Cascade PBS News - Washington state & Seattle News

Podcast | Behind the scenes of Mossback's audio storytelling

Maleeha Syed — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 04:59:00 PDT

Topics: Podcast

Seattle rallies as Supreme Court weighs criminalizing homelessness

Josh Cohen — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 13:23:18 PDT

For Gina Owens, the parallels between herself and Gloria Johnson — one of the plaintiffs in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court about criminalizing homelessness — are all too striking.

Owens used to be a nurse, but a car crash in the year 2000 disabled her spinal cord and left her unable to work. Without a steady income, she fell behind on her rent and was evicted into several years of homelessness.

Johnson, the lead plaintiff in Grants Pass v. Johnson, was also a career nurse who retired, but was unable to find housing she could afford on Social Security and became homeless, living in her minivan on the edge of town. On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the class action lawsuit against Grants Pass, Oregon’s anti-public sleeping laws.

Owens, a leader with Washington Community Action Network and prominent homelessness activist in Seattle, spoke to a crowd of 60-70 people that afternoon outside the Nakamura Federal Courthouse in Downtown Seattle at a rally organized by the Services Not Sweeps Coalition.

A ruling in favor of Grants Pass could make it easier for cities to fine or jail people experiencing homelessness for sleeping in public. Lawyers and advocates fear a worst-case outcome that would functionally make it illegal to be homeless in public.

“I want the Supreme Court to listen to our stories … before they make their decision,” said Owens. “I want them to know that people are not criminals. They are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors. They are the community members we live amongst every day. They are not criminals, and they should not be held as a criminal just simply by sleeping on the street.”

Chalk messages are left on the steps of the Nakamura Federal Courthouse during a rally Monday. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)

Grants Pass v. Johnson stems from a law in the city of Grants Pass meant to deter people experiencing homelessness from staying in town. The law bars anyone from sleeping in public spaces — including parks, sidewalks and in cars — or using materials such as blankets or sleeping bags for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live.

The town began aggressively enforcing the law in 2013, issuing $295 fines that increased to $537.60 if unpaid. After two citations, police can arrest someone for criminal trespass, which could result in 30 days in jail and another $1,250 fine.

At a March 2013 Grants Pass City Council meeting, then-Council President Lily Morgan said, “The point is to make it uncomfortable enough for them in our city so they will want to move on down the road.”

Advocates have long argued that criminalizing homelessness makes it much harder for people to get into housing and leave homelessness behind. The debt a person accrues from citations they cannot pay hurts their credit score and can make it harder to qualify for housing, as does having a criminal record.

In addition, jail time can lead to lost contact between case managers and homeless clients, which can be a huge setback in the arduous task of navigating the homeless-services system.

Protesters rally at the Nakamura Federal Courthouse, Monday, after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case that could make it easier for cities to fine or jail people experiencing homelessness for sleeping in public, April 22, 2024. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)

In 2018, the Oregon Law Center filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Debra Blake, a woman who’d been homeless in Grants Pass for nearly a decade and accumulated more than $5,000 in fines for sleeping in public. After Blake died in 2021, Gloria Johnson and John Logan, another homeless resident, stepped in as the named representatives in the class action.

The lawsuit argued that fines and jail time violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment because people involuntarily experiencing homelessness have nowhere to sleep but public spaces. Grants Pass, a small city located in southern Oregon, has just a few homeless shelter options that fall far short of meeting every homeless resident’s needs.

Lawyers representing Grants Pass have argued that the city needs the laws to address safety and public health issues in homeless encampments.

Grants Pass v. Johnson has wended through the appeals process, with lower courts agreeing with the plaintiffs’ argument that the law violates the Eighth Amendment. It now falls to the Supreme Court to decide. The justices are expected to rule in late June.

After oral argument Monday, The New York Times reported that a majority of justices appeared to side with the City of Grants Pass, an outcome that would allow cities to more easily impose fines and jail time for people sleeping in public, regardless of the availability of shelter. Other court watchers, however, said that several justices floated the possibility that the federal judiciary might lack jurisdiction to hear the case at all and that homelessness policy should remain a local government issue.

“If the Supreme Court finds in favor of Grants Pass, it will be dystopian,” said Sara Rankin at Monday’s rally. Rankin is a Seattle University law professor and head of the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project. “It will be like a domino effect. Every city is going to then outlaw sleeping within the city boundaries, and you could have an entire patchwork of states in which it is not legal for you to exist if you don’t have a home.”

Though Rankin worries about the ripple effect of the Supreme Court siding with Grants Pass, she cautioned people to understand the limits of the case. It does not have bearing on a city’s legal ability to clear unauthorized encampments; or the ability to restrict when and where people can set up encampments; or even the ability to impose fines or arrests when people refuse offers of available shelter.

Instead, the Court’s ruling will determine primarily whether cities can ban public homelessness regardless of whether there’s adequate shelter or housing for people to move to. In its 2022 ruling in favor of Johnson, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit cited its own 2018 ruling in Martin v. Boise, which said that cities cannot enforce camping bans if there’s inadequate shelter space to offer people.

In September, Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison joined the National League of Cities and a slew of other cities including Spokane, Tacoma and San Diego in support of Grants Pass, submitting an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to review Grants Pass v. Johnson.

Their brief stated, “The homelessness crisis is complex and the Ninth Circuit’s decisions have paralyzed local communities’ ability to address it in the places where it is most acute.”

The authors take the stance that the Ninth Circuit’s “shelter availability” test is unworkable for local municipalities. The brief states that the test has, “the practical effect of imposing a judge-made financial obligation on local governments to provide public shelter options, regardless of whether local policymakers and their experts believe that is the best way to address homelessness.”

People browse through a selection of free clothing during a rally at the Nakamura Federal Courthouse. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)

Seattle has continued to clear unauthorized encampments. The Seattle Times reported that the city removed thousands of tents from public spaces in 2023, but only 16% of those people in clear encampments entered a shelter immediately afterwards. Furthermore, Publicola reported that those shelter enrollments can last for as little as one night — far from a sustained solution to street homelessness.

Alison Eisinger, executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, acknowledges things could get worse for homeless residents should the Supreme Court side with Grants Pass. But she doesn’t want people to lose sight of how bad things already are.

