Letters, week of Jan. 28, 2025: ICE arrests, Port gravel, syrup and WTA routes

Editor,

Gravel? Gravel?! Really? Now I know the circus is in town. Courtesy of the port commissioners.

In Michael Shepard’s guest commentary (CDN, Jan. 22,2025), he contends that the port “has learned from the recent experience with ABC Recycling,” and is prepared to fulfill its mission as “a driving force behind Whatcom County’s economic vitality, environmental stewardship and community vision.”

The picture I see is a seaside version of a gravel pit with piles of material, huge trucks and equipment obscuring our view of the bay alongside a pump track, a beer garden/container village, over-priced empty or unfinished waterfront condos, and a convention center. A circus or an LSD-infused fever dream. The visual and aesthetic dissonance is deafening. Again, I harken back to the plans this community signed on to in the 2000’s.

To be fair, we don’t know what Granite Construction has in mind for this proposed facility. Will large rock be crushed into smaller ones? Where is water coming from to wash it all? It’s difficult to imagine that it will be a draw for other businesses or encourage housing.

The port is also undertaking improvements in the existing infrastructure at the Bellingham Shipping Terminal, apparently aimed at loading heavy cargo. Are they already gearing up for this specifically? In spite of claims of greater transparency, I would be skeptical, based on past dealings. How many jobs, family-wage jobs or not will be created? A few additional truck drivers and a handful of equipment operators perhaps. Gravel? Really?

Steve Bailey

Bellingham

Editor,

Mr. Hammer, a wave of pre-emptive road rage washes over while reading the CDN article outlining the litany of I-5 delays associated with several forthcoming culvert replacement projects (CDN, Jan. 23, 2025).

The irony in another article (CDN, Jan. 1, 2025) was not lost on me when citing the $160 million to be spent on these fish passage improvement projects, while a measly $22 million couldn’t be found between the couch cushions to maintain the drivable surface of said stretch of I-5.

However, I feel compelled to respond to the insinuation that the $8 billion to be spent on state fish passage improvement projects by 2030 will be in vain due to existing non-state-owned fish blockages downstream from the projects. My line of work involves assisting municipalities and private citizens with obtaining permits for stream-related developments — all of which are required to upsize when modifying culverts on fish-bearing streams. In conjunction with the numerous voluntary passage enhancements by cities and non-profits, these serve to effectively and incrementally fix the blockages between state-managed crossings and increase accessible habitat.

Will all this effort increase salmon runs? Only time will tell. But in the meantime, while we collectively seethe in this summer’s traffic, I invite us all to gain some perspective knowing the economic toll and temporary inconvenience of these projects are a step in the right direction towards upholding the treaty rights guaranteed to the Coast Salish tribes — all of whom have experienced outsized economic and cultural impacts from the construction of these roads and culverts in the first place.

Collin Van Slyke

Bellingham

Editor,

I was pleased to learn that the CDN is assigning a dedicated reporter to cover the Port of Bellingham. I attended the Dec. 17, 2024 port commission meeting and the guest commentary by Michael Shepard (CDN, Jan. 22, 2025) doesn’t present all the facts, and potential environmental impacts I heard at that meeting.

The proposed gravel-shipping operation will deliver to the terminal at least three barges per week containing eight or 16 tons of material each. That’s 24 to 48 tons (48,000 to 96,000 pounds) of gravel per week. I was told that moving that material each week would require 50 truckloads per day. Fifty trucks a day through downtown Bellingham.

While the port may have investigated water quality safeguards of the proposed project, it seems to not have cared about the air and sound pollution or traffic congestion of 50 diesel trucks driving through Bellingham, each day! And this project will yield $300,000 to $500,000 in income per year. That’s it! Perhaps the CDN can look into this proposal for us?

