Letters to the Editor Week of April 12, 2023

Editor,

The article (CDN April 4, 2023) about students releasing salmon fry into Padden Creek eloquently described the dedication of students, teachers, staff and volunteers. Their work is foundational. Without salmon and salmon habitats, our home would lose an essential part of its identity.

Unfortunately, some of their work was undermined by school district leaders and county planners. Wade King Elementary School was built in the buffer of a Category I wetland that feeds headwaters of the same creek into which the students release salmon. The wetland provides cool, clean water to the creek that juvenile salmon require. Replacing forested wetland buffers with buildings and pavement contaminates water, raises water temperature and reduces wetland buffering capacity — rendering creeks hostile to salmon. The Critical Areas Ordinance prohibits development in Category I wetlands and their buffers, but laws do not protect unless they are enforced. When school district leaders chose that site for Wade King Elementary and when county planners approved building permits for the site, they acted to destroy habitat that salmon need. 

Why should we be concerned now? As you read this, county and city planners are working on the next Comprehensive Plan update, which will determine the fate of the remaining forest and wetlands in the headwaters of Padden Creek. The students work to maintain school tanks where salmon eggs and fry survive and grow. Our responsibility is to maintain habitats where juvenile salmon can continue to thrive. If we really care about our children, salmon and their shared future, we must demand that our leaders act differently. 

John McLaughlin

Bellingham

Editor,

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a mean streak developed in some state legislatures when it comes to abortion and by extension, health care. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, among the states that instituted abortion restrictions, Idaho and 12 other states did so for all stages of pregnancy, including cases of rape. This month Idaho added an “abortion trafficking” provision targeting minors as well. 

The current bans on abortion are abhorrent in themselves, but no exception for rape reaches another level. Rape has been a tool of warfare for centuries, including in contemporary times; recall the rape camps during the Balkan war of the 1990s. The world abhors this when it happens and considers it a war crime, but apparently these states decided to overlook that. A few, such as Texas, will pay a bounty for those convicted of having an abortion, raising a theoretical but grotesque question: Can a rapist sue his victim if she gets an abortion?

These legislatures have something else in common; most have refused to expand their Medicaid programs, even though federal subsidies are available to cover up to 90% of the cost. Expanding Medicaid would provide health care to an estimated additional 2 million of their residents and help prevent the closure of financially strapped hospitals.

The deliberate refusal to expand health care combined with these abortion bans is heartless and clearly designed to punish rather than protect. This is America moving backward, not forward. 

Klaus Wergin

Bellingham

Editor,

It’s about time for bigger thinking. As I read, “Whatcom could be first to eliminate kidney waitlist,” (CDN, April 7, 2023) I was impressed with the writer’s moonshot analogy.  

These days, the mindset too often is, “That’s the best we can do …” so this guest essay lifted my spirits.  

When, not if, Whatcom County eliminates a kidney transplant waiting list, the downstream outcomes will have far-reaching impacts, not only for individual patients but also for our communities at-large. 

I’ve been following the kidney health awareness campaign that Dr. Bill Lombard is involved with and am encouraged that the effort has a focus on prevention — preventing diabetes, specifically, which is the top cause of chronic kidney failure. 

Our public health department must take a more proactive role in diabetes awareness because that disease is a growing public health crisis. In 1994, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) diabetes program declared that diabetes had reached epidemic proportions and should be considered a major public health problem. That’s not a typo — yes, 1994. In December 2022, the CDC warned of a 700% surge in diabetes in young Americans under the age of 20 in the coming decades. 

Contact Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu and your county representative and urge them to put diabetes awareness, prevention and education on the public health agenda. Sidhu and the council compose the board for Whatcom County Health and Community Services. They need to hear from us: ssidhu@co.whatcom.wa.us and council@co.whatcom.wa.us. 

Eliminating a kidney waitlist in our county is an ambitious but achievable goal. Let’s do it. 

Delores Davies

Ferndale

Editor,

Perhaps a small thing … but I want to give kudos to your graphics department. The typeface and images are clear and BIG … it is a refreshing, easy read. I congratulate the entire CDN gang. A pleasant and nice big contrast to brand “x” publications. 

Dave Christensen

Bellingham

Editor,

New national traffic data has just been released that quantifies a great increase in road deaths over the past four years, and attributes that great increase in road deaths to the lack of police traffic violation enforcement.

Speeding, tailgating, dangerous passing, aggressive and reckless driving are all way up since many law enforcement agencies decided to stop enforcing traffic laws, those agencies often citing perceived enforcement disparities and staffing reductions as the rationale.

I’ve been driving between Sudden Valley and Bellingham for 44 years, and I’m shocked by how dangerously common the worst driving behaviors have become on a daily basis. Everyone who lives in Sudden Valley is being endangered by these reckless nuts driving like fools and maniacs, and it’s time for the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office to resume serious, regular traffic enforcement in Geneva and on Lake Louise Road.

One of those dangerous drivers is going to kill another innocent driver, pedestrian or bicyclist. The dangerous, careless and distracted drivers are much worse now because there is no traffic enforcement, no deterrent to discourage unsafe driving, so they know they won’t get pulled over.

Hey, Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office: It’s time to resume protecting public safety. It’s time to resume vigorous traffic enforcement on Lake Louise Road.

Forest Cat

Sudden Valley

Editor,

In 2020, Dave Doll, our police chief at that time of turmoil, removed the ”thin blue line” flag sign that was placed in front of the police station, although I understand other versions of it still appear inside the building. I would like to make some further observations regarding the U.S. flag adopted with the thin blue line.

The term “thin blue line” was, it seems, originally the title of a 1911 poem by Nels Dickmann Anderson, although other explanations of its origins exist. The poem referred to the Army of the time that wore blue uniforms and formed in that blue line. My assumption is that the police officers who have appropriated this “thin blue line” flag to represent their profession may not know the descriptive name’s history, but they would also be those who greatly respect and treasure the flag of the United States, the Stars and Stripes, as a symbol for our nation and every one of its citizens. I do, as a member of the group of veterans who takes care of the “Veterans Flag” in Fairhaven. 

Often ignored is 4 U.S. Code Section 8 (g): “The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.” 

Yet the flag is used, and many times abused, by a panoply of organizations: political parties, hate groups, religious groups, sports entities, clothing manufacturers and even the U.S. military. All of these versions of the flag attempt to bring to the members of the group and those who observe the group that the proud organization is somehow allied with, and truly or singularly representative of, the U.S. as a whole. Therefore, to speak against that organization and its adopted version of the U.S. flag is somehow unpatriotic or un-American.

Bellingham City Council member Kristina Michele Martens is correct in her observation to Chief Mertzig that the so-called “police flag” is divisive in nature. Technically, it is also illegal. 

Dick Conoboy

Bellingham

Editor,

Every cultural crisis at every level includes a “blaming of the media” ritual, in which we disparage a shadowy, conspiratorial group — possibly foreigners or aliens — that are traitorous, not outraged enough, distracting and unaccountable. “They” are leading us to ruin. Except that they are not leaders in any way. They are followers, and they are following you. Every media professional knows that in their core, as I did when I was one. It’s been that way forever, but most obviously since the Nielsen sweeps of the ’70s, which have evolved into clicks and likes monitored in real-time. We are precisely the editors and reporters we love to hate. Ourselves, our neighbors, friends and relations are the bogeymen and women. Next time you read or say “media,” substitute pronouns like we, us, me, etc. Blaming the media is exactly like thoughts and prayers — nobody is listening, and nothing ever changes.

Tom Horton

Sudden Valley