“We are so far from a world in which people are offered shelter or housing that meets their needs and [still] refuse it,” Eisinger told Cascade PBS. “We are completely underwater. More than half the [tens of thousands of] people experiencing homelessness in King County are unsheltered.”

The Coalition on Homelessness was one of several local organizations and individuals that worked together to file an amicus brief in Grants Pass v. Johnson arguing against the city’s laws. The group also included former King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg, the advocacy group WHEEL (Women’s Housing, Equality and Enhancement League) and King County’s former chief medical examiner Richard Harruff.

Eisinger said that regardless of the outcome of Grants Pass v. Johnson, building more affordable housing will still be the most important tool for addressing homelessness.

“This case isn’t actually about homelessness; it is about failures at the tiny-city, big-city, state and federal level to do what is necessary to respond to the lack of affordable homes,” she said. “We have to continue to resist the bad, and we have to work even harder, not only for what is good and effective, but to scale it up.” This article was updated with information about Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison's amicus brief.

Topics: Crime, Homelessness, Housing, Supreme Court

Black Arts Legacies: Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, cultural connector

Jas Keimig — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 05:00:00 PDT

Topics: arts, black arts legacies, Painting, Sculpture, Seattle

Volunteers celebrate Earth Day with Puget Sound beach cleanups

Nicholas Williams — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 04:59:00 PDT

It’s noon at Golden Gardens Park. For the first time in weeks there isn’t a cloud in the sky. Music is blaring and there are volunteers scattered along the beach picking up trash.

The volunteers are a part of the Surfrider Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting the world's oceans, waves and beaches. The Seattle chapter cleans beaches, tests water and advocates for plastic pollution laws.

“It feels like you’re making a difference … when you clean up a beach. And most of the time, these beaches are places that a lot of people like to go, like Gas Works, Green Lake and Seward Park,” said Diana Haass, who manages communications for the Surfrider chapter in Seattle.

The pollution they’ve found through the years includes foam, bags, straws, butts, microplastics and bottles.

The Pew Trust notes that an estimated 11 million metric tons of plastic waste annually enters the ocean. Without immediate and sustained action, that amount will nearly triple by 2040, to 29 million metric tons per year. That’s the same as dumping 110 pounds (50 kilograms) of plastic on every meter of coastline around the world.

The Seattle Surfrider Foundation is preparing for its Clean & Cruise program, a monthly beach cleanup and an optional social paddle at a different beach from Earth Day through the fall.

Steve Strohmaier drops trash in a bucket held by Dirk Metzler at Golden Gardens. (Grant Hindsley for Cascade PBS)

Seattle Surfrider Chair Drew Albenze said that volunteers have joined them from all walks of life. “Some of us are surfers, scientists, climate activists, we are all over the board and you don’t need to be a surfer to be a Surfrider,” he said.

Grace Schamber, a freshman at the University of Washington and a frequent volunteer, said her favorite part of the beach cleanup is seeing how much of a difference they make.

“It's impactful to see at the end how much trash we picked up,” she said. “On Earth Day last year, we had only five volunteers total, it was a rainy day, but we still picked up over 300 pounds of trash in just a couple of hours.”

Surfrider Seattle Chapter chair Drew Albenze at Golden Gardens during a cleanup on Sunday, April 21. (Grant Hindsley for Cascade PBS)

Despite the good cause, the organization sometimes struggles to recruit volunteers and most come and go depending on their schedules. “I think it’s just getting people to continue to be around and to have those numbers so we can make those bigger changes and have a bigger impact,” said Volunteer Coordinator Savanah Cacace. “You know, the more people that come to a beach cleanup, the more garbage you pick up.”

Other organizations coordinating beach cleanups in the Seattle area include the Washington CoastSavers, Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, CleanupSEA and Grassroots Garbage Gang.

Upcoming Beach Cleanups

April 24 and May 8, Lake Union kayak cleanup, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., with Puget Soundkeeper Alliance

July 4 evening and July 5 morning fireworks cleanup, central and south Pacific Beach, Washington Coastsavers

First Saturday of every month at Alki Beach, 7 to 10 a.m., CleanupSEA

Clean and Cruise monthly at different beaches, contact Seattle Chapter of Surfrider Foundation

Footprints in the sand at Golden Gardens during a Surfrider Seattle Chapter beach cleanup. (Grant Hindsley for Cascade PBS)

Since 1984, The Puget Soundkeeper Alliance has completed more than 1,600 patrols of Puget Sound waterways, won legal action against 170 Clean Water Act violators and removed over 145,000 pounds of trash from the water.

Even with such a long list of accomplishments, they too have found it difficult to keep volunteers around.

“It’s really hard,” said Sean Dixon, executive director of the Alliance. “It depends on people who want to come out and get their hands dirty by picking up garbage weekend after weekend, year after year. Because there's always going to be more garbage to pick up.”

That said, the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance is one of the more active beach cleanup organizations that have worked in the Seattle area, engaging with around 1,000 volunteers total participating in about 100 events per year.

“This year is our 40th anniversary. … We’ve got a lot of people who have grown up going to our cleanups and seeing our name,” Dixon said.

Puget Soundkeeper, similar to Surfrider, is gearing up for its Kayak Cleanup program, which is a weekly kayak paddle, depending on the weather, and beach cleanup on Lake Union.

The Surfrider Foundation, in addition to cleanups, also advocates for alternatives to plastic pollution sources such as replacing single-use plastic bags and straws with reusable or biodegradable options. The Foundation also identified cigarette butts as a significant portion of beach pollution, which led to community programs like Hold Onto Your Butt to address the issue.

For both organizations, these activities are both practical – getting some of the pollution off our beaches – and philosophical – raising awareness of the need to address plastic pollution.

“We must work as one – governments, companies, and consumers alike – to break our addiction to plastics, champion zero waste, and build a truly circular economy,” said Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations in a press statement on plastic waste.

Steve Strohmaier and Dirk and Olivia Metzler pick up trash at Golden Gardens during Sunday’s Surfrider Seattle Chapter beach cleanup on Sunday. (Grant Hindsley for Cascade PBS)

Meanwhile, the organizers of the cleanups for the Surfrider Foundation remain hopeful.

“I would say that it’s a pretty low-barrier entry to become a volunteer, just showing up to an event, that’s the first step,” Haass, of Surfrider, said. She would like to see more people get comfortable with having tougher conversations about sustainability and climate change.