Mary Loquvam

Bellingham

Editor,

The Laken Riley Act requires DHS to detain individuals who are unlawfully present in the United States and have been charged with burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting. It is named after a young female nursing student who was assaulted, abused, raped and murdered by an illegally present gang member with a long criminal record.  As of Jan. 8, it had passed the House and was before the Senate. Among those voting against the bill were Washington congressional representatives Suzanne Delbene and Rick Larsen.

President Trump rapidly moved to apprehend and remove violent offenders who are illegally present in the United States. His actions produced comments from Sheriff Tanksley and WWU, professing immigration enforcement to be outside their responsibilities. They refer to Washington Senate Bill 5497 and other policies, which forbid state and local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration enforcement efforts. These policies are interpreted by some as prohibiting informing ICE to the presence of illegals who are detained for infractions other than illegal immigration or holding such persons until ICE is able to place them in custody.

Why would law enforcement release a violent offender into the community, knowing they are illegally present in the United States? Does that not unnecessarily place the community at risk? Such policies directly resulted in the horrific death of Laken Riley! Do law enforcement and political executives not take a sworn oath to protect and defend? Washington legislators need to rethink their stance on cooperation with federal government illegal immigration enforcement.

Dough Lilyroth

Lummi Island

Editor’s note: The bill in question was approved by the U.S. House on Jan. 22.

Editor,

The article on locally made maple syrup (CDN, Jan. 25, 2025) literally hit the spot with me. A few months ago, I discovered Mama’s Garden Maple Syrup at Boxx Berry Farm and snapped up a bottle as quickly as I could. Yes, it is expensive, but oh, so good; much better than that I have been buying (I won’t touch the artificial stuff).

Back around 1970, I was a forestry grad student at the University of Washington, living in a shack surrounded by woods east of Lake Washington. A research associate from Michigan gave me the idea to tap a nearby grove of big tooth maples. I dutifully boiled the collected sap (over a wood fire, no less) until I had a small amount of product.

I don’t remember how it tasted — probably not nearly as good as mama’s — but I can tell you that it was a hell of a lot of work, work that I was not tempted to repeat the next year. I am very happy that local producers are willing to do so — after the equally laborious process of obtaining necessary permits — to provide the topping for my Sunday waffle, and will gladly reimburse them for their efforts.

Ed Wood

Bellingham

Editor,

After years of being bombarded with fervent demands for money from candidates from my party of choice, and finding my interest diminishing, I just replied to one. I’m sharing it because, for me, it is truth. 

“[Candidate], I love you and appreciate all your hard work.

“But, you and other [party candidates] are losing my support and trust because of the persistent message that, condensed, reads, “the [other guys] are terrible, and here are all the terrible things they are doing. So support me and send me lots of money every day.

“There is no substance to being anti-something without being for something concrete. The fact that you are anti-[other guys] isn’t enough of a platform to give any sense of purpose or direction.

“It’s pretty clear what the [your party] candidates throughout the country are opposed to. But who has any idea what they, and you, are in favor of? 

“I don’t have anything to hang onto strongly enough to convince me to pay heed to the constant demands for more and more money.

“I wish I did.”

Carol Brach

Bellingham

Editor,

Thank you for your coverage of the picket on PeaceHealth. I’m a 19-year hospital employee and a member of the bargaining team. I’d like to discuss our team’s goals and respond to comments by PeaceHealth’s Amy Drury. 

One of our most important goals is bringing our lower-paid employees closer to a living wage. These are transporters who safely transport ill patients, environmental services workers keeping the hospital at the highest standard of cleanliness and others. They should make more than fast food workers. We don’t think $5 above minimum wage is unreasonable for people performing these critical jobs and living in Bellingham. Yes, this does amount to a large percentage increase. For our higher-paid employees, we are proposing lower percentage increases, partly depending on what other employers are paying for similar jobs.

According to Ms. Drury, the union “has provided no justification for these increases based on local market pay rates or expected inflation rates for the next three years.”

