direct mail and other unwanted solicitations out of your mailbox. (more)

I wrote recently about the folly of shipping hundreds of thousands of tons of Hawaiian garbage to landfills in central Washington. I wrote that the low cost – $99 per 100,000 tons, enables what is so clearly the unsustainable lifestyle that so many of us on this planet live. There are other issues – the garbage is shrink-wrapped, as if this will somehow prevent transmission of non-native species. As readers pointed out, excess packaging creates excess trash. And in that piece, I mentioned that Seattleites, not just Honolulu residents, must feel this pain, because our garbage also is shipped out of our backyard – not by barge, but by rail, to central Oregon, where it is piled in someone else’s big empty backyard.

Some good news is emerging from that big empty backyard this week.

Read more here at InvestigateWest

Olympia- The House passed its first bill of the session this week –  a measure that would ask voters to decide whether to create jobs by using $860 million in bonds in order to make schools more energy efficient.

The bill “catalyzes probably about 2.5 billion dollars in work, which gives you 38,000 jobs, and will account in $190 million dollars in savings to the taxpayer every single year,” explained Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, the bills’ creator and primary sponsor. If approved by the Senate, the measure, House Bill 2561, would need voter approval in November. (more)

If there is any doubt that greenhouse gas emissions have extensive, far-reaching effects on our planet, the newly released results of a careful, long-term study should put any remaining confusion to rest.

New research shows the Pacific Ocean is becoming more acidic, weakening shellfish and other marine life at a scarily fast clip – resulting in a 6 percent jump in ocean water acidity over the past 15 years in the top 300 feet of the ocean.

Ocean acidification is caused by carbon dioxide from cars, factories and power plants that causes global greenhouse effects and also dissolves in the ocean, writes Seattle Times science reporter Sandi Doughton. The process makes seawater slightly more acidic, and also gobbles up carbonate, a basic building block of seashells.

(more here at InvestigateWest)

Health care reform could make life better for doctors and hospitals in Washington state that provide medical care to more than 780,000 seniors if three congressional Democrats have their way.

Sen. Maria Cantwell and Reps. Norm Dicks and Jay Inslee join four other congressional Dems in a letter to House and Senate leaders saying they won’t support health care reform unless it overhauls a complex Medicare reimbursement formula that for years has shortchanged doctors and hospitals in Washington state. (more)

The recession and the giant hole in the state budget its created may give the state’s public universities the opportunity they’ve been looking for – the ability to raise tuition without the Legislature’s approval.

Lawmakers have firmly held onto that power for years, against hard lobbying by university administrators. Lawmakers have rightly seen it as a way to keep tuition more affordable, particularly at the “elite” public institutions including the University of Washington. (more)

What do you think about shrink-wrapped bales of garbage barged from tropical Hawaii across the Pacific down the once-fierce Columbia River to Longview? Just doesn’t sound like a good idea, does it?

Don’t feel too good about reports that the plan, hatched about six months ago by Seattle-based Hawaiian Waste Systems,  may have hit a snag. (more)