“When we have conversations like this that lowers the barrier, where it lowers that scariness and shows people that actions do matter, we can make a difference,” Haass said.

Topics: Environment

The Nosh: Exploring Seattle’s vibrant sober scene one mocktail at a time

Rachel Belle — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 06:59:00 PDT

Topics: Multimedia, Video, Food, Seattle, Health, local business, Nightlife

A federal program could fix Washington’s salmon-killing culverts

Ben Goldfarb — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 05:00:00 PDT

Every year, hundreds of muscular, sea-bright fish — chum salmon, chinook, coho, steelhead — push into the Columbia River from the Pacific Ocean, swim over 120 miles (200 kilometers) upstream, and turn left into Hardy Creek. They wend through rocky shallows shaded by alder and willow, cold water passing over flared gills. Plump with milt and eggs, they pump their tails furiously, striving for the graveled spawning grounds in southern Washington where they’ll complete their life’s final, fatal mission.

And then they hit the railroad.

In the early 1900s, Hardy Creek was throttled by BNSF Railway, the United States’ largest freight railroad network. When the company built its Columbia River line, engineers routed Hardy Creek under the tracks via a culvert — a 2.5-meter-wide arch atop a concrete pad. The culvert, far narrower than Hardy Creek’s natural channel, concentrated the stream like a fire hose and blasted away approaching salmon. Over time, the rushing flow scoured out a deep pool, and the culvert became an impassable cascade disconnected from the stream below — a “perched” culvert, in the jargon of engineers.

“It’s an obvious barrier,” says Peter Barber, manager of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe’s habitat restoration program. “A fish would be hard-pressed to navigate through that culvert.”

The strangulation of Hardy Creek is an archetypal story. Culverts, the unassuming concrete and metal pipes that convey streams beneath human-made infrastructure, are everywhere, undergirding our planet’s sprawling road networks and rail lines. Researchers estimate that more than 200,000 culverts lie beneath state highways in California alone, nearly 100,000 in Germany, and another 60,000 in Great Britain. In Europe, they thwart endangered eels; in Australia, they curtail the movements of Murray cod. In Massachusetts’ Herring River, snapping turtles lurk in culverts to devour passing fish, largely preventing herring from spawning. Taken as a whole, these obstacles are a major reason that three-quarters of the world’s migratory fish species are endangered.

Compared with dams, however, culverts have historically escaped public attention; most people drive over them every day without noticing. “I used to tell people I assess culverts,” recalls Mark Eisenman, a planner at the Alaska Department of Transportation. “They’d say, what the hell’s a culvert?”

In 2022, however, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration launched a $1 billion program to replace culverts that block oceangoing fish on streams like Hardy Creek — among the largest pots of money ever devoted to these humble pipes. Fixing the countless barriers that underlie infrastructure, according to Barber, is “one of the best ways to restore our salmon runs locally.” But given the sheer scale of the culvert crisis, even a billion dollars will only go so far. Can we repair our faulty culverts while there’s still time to save sea-run fish?

Roads have impeded fish since well before the proliferation of automobiles. In 1893, a log drifted down a tributary of British Columbia’s Fraser River and wedged itself in a wagon-road culvert, preventing sockeye salmon from migrating. So many fish crowded against the jammed pipe that they writhed onto the road, obliging an inspector to “engage men and teams to cart the salmon in order to keep the road clear for traffic,” per one reporter. In 1932, engineers in Arlington Heights, Illinois, found a pair of pickerel caught in culverts, and reportedly “enjoyed a good fish dinner.”

But the real problem wasn’t the few fish caught in culverts — it was the millions who couldn’t swim through them. Early engineers hadn’t given fish a moment’s thought; one 19th-century road-making manual suggested that culverts simply be “large enough to admit a boy to enter to clean them out.” As road systems metastasized throughout the 20th century, the so-called boy standard proved disastrous. As in Hardy Creek, culverts cinched flows into torrents too powerful for adult fish to swim against. Cramped and perched culverts also prevented juveniles from flitting up and downstream in search of food and refuge. Even as conservationists fretted about megadams and overfishing, roads and railroads were secretly sapping the vitality of coastal streams.

By mid-century, a few scientists had begun to pay attention. After a 1949 report from the Washington Department of Fisheries observed that culverts had created a vast “lost frontier” of foreclosed fish habitat, scientists in Oregon and Washington began retrofitting culverts. Their first attempt was to deploy baffles, rungs that slowed torrential flows into gentle pools, along with angled ramps called fishways. Soon, though, they realized that replacing culverts altogether was far better than retrofitting them. If most culverts failed fish because they were too small, the solution was simple: swap out narrow pipes with wider ones (or, even better, bridges).

Fish biologists came to tout a design known as the stream simulation model — a culvert wide enough to accommodate a waterway and its banks, even during floods, without altering its flows. “The idea is that the river doesn’t know that it’s going through the pipe,” says Eisenman. A gravel floor, rather than a concrete or metal one, completes the effect. “In theory, the fish don’t know when they’re swimming through, either. It just gets a little dark for a while.”

A few autumns ago, I saw an impressive “stream-sim” culvert in action at Little Skookum Creek near Olympia. In 2001, a coalition of 21 Indigenous tribes had sued the state of Washington, arguing that its many crummy culverts violated their right to harvest fish in traditional places. The tribes eventually won, and the state’s Department of Transportation began the arduous, court-ordered process of replacing hundreds of salmon-impeding culverts—including the one at Little Skookum Creek. Here, the department had torn out a rusted metal pipe and replaced it with a wider, shorter span more akin to a small bridge. The stream ran through it unencumbered.

The new crossing was anything but glamorous; if I hadn’t known the state had recently installed it, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. “This is not the most complicated project,” admitted Paul Wagner, at the time a biologist (since retired) with the state’s transportation department and my guide for the day.

Simple, perhaps, but effective. As we watched, a dozen chum salmon finned in Little Skookum’s channel, snouts pointed upstream. Their flanks were barred with electric purple-and-green stripes, their fins ragged with decay. One by one, with the remains of their flagging strength, they kicked their tails and skittered through the culvert to spawn and die. Cars rumbled on the road above them. “It’s pretty cool to see the animals actually using this,” Wagner said. Better culverts struck me as a form of ecological justice, reconnecting the rivers that infrastructure had sundered.