Regarding market pay rates: In my department, ultrasound, we have recently lost employees to Seattle and Skagit. There are ultrasound schools in Seattle, but due to the wage difference, we are unable to hire their students even after training them here for a whole year. Seattle may have a slightly higher cost of living, but we are certainly competing in that market for employees. This is true in all departments. CNAs, who directly care for our loved ones, make 24% more elsewhere in Bellingham.

Regarding future inflation: Is there reliable data on future inflation? More relevant is what we’ve recently lost to inflation. To a workforce that lost 11.5% during the last contract, management is offering a 3% cost of living raise. We see this as inadequate, even disrespectful.

Please support your hospital employees as they continue to negotiate in good faith for a better community hospital.

Paula Glackin

Mount Vernon

Editor,

The article “Should public transit prioritize more riders or broader access? WTA to decide” (CDN, Jan. 16, 2025) raises more questions than it answered. Why did WTA narrow its choices to just two? 

If the answer is more riders, shouldn’t the City of Bellingham be the governing body making decisions about how best to serve those riders? Those people happen to be the constituents of our city elected officials, but not all are on the WTA Board. About 95% of current riders originate from within Bellingham. If more riders is the priority, those additional riders will be derived from a reallocation of resources to the most productive WTA services within Bellingham. Everett Transit is an example of an operation that has prioritized ridership. Suggesting such a consequence is not without a regional precedent. 

If the answer is broader access, shouldn’t Whatcom County be the governing body making decisions about how best to offer broader access? Broader access is mostly for transit-dependent people throughout the county often going to and from county social services. King County Metro is an example of an operation that has prioritized broader access. So, again, suggesting such a consequence is not without a regional precedent. 

Shouldn’t there be other priorities? Does not one priority involve providing a balanced, multi-modal public transportation system? If the answer is yes, shouldn’t the WTA continue to be the governing body? 

It is unclear why WTA wants to question why it exists. If WTA picks one of the two priorities it has proposed, one must wonder whether WTA is the correct governing body to fulfill the future path it has selected.

Wes Frysztacki

Bellingham

Editor,

Trump pardoned all the convicted offenders from the January 6, 2021 ransacking of the Capitol. The pardon indiscriminately included scores of violent felons who had been convicted of mounting grave physical attacks against Capitol Police that day (The Hill, Jan. 22, 2025).

What message does this send the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the tens of thousands of would-be stormtroopers of MAGA? The message is clear: Violence and violent intimidation in the service of MAGA is just fine and will be looked upon kindly by the Trump regime.

I expect more of the kind of violence that we saw at Charlottesville, now that it’s been officially blessed. 

Abe Jacobson

Bellingham

Editor,

The most succinct thing to be said about the new Trump administration and the old is consistency, especially in the field of the public health response to worldwide pandemics. 

Just as Trump did in 2020, by cutting money from the National Institute of Health, which studies have shown caused a 40% uptick in COVID-19 and a commensurate delay in pursuing treatments, his new insane pick to head HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is pausing research and interfering with scientists even sharing their findings. 

This insanity, many scientists believe, will lead to another even more deadly pandemic worldwide and in the U.S., where the virus has already quickly mutated in a very short time, allowing its spread by human-to-human contact. 

In the past year alone, the virus is being blamed for a more than 10-fold increase in the disease in Australia alone … from less than 1200 cases in 2023 to more than 13,000 in 2024 … and the increase is on a J curve.

What will it take to wake MAGA up? Being aware we know is antithetical to their credo, but they will be dying as fast as the rest of us …. they will just be blaming it on others rather than taking a hard look in the mirror.

Michael Waite

Sedro-Woolley

Editor,

You have stated in Cascadia on several occasions that the City of Bellingham is seeking state funds to clean up the RG Haley eyesore dump on our waterfront. I would like to know how this will be done once it is funded. Cascadia, please investigate and report.

Will the waste be trucked somewhere (where?), or will the city just try again to contain it on-site?