For all the virtues of culvert replacement, however, many transportation departments have been slow to pursue it for the usual reason: money. The Little Skookum Creek project seemed straightforward, but it cost more than $2.7 million, and other streams require far larger fixes. That afternoon, Wagner took me to Coffee Creek, a humble trickle that, decades earlier, had been interred under 30 feet of earthen roadbed where it passed beneath a highway. Rather than excavating all that fill, the agency had decided it would be simpler to reroute the whole stream through a new artificial channel. We stood on a bluff and surveyed the unfinished creek, which lay as bare and muddy as a ditch in drought. The undertaking would ultimately cost around $20 million, Wagner said, sounding a touch rueful. Culverts might be inconspicuous, but they didn’t come cheap.

In 2021, the United States’ culvert-funding shortfall caught the belated attention of politicians. That November, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a $1.2 trillion package that included money for everything from high-speed rail to electric vehicle charging stations to basic highway repairs. Tucked deep in the law’s thousand-odd pages was a section that attracted little media coverage, but had immense consequences for fish: the National Culvert Removal, Replacement, and Restoration Grant Program.

Visitors view a widened passage for salmon to swim up the Middle Fork of the Newaukum River under Middle Fork Road near Chehalis, Lewis County, Nov. 20, 2019. (Ted S. Warren/AP)

Nearly a year later, when the program opened for applications, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe’s Peter Barber — a longtime tribal employee, though not a member — was approached by a representative from the BNSF Railway. The company had caught wind of the new funding and wondered if Barber knew of any fish-blocking culverts on their rail line. Barber thought immediately of Hardy Creek.

Together, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and the railway crafted an ambitious grant application. They proposed tearing out the narrow culvert and swapping in a 33-meter-wide bridge, made of prefabricated parts that the railroad could plug in so quickly that service on the Columbia River line would only cease for 32 hours. The bridge wouldn’t just accommodate the free flow of water and fish, it would also allow the woody debris and fresh gravel to tumble down from Hardy Creek’s headwaters. The gravel would settle downstream, affording adult salmon clean, rocky substrate in which to spawn; the wood would shelter their fry. The old culvert had distorted the stream’s entire structure and ecosystem; a new bridge would set things right.

In August 2023, the Federal Highway Administration announced the recipients of the first round of culvert funding. Among the winners was Hardy Creek, which received the full $5 million that the Cowlitz and BNSF had requested. When I spoke with Barber a few months later, he still seemed astonished. “It was one of those problems that I never thought I would see fixed in my lifetime,” he said.

Hardy Creek found itself in good company. All told, the program’s first cycle gave 59 state, tribal and local governments $196 million to pull out nearly 170 fish-blocking culverts. To no one’s surprise, the bulk of the funding went to Pacific salmonids: There were projects aimed at steelhead in California, chinook in Oregon and coho in Washington. Some grants are relatively modest in scope — $470,000 to California’s Wiyot Tribe to replace a culvert on Butte Creek, for instance — and others immense. The Alaska Department of Transportation got $20 million to replace up to a dozen dilapidated, undersized culverts along the highway that leads to Denali National Park and Preserve, a mammoth restoration project that will benefit all five species of Pacific salmon.

“We have salmon everywhere, we have habitat everywhere,” says the department’s Eisenman. “This lets us start fixing some problems.”

While Pacific salmon were the big winners, eastern fish earned some love, too. The town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, got $2 million to swap out culverts that hamper herring; Maine’s Passamaquoddy Tribe received nearly $8 million to aid a suite of fish that includes sea lamprey and tomcod. The Virginia Department of Transportation got $434,000 to replace a pair of narrow pipes beneath Montague Island Road that prevent shad, blueback herring, alewife and sturgeon from swimming up a brackish channel that goes by the inglorious name of Mud Creek. According to Amy Golden, program manager in the department’s environmental division, the agency plans to install a larger, embedded culvert capable of passing four times as much water as the existing pipe — a culvert that won’t blast away the fish attempting to navigate it.

Mud Creek also illustrates another deficiency of culverts: They frustrate human movements as well as fish migration. Several times a year, says Golden, incoming storm surges overwhelm the Mud Creek culvert and gush onto Montague Island Road, damaging its surface and denying locals access to their homes. This is an increasingly common predicament. Culverts, already the Achilles heels of road networks, are becoming even more vulnerable as the climate changes. They’re swamped by king tides, clogged by landslides, and battered by deluges; during 2011’s Tropical Storm Irene, roughly 1,000 culverts washed out in Vermont alone, closing many roads. The same enlarged culverts that help fish are also less liable to get plugged by debris or inundated by storm surges. “We can address a maintenance need, a fish passage need and a resilience need, all at the same time,” Golden says.

Perhaps the most powerful virtue of culvert replacement is that it fundamentally reconnects land and sea. Fish-blocking culverts are forces of disunity that prevent anadromous fish from contributing their oceanic phosphorus and nitrogen to forests, and starve marine predators dependent on healthy stocks. In Western Washington’s King County, for example, culverts within the Bear Creek basin have curtailed populations of chinook salmon, a key food source for Puget Sound’s beleaguered killer whales. A grant of nearly $7 million will allow the county to replace three inadequate Bear River culverts — and, with luck, restitch the torn linkages between marine and terrestrial environments.

“We’re allowing those ocean nutrients to once again go up the watershed,” says Evan Lewis, who leads the county’s fish passage restoration program. “Salmon are self-propelled bags of fertilizer.”

Around the world, other countries are also kicking lousy culverts to the curb. In France, faulty culverts have been torn out for the sake of Atlantic salmon and brown trout; in New Zealand, they’ve been removed for smelt, eels and torrentfish. In British Columbia, home to more than 90,000 fish-blocking culverts, a host of conservation groups and government agencies aredeveloping a strategic plan to remove the most egregious blockages. The United States is leading the charge, but its $1 billion culvert replacement program is no piscine panacea. The Washington State Department of Transportation recently estimated that it would cost around $7.5 billion to deal with the hundreds of fish-blocking culverts it’s required to fix on behalf of Indigenous tribes—to say nothing of perhaps 20,000 more on roads owned by counties, towns and private entities.

The program is also limited by geography. Although the only culverts eligible for funding are those that obstruct sea-run fish, many landlocked species also migrate. In the Great Lakes region alone, perhaps 250,000 culverts confound suckers, pike, brook trout and other freshwater denizens. These fish won’t benefit from federal largesse, yet they need help as surely as any coho or chum.

Moreover, culverts so thoroughly warp streams that their damage isn’t easily undone. In Hardy Creek, decades’ worth of sediment has gathered above the BNSF Railway’s culvert; when the blockade comes out, the stream will be free — along with several tons of accumulated silt. Culvert removal thus can’t proceed until the Cowlitz Indian Tribe also installs log jams to capture the liberated sediment; otherwise, Barber says, downstream eggs and fry could suffocate. What’s more, after the railroad culvert comes out, Hardy Creek’s salmon will still face another impassable pipe beneath a state highway just upstream. (Barber hopes to eventually replace that one, too.) Ponder the culvert crisis too long, and it quickly swells to intractable proportions.

Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Rep. Kim Schrier, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe Chair Jaison Elkins, Rep. Rick Larsen, Sen. Patty Murray, Sen. Maria Cantwell and King County Executive Dow Constantine tour a culvert near Maple Valley on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022. (Amanda Snyder/Cascade PBS)

Like many wicked problems, there’s only one way to tackle culverts: one pipe at a time. Sometime in the near future — two years from now, or three, or five — a female chum salmon, battle-scarred and tattered with incipient death, will power up Hardy Creek. She’ll pause to rest in the pools behind woody debris and inspect new gravel beds that have settled below riffles. Libidinous males will gather in her wake. At some point in her quest, she will swim up a stretch of newly reconstructed channel and beneath a capacious railroad bridge where once a culvert stood. With luck, she’ll never notice.

Hakai Magazine originally published this article on March 26, 2024. Hakai Magazine is an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems.

Topics:

Seattle City Council rejects affordable-housing development bill

Josh Cohen — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 14:40:41 PDT

A Seattle City Councilmember’s effort to incentivize the construction of apartment buildings that include affordable housing and ground-floor community amenities appears dead in the water after her land use committee colleagues voted against the bill on April 17.

Councilmember Tammy Morales’ Connected Communities Pilot would have allowed private or nonprofit developers to build higher or wider buildings, skip design review, and be exempted from certain development fees if they partnered with community organizations to construct projects where at least 30% of the units are subsidized at below-market rates and the ground floor included an asset such as a child care center or health care facility. The pilot was proposed to last until 2029 or allow 35 projects, whichever happened sooner.

Those partner community organizations would likely have been nonprofit entities that work with refugees, immigrants, communities of color, LGBTQ+ communities and people experiencing homelessness or at risk of economic displacement.

Morales amended her legislation to address concerns raised by colleagues at an earlier committee meeting, especially around the income level the affordable units would be targeted toward, as well as a complicated home ownership provision.

In the previous version of the bill, which Cascade PBS reported on in March, the subsidized units had to be affordable to a household earning 80% or less of the Seattle area median income, which is $70,650 for a single person and $100,900 for a family of four. At the time, Councilmembers Tanya Woo and Maritza Rivera expressed concern that 80% of median income did not sufficiently help lower-income residents.

The earlier bill also included a provision to allow a homeowner to contribute their land to a development project in exchange for a condo unit in the building that they’d own in perpetuity. Councilmembers Cathy Moore and Rivera opposed the provision primarily because the city lacks authority to get involved in third party negotiations like those between a developer and a homeowner.

Morales amended the bill to require the subsidized studio and one-bedroom units to be affordable to households earning 60% or less of area median income ($57,550 for an individual), down from 80%. Two-bedroom units or larger would still be pegged at 80% of area median income.

Morales explained that in meetings with the Office of Housing and developers, she heard that the private market in Seattle already provides studios and one-bedrooms that someone earning 80% area median income can afford. But the private market is not providing apartments with two or more bedrooms that are affordable to a family earning 80% of area median income.

The amended proposal removed the complex homeownership piece.

Despite the changes, the majority of the land use committee voted against the bill on Wednesday. Moore, Rivera and Woo voted no. The councilmembers said that they were concerned about passing a new development incentive while the City Council reviews the Comprehensive Plan update, which will address zoning regulations citywide.

Moore said that she appreciated Morales’ and Strauss’ efforts to address the affordable housing crisis, but that she thought, “A more effective approach to attaining citywide neighborhood affordability is to make the benefit of development capacity generally available to all and to do so through the draft Comprehensive Plan currently before Council.”

Councilmember Dan Strauss abstained from voting. He said, “I do believe in your bill and the intent you’re bringing it forward with.” But Strauss wanted to introduce amendments that weren’t yet ready, primarily to align the development incentives in the Connected Communities pilot with those in a 2021 ordinance that allows a development bonus for affordable housing projects on property owned by religious institutions.

Morales was the lone yes vote for her bill and expressed her frustration with the idea of waiting to finalize the Comprehensive Plan and with the Council’s general inaction on legislation since taking office in January.

“This is not a controversial bill. Cutting red tape to let organizations like Habitat for Humanity build more homes is not controversial. In the midst of this housing crisis, we have to be bold and take action. We’ve been here for four months, and we’ve not passed any significant legislation so far,” Morales said at the committee meeting.

The Connected Communities legislation almost didn’t make it to a committee vote on Wednesday.

After initially moving her bill for a discussion and vote, Morales was met with more than 30 seconds of silence from her colleagues. Even when legislation is destined for rejection, it is extremely rare for Councilmembers not to second a colleague’s bill as a courtesy to allow the discussion and vote to happen.

Strauss was first to speak up and explained that he was not comfortable voting on the bill without his not-yet-ready amendments.

Moore eventually provided the “second” necessary to allow a discussion and vote. She said, “I want this bill to be resolved today. I don’t think it’s fair to the chair or the rest of the members of this committee to continue to engage in committee time on this issue.”

Committee votes on legislation do not determine a bill’s final fate. Committees vote on whether to recommend or oppose the full City Council’s passage of a bill. The Connected Communities legislation will still go to the full Council for a vote on April 30, but likely does not have the majority support necessary to pass.