Jeanie Bein

Bellingham

Editor,

I read with great interest your article in the Jan. 17 issue concerning the future of Whatcom Transit Authority ridership, and the question of future route planning. 

Up to this time, I’ve been driving my own car exclusively for all my transportation needs. I will be applying for use of the WTA’s shuttle for seniors when I turn 75 this spring. This great service will take me from my door to whatever shopping, doctor’s appointments, classes or other transportation needs I may have, and then home again. It will require careful scheduling, but It will be the only means for me to use the WTA and reduce using my own car. 

 What about riding the existing regular WTA routes, you ask? Unfortunately, the nearest regular route bus stop to my home is about half a mile away. This is too far for a 75-year-old lady to walk to and from with groceries, or in bad weather or after dark. So it’s the WTA shuttle or my own car.

If the route went just a bit further south, it could stop at Cedar Grove and Lake Padden Estates on Samish Way. I and about over a hundred of my neighbors would be able to make good use of it.

Extending this route would be of great service to many people, especially to two communities of senior citizens. I encourage the WTA to take this into consideration when contemplating future route decisions. 

Linda Wolf

Bellingham

Editor,

As I witnessed the excruciating spectacle of the Coronation of Emperor Donald Trump, surrounded by obsequious, sycophantic courtiers and courtesans and other assorted adoring political prostitutes, like some adapted Shakespearean dark farce in a Reality TV dystopic mini-series.

With a spectacular plot twist, The Court Jester, the Billionaire Buffoon with the bottle blonde bouffant, somehow was now the self-anointed Monarch of America.

Inevitably, when the day comes, that the Emperor, (think a Fat Elvis) is finally revealed to have no clothes, fills me with bittersweet emotions of hope … and yep, extreme revulsion.

This now … the new “normal”. Return ticket to normalcy — canceled. We have met the enemy … and the enemy is us.

It’s time to disabuse ourselves that this is just a transient erratic swing of the pendulum, which has swung so far to the right, that it’s stuck. The inherent moral hazard of greed and the naked pursuit of power are hard-coded into the human species. The oligarchs will not go quietly into the night.

“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” — Louis D. Brandeis – Supreme Court Justice.

In the meantime, what now?

For starters, time for a complete overhaul and re-calibration of political strategy by the opposition.

No more defense. No more showing up to a knife fight with a dull butter knife, when the other side is packin’ an AR-15. The best defense is a good offense. Game on!

Michael Kominsky

Belliingham

Editor,

The day that honors Martin Luther King Day was in juxtaposition with the inauguration of a president, a convicted felon, who received less than 50% of the total votes cast in the Nov. 6 election. The stark contrast between these two individuals drew my attention to the words on the Statue of Liberty in upper New York Bay: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.“ Emma Lazarus and Lady Liberty weep.

On Jan. 6, 2020, an estimated 2,000-plus rioters engaged in an attempted coup de’tat at our nation’s capitol. Four years and 14 days after one of the darkest days in American history, an estimated 1,500 convicted rioters were pardoned or had sentences commuted by the previous and now new president.

Themis, the blindfolded Greek Goddess of Law and Justice, whose statue is present in courtrooms, weeps in concert with the 140 law enforcement officers injured in defending the transition of presidential power that is a bedrock principal of our republic — if we can keep it for 1,461 days until the inauguration of our next new president.

By our actions, We the People need to pursue the good in the United States of America. Our children and grandchildren are depending on us!

Jerry Hunter

Bellingham

Letters to the Editor are published online Wednesdays; a selection is published in print Fridays. Send to letters@cascadiadaily.com by 10 a.m. Tuesdays. Rules: Maximum 250 words, be civil, have a point and make it clearly. Preference is given to letters about local subjects. CDN reserves the right to reject letters or edit for length, clarity, grammar and style, or removal of personal attacks or offensive content. Letters must include an address/phone number to verify the writer's identity (not for publication).