Topics: development, Housing, Seattle City Government

Whatcom County paid $225K to settle sexual harassment complaints

Brandon Block — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 05:00:00 PDT

Whatcom County officials paid $225,000 last November to settle claims that a former Public Works director sexually harassed a female employee for more than two years.

Jon Hutchings resigned in lieu of termination in October 2022, just one day before a third-party investigator interviewed three female employees who reported Hutchings had made sexual comments to them or touched them inappropriately while at work.

But county leaders never formally disciplined Hutchings or adjudicated the complaints. And they helped him get a new job, writing a favorable “letter of introduction.”

“It has been a pleasure working with Jon and I am very confident that he will serve your organization well,” the letter concludes, signed by the county executive and deputy executive.

As a legal condition of Hutchings’ departure, county leaders also agreed not to disclose information about his misconduct to future employers. Hutchings now runs the Public Works department for Lynden, a city of about 16,000 people 15 miles north of Bellingham. He did not respond to a request for an interview.

Lynden’s city code requires department heads to be appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city council. Mayor Scott Korthuis did not respond to multiple calls and emails, and City Administrator John Williams declined to say how much they knew about Hutchings’ past behavior when the city hired him, referring to it as a “personnel matter.”

This story is part of Cascade PBS’s WA Workplace Watch, an investigative project covering worker safety and labor in Washington state.

Cascade PBS reached out to Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu, Deputy Executive Tyler Schroeder, and current Public Works Director Elizabeth Kosa, who served as assistant director before Hutchings resigned. None responded to interview requests for this story.

Whatcom County spokesperson Jed Holmes wrote in an email to Cascade PBS that the county is committed to investigating allegations of inappropriate workplace behavior, but officials did not respond to detailed questions about Hutchings’ departure.

“[D]ue to this commitment to providing a safe, fair and respectful work environment,” Holmes responded, “we are not going to grant your interview requests on the subject of your email.”

Multiple complaints

Internal records reveal that three different women reported Hutchings for repeatedly hugging them without their consent, touching a female employee’s thigh and asking a high-ranking manager to see pictures of her in a swimsuit.

One female employee, who we will call “Wendy,” first reported her discomfort with Hutchings in the fall of 2021. (Cascade PBS has granted the woman's request for anonymity to protect her privacy as a victim of alleged sexual harassment.)

The county’s initial response to her complaint was to organize a “facilitated counseling session” with her, Hutchings and a “coach.” Records show no further follow-up for nearly a year after her initial complaint, with HR re-engaging only after a second employee came forward to report inappropriate comments and touching.

Text messages Wendy submitted to HR show Hutchings frequently contacted her on nights and weekends about personal topics, sharing family frustrations, inviting her on walks, commenting on her body and in one case telling her that he “like[s] feeling like the one who can take care of you.”

Wendy was hesitant to bring her concerns to HR after reporting her previous boss for harassment in 2014, according to a letter her lawyer sent to the county. Notes from a manager who interviewed Wendy noted she was “very skeptical” of HR due to how the previous complaint was handled and “will not be interviewed in a group setting with HR again.”

Find tools and resources in Cascade PBS’s Check Your Work guide to search workplace safety records and complaints for businesses in your community.

Internal records show Wendy told HR she had known Hutchings for 15 years and largely enjoyed working with him until 2020, when he began focusing unwelcome attention on her.

Hutchings called her nicknames like “sweetie,” “sunshine,” “baby” and “momma.” He would hug her without asking, sometimes from behind, often enough that she put up a “no hugs” sign at her desk.

Wendy provided screenshots of 120 texts out of more than 200 she said Hutchings sent her over two years. A sample of texts circulated to senior county HR officials reveal largely one-sided conversations in which Hutchings expresses anguish over his family, seeks emotional support, offers to bring her flowers and fresh eggs, and invites her to watch the moonrise. After inviting her for a walk on a Saturday, he adds, “This is not a date!”

“Just home from sailing,” Hutchings texted one Saturday at 6:52 p.m. “Starting fire, listening to Jack Johnson. What you doing?”

In an email to Cascade PBS relayed through her lawyer, Wendy wrote that she tried at first to be patient with Hutchings, but eventually he “took it way too far.”

“My family would question me whenever they would visit or I would visit them,” she wrote, “why does your boss text you all the time at all hours?”

She first reported Hutchings’ behavior to then-Assistant Director Elizabeth Kosa in September 2021, according to HR records. She also confronted Hutchings that same day, according to a log she provided to HR.

About one week later, Kosa organized a “facilitated counseling session” with Hutchings, Wendy and a person HR later referred to as a “coach.” Wendy was “very clear in telling Mr. Hutchings to stop communicating with her after hours [and] about his personal life,” according to Kosa’s account in a third-party investigation report.

After the meeting, Hutchings began to treat Wendy differently at work, she told the investigator. He excluded her from important work and undermined her in front of colleagues, in one case criticizing her for wearing flip-flops. Three days after inviting her to the non-date walk, he yelled at her during a work meeting, saying “I’m done with you. I’m not talking to you anymore,” according to a log she submitted to HR. He then apologized and scheduled a meeting to discuss his feelings about her.

County email records appear to indicate that for nearly a full year following Wendy’s complaint, leadership took no further investigative or disciplinary action.

Then in early September 2022, as Hutchings cleaned out COVID-19 supplies from an operations office alongside a female worker, he held a thermometer up to her forehead to take her temperature and said, “You’re a hottie,” according to HR records. The worker later recalled to an investigator that Hutchings had put his hand on her thigh during a leadership training in 2016 or 2017.

The county brought in a third-party investigator to interview Wendy and the operations worker in late October 2022. The investigative report echoed what the female employees told Kosa and later HR. It also revealed Hutchings had allegedly told a third female colleague he would “need to see a photo of her underwater, in her swimsuit” after she shared plans for diving.

But unbeknownst to the women, Hutchings had already emailed Schroeder, the deputy executive, saying he would resign. Before the investigative report was delivered, Hutchings and senior county leaders had largely hammered out an agreement that would allow him to characterize his departure as a resignation and required the county to omit information about his misconduct when contacted by future employers.

By the time the investigative report came back, the county had already started drafting Hutchings a letter of recommendation. The investigator did not interview Hutchings.

‘Going on a long time’

Meeting minutes show the Lynden City Council confirmed Hutchings as their Public Works director on May 15, 2023.

Mayor Korthuis did not respond to inquiries about Hutchings. It remains unclear how much the city of Lynden knew about Hutchings’ behavior when they hired him.

“It sickens and infuriates me how much he was not held accountable for his actions and how much he was protected,” Wendy wrote in an email. “In my opinion they clearly went out of their way on that agreement to hide everything, and to protect the abuser at the expense of the victim.”

Wendy noted that Whatcom County has updated its sexual harassment trainings since Hutchings’ departure and updated policies to require full investigations of all complaints, but said she needed years of therapy to deal with the “daily toll” of the abuse. The nonstop messages exhausted her physically and mentally, she wrote, to the point that she developed severe stomach pain leading to multiple emergency room trips.

Wendy’s attorney sent a letter to the county on Oct. 24, 2023, accusing the county of violating federal and state laws against discrimination based on sex and retaliation against those who report it.

“It seems in this case that the county actually supported [Wendy’s] abuser,” the attorney wrote, “and certainly failed to take prompt and effective action to stop the discrimination.”

The letter alleges that despite agreeing not to contact her, Hutchings in April 2023 left a note in her mailbox that indicated an interest in re-engaging in a relationship with her. He also included a gift: a book on personal boundaries. Hutchings’ separation agreement with Whatcom County references a recent no-contact directive, although it does not say with whom.

The letter sought $400,000 and “prospective anti-sex discrimination corrective action as negotiated.” A settlement agreement shows the county ultimately paid $225,000.

Wendy had kept a log of her interactions with Hutchings, which she later submitted to HR. An HR representative annotated Wendy’s log in pencil, circling the date when Wendy first confronted Hutchings.

“I told him I was uncomfortable with his level of engaging me outside of work in personal matters (texting etc.) and that it was bordering on becoming super inappropriate,” Wendy wrote in that day’s entry.

The HR representative underlined the beginning of the next sentence.

“This has been going on a long time.”

Article continues below Related Stories

Topics: Labor, Washington Workplace Watch, Crosscut Investigates, Investigations

State audit says WA police seizures require more transparency

Jerry Cornfield — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 04:59:00 PDT

When police believe property like a car, boat or even just cash is tied to a crime, they can seize it and in many instances keep the proceeds.

The practice is known as civil asset forfeiture. A new audit finds that law enforcement agencies here in Washington are complying with the state’s seizure law, but could do more to help people trying to reclaim property they’ve lost and to be more transparent about how the system works.

In a 110-page report released last week, the State Auditor’s Office delves into a program long used by police in combating drug-related crimes that has drawn fire from critics concerned that property of some racial and ethnic groups is disproportionately targeted.

“This independent analysis offers a clearer picture of a little-understood aspect of our criminal justice system,” State Auditor Pat McCarthy said in a statement. “Our audit shows that greater transparency regarding civil asset forfeiture can help Washington continue to discourage wrongdoing by seizing the material elements of crime while also protecting every person’s right to due process.”

State law allows the police to retain up to 90% of the proceeds from forfeited property.

Officers can seize property without arresting, charging or convicting the property owner of a crime, under the law. Technically, civil asset forfeiture is a lawsuit brought by the police agency against the property itself, not the owner, according to the audit.

Police must show – usually to an administrator, not a trial judge and jury – that the property was involved in or is the proceeds of a crime. Since it is a civil case, police do not have to prove that the property owner was guilty of committing a crime. To try to get their property back, owners must file a claim, which assures them a chance to prove they obtained the seized assets legitimately.

If the owner doesn’t file a claim by a given deadline, it is considered forfeited. That’s when it may get auctioned and proceeds kept by the law enforcement agency.

Washington law allows the same police agency that seized property to decide the forfeiture case — an apparent conflict of interest, according to the audit.

For police agencies and the federal government, it’s a tool to help disrupt criminal organizations by confiscating their assets and plowing any proceeds back into crime fighting.

“Following the law … could do more”

The performance audit released Thursday looked at the forfeiture practices in eight city, county and state agencies between January 2020 and December 2022. They were the Centralia, Seattle and Yakima police departments; the Grant County and Spokane County sheriff’s offices; Washington State Patrol; the Grays Harbor County Drug Task Force and the Port of Seattle police, which covers SeaTac International Airport.

Collectively, the agencies conducted 865 civil asset forfeiture cases, with the number of cases for each agency ranging from 27 to 265. The value of property agencies seized ranged from as low as $3.50 to over $450,000, with cash accounting for nearly 75% of property seized, auditors found.

“We concluded that while the agencies we audited followed state law, they could do more to ensure people receive notice of the police’s intent to forfeit their property and understand how to reclaim it,” auditors found.

One of the recommendations is to ensure individuals receive written notice and materials are produced in languages other than English.

While Washington law does require police to collect certain information about the property, it does not require gathering demographic information on those whose assets are seized.

Auditors analyzed U.S. census data on surnames and the racial and ethnic makeup of geographic locations to see if there were any inequities among cases handled by the eight agencies. There were.

They found that people who were Black, Hispanic or of Asian and Pacific Islander descent had their property seized at significantly higher rates than their share of the local population in cases reported by Grant County, Port of Seattle, City of Seattle, Yakima and the Washington State Patrol.

For Spokane County and the Grays Harbor County task force, the share of forfeitures for white people exceeded their percentage of the population.

Going forward, auditors recommend police agencies be required to track demographic data on each case. Other data they suggest be collected annually include details on property seized and forfeited, use of proceeds, outcomes of civil and criminal cases tied to seizures, and the number of cases in which a person filed a claim to contest the law enforcement action.

Designating a neutral party outside of law enforcement to oversee forfeiture decisions could help address the perceived conflict of interest of having police deciding cases, the auditors also said.

They urged the Legislature to set up a workgroup to look at the issues raised in the report.

Agree to disagree

Each of the audited agencies responded in December. In general, they agreed with calls for gathering additional data, increasing transparency and doing more to ensure people are aware of the process for reclaiming their property before it is auctioned.

Some also expressed concern with the tone of the report, concerned authors had been too influenced by consulting interested parties opposed to civil asset forfeiture laws across the country.

“This audit was not born out of curiosity, a desire to learn asset forfeiture, or as part of a random procedure to evaluate programs within the state. It is evident the stakeholders have a preconceived position and the [State Auditor Office] audit process was used to support the position,” wrote Bronson Faul, senior assistant city attorney for Yakima.

One thing he noted was the report’s repeated description of forfeitures being low-value property. Most of the ones reviewed by auditors were worth $2,000 or less.

Under current market conditions, that sum would buy about one pound of methamphetamine or 2,000 fentanyl pills.

“Categorizing this as low value does not seem appropriate,” he wrote.

Washington State Standard originally published this story on April 11, 2024. Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence.

Topics: criminal justice, Law & Justice, police

ArtSEA: Bed Bath & Beyond meets Bumbershoot

Brangien Davis — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 17:11:15 PDT

The ambiguous promise of Bed Bath & Beyond has long been the source of jokes and fanciful speculation. Might you find a panini press? Or a way to finally connect with your mother-in-law? When the Downtown store shuttered in 2018 (well before the retail chain became an online-only brand), Vanishing Seattle pondered “Bed Bath & Beyond Help?”

At least for this location, what’s “beyond” has been clarified. The long-vacant 66,000-square-foot space — a 1960 building that looks like it’s being trampled by its own parking garage — is becoming a new arts and performance space called Cannonball Arts. The effort is led by local production company New Rising Sun, the group that brought Bumbershoot back to life last year with the aim of returning the festival to its funkier, artsier origins.

Creative director Greg Lundgren has a long history of giving artful new life to Seattle’s abandoned spaces, including Vital 5 Gallery (in a former car dealership), Out of Sight exhibits at the (pre-renovation) King Street Station, and the (now closed) Museum of Museums in an unused Swedish Medical Center facility. This time it’s a dormant department store that will come alive with installations, videos, concerts, dance, contemporary Native art and emerging technology. Created in partnership with the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and set to open in spring 2025 — after a makeover by SHED Architecture — the new arts center will bring the creative energy of Bumbershoot to a year-round, downtown setting. Meanwhile, the lineup for this year’s Bumbershoot (again curated by New Rising Sun; Aug. 31 - Sept. 1) is starting to emerge. In addition to plenty of live music, expect an Out of Sight contemporary art exhibit, free-range dance performances across the festival grounds, the Bumbermania! wrestling show (hilarious, and one of my faves from last year), a deep-fake BigFoot competition and the return of the insanely popular Cat Circus.

“Wishlist,” by Portland artist Jessica Jackson Hutchins, part of her solo show ‘Wrecked and Righteous.’ (Frye Art Museum)

We’re coming up on Earth Day (April 22), and nothing says earth like clay. The malleability of humanity’s earliest medium is well represented by several shows currently on view in Seattle. < London-based artist Claire Partington is showing her exquisite and curious ceramic figures in The Limerents at Winston Wachter Gallery (April 25 - June 12). Blending Greek myths and pop culture, these finely wrought glazed earthenware pieces offer an amusing take on all-consuming obsession. See: Adonis, sporting Nikes and gold shin guards while staring into his gold phone; and Daphne, turning into a tree while decked out in gold hoops and yoga duds. < On the other end of the ceramic spectrum, head to the Frye Art Museum for extra-large and gloriously lumpy sculptures by Jessica Jackson Hutchins in Wrecked and Righteous (through May 5). The Portland artist creates large assemblages of glazed clay clomped onto household objects (such as chairs and couches). The result feels both funny and hefty — giving a visceral sense of what it’s like to be an unwieldy human moving about in the world.

< At Wa Na Wari, Nigeria-based Cameroonian artist Djakou Kassi Nathalie will present several of her meticulously carved clay sculptures as part of a new group show (April 27 - July 20). The clothes — and sometimes hair — of these compelling figures consist of thickly textured and intricately cut mask shapes that contrast strikingly with the subjects’ smooth skin. Both familiar and often deliberately out of scale, they beckon you to look closer. < For extra credit: Head to new downtown Mount Vernon gallery Leonard Brothers Fine Art, where the Tulip Time Invitational (through April 27) pays tribute to the annual flower festival with a cheeky array of clay. (Side note: The tulips are in peak bloom right now and I can attest they are totally worth a visit.) Curated by Shoreline ceramics gallery Modern Glaze, the group show features appealingly abstract vessels, tantalizing towers and a pair of fantastic flexed feet — all the better for tiptoeing through the you-know-whats.

“Without Fear (Amelia Earhart)” by Jeffrey Veregge. (Stonington Gallery)

The Northwest lost an artist of unique vision last week: muralist and Marvel comic cover artist Jeffrey Veregge. He died of a heart attack on April 12, after a long struggle with complications due to lupus. He was 50. A member of the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, Veregge developed his signature style by blending traditional Coast Salish formline techniques with his own love of pop culture, space exploration and comic book heroes. He dubbed his unmistakable look “Salish Geek.”

“People have an idea of what Native art is and what Salish art is,” Veregge told Crosscut in May 2020. “I want people to see that it can be contemporary in a way that still honors the intention of the form and the storytelling, but in a way that is new and unexpected.”

Unexpectedness is the charm of Veregge’s work, in which he portrayed Star Wars, Batman, the Seattle Seahawks and NASA missions with Salish flair and a midcentury modern sheen.

You can find his exuberant “Reaching for Space” design on T-shirts at the Space Needle gift shop, peruse his space-age prints at Stonington Gallery, see his superhero work for Marvel comics, and check out one of his large murals in the staircase leading to the underground parking lot at Climate Pledge Arena. Installed in 2021, the latter piece tells the story of our region in chronological layers, from the past to the future, bottom upward: Indigenous canoers and longhouses make way for settler homes, and above those, robot birds fly among tall trees rooted in history.

Veregge’s most recent installation adorns the new Tapestry apartment complex at 12th and Yesler, where his exterior design feature is visible from the street. He based the cascading metal “waterfall” on Salish basket-weaving patterns, and incorporated sleek formline bluebirds, which he said were flying upward to carry hope to the heavens.

Topics: Arts, ArtSEA, Features, Things to do

Your Last Meal | Tom Papa baked sourdough bread before you did

Rachel Belle — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 05:00:00 PDT

Topics:

The Newsfeed: Are Seattle's public gathering spaces vanishing?

Paris Jackson — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 04:59:00 PDT

Topics: Multimedia, Video