A big measles outbreak in British Columbia has crossed over the border into the American Northwest.
Health officers in B.C.’s Fraser Valley have confirmed over 350 cases of measles there since an outbreak started in early March. Six additional cases have now been diagnosed in Whatcom County, Wash., including a woman in her 20s who has prompted a regionwide alert.
While contagious, she mingled with crowds at a rock concert at Seattle’s Key Arena. She also visited Puget Sound tourist attractions such as the Pike Place Market, LeMay Car Museum and Harmon Brewing Company in Tacoma.
Whatcom County Health Officer Greg Stern says this measles outbreak traces back to a religious community in British Columbia’s “Bible Belt.”
“To the extent that people avoid vaccines, they increase both their risk and the risk of the community so that it can take hold. I’m worried about that.”
Already this year, seven cases of measles have been reported to the Washington State Department of Health. That compares to just five over the entire course of last year.
In recent years, the Washington and Oregon legislatures have made it harder to get vaccination exemptions for school-age children.
Mi’kmaq Warriors and Elsipogtog anti-fracking struggle update
The Mi’kmaq Warriors, Germaine Jr Breau & Aaron Francis who have been held in custody since the day of the raid on Oct 17th, are now facing trial in Moncton courts. They are currently facing indictable charges for being true to their inherent responsibilities as L’nu people by protecting the lands and waters against corporate imperialists, SWN. We are unsure how much longer Aaron & Jr will have to sit in jail, having already served over 5 months without conviction. The financial burden of supporting imprisoned warriors has been carried solely by the family and loved ones and it’s time that changed. Again we are uncertain as to the outcomes of sentencing, but Jr & Aaron have plead to a number of charges. Support funds will be used for canteen, phone calls (which are both collect & long distance), gas for visits, etc. Please donate here http://www.gofundme.com/jailedwarriors Thanks to everyone for their ongoing and continued support!!
Viola Carol Gomez was born on June 20, 1979, a Wednesday, and passed away on March 31, 2014, a Monday. She was a beloved mother, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, cousin, and friend who will always be in our hearts. She is survived by her children, Isabel, Olivia, Raul Jr., Sebastian, and Yasmani; her parents, Lillian and Juan Gomez Sr.; her grandmother, Liboria Gomez Perez; her sisters, Danelle and Jose Loera and Alicia Amador; her brother, Juan Gomez Jr. and Candy Brown; her niece and nephews, Danicio, Talia, Victor, Juan III, and Raphael; her aunts and uncles, Alicia Cruz, Dennis Hegnes Sr., Bertha Jimenez-Gomez, Jaime Jimenez, Leticia Jimenez, Hugo and Francisca Muñoz-Gomez, Mario Muñoz-Gomez, and David Spencer Sr.; and numerous cousins. She is preceded in death by her grandparents, Lillian and William “Duke” Jones; her grandfather, Juan Salas-Adame; her aunts, Viola Jones Spencer, Marion Jones Hegnes, and Rosemary “Posie” Cross Jones; her uncles, Frankie Charles, Gustavo Cortez Sr., Donald “Dukie” Jones, and Emmett Jones and two infants; and cousins, Lloyd Jones, Janel Spencer, and Dawn Shirley Spencer. Visitation will be held on Thursday, April 3, 2014 at 1:00 p.m. at Schaefer-Shipman Funeral Home with an Interfaith Service to follow at 6:00 p.m. at the Tulalip Tribal Gym. Funeral will be held Friday, April 4, 2014 at 10:00 a.m. at the Tulalip Tribal Gym with burial following at Mission Beach Cemetery. Arrangements entrusted to Schaefer-Shipman.
See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/heraldnet/obituary.aspx?n=viola-carol-gomez&pid=170474896&fhid=2242#sthash.V0UVvrxY.dpuf
Neighbors Helping Neighbors Concert at Tulalip Resort Casino
WHO: Tulalip Resort Casino, country music star Chance McKinney, with Ron Stubbs as the opening act
WHAT:
A live concert to raise Oso Landslide Relief funds, with a goal of a sell-out event
$20 entry charge at the door, with 100% of the admission proceeds benefiting the Oso community
Each attendee will receive a drawing ticket to win an autographed guitar by Chance McKinney
The total donation will become part of an account set up by Union Bank of Edmonds and Cascade Valley Hospital. Proceeds will be used to assist the victims and their families. Additional donations may be made at the event
WHY: A large landslide destroying a sizable part of the Oso community, covering nearly a square mile with mud and debris, as well as claiming at least 27 lives“It’s not often we’re called upon to help neighbors in such dire need, but when the opportunity arises, nobody can say the Pacific Northwest isn’t up for the challenge!” says Chance McKinney.
Tulalip COO and President Ken Kettler concurs, “Our goal is to deliver funds directly back to the Oso community, where the need is epic and every dollar helps chip away at the sheer magnitude.”
A coal mine in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. Elected officials from the Northwest and beyond want Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber to stop the Morrow Pacific project, which transfer Powder River Basin coal to Asia by way of the Columbia River. | credit: Katie Campbell
Dozens of elected officials from across the region are asking Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and a state agency director to deny a key permit for a coal export project on the Columbia River.
The request went out in the form of a letter from 86 officials including mayors, city councilors and state lawmakers from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.
They want the governor and Oregon Department of State Lands Director Mary Abrams to stop the Morrow Pacific coal export project. The project would ship nearly 9 million tons of coal a year from Wyoming and Montana to Asia by trains, barges and ships.
Opponents say the state of Oregon can stop the project by denying a permit project developer Ambre Energy needs to build a dock for coal barges at the Port of Morrow in Boardman. Oregon Representative Jules Bailey of Portland is one of the officials who wants to see that happen. He says Gov. Kitzhaber has “a lot of tools at his disposal” that he could to deny the project.
“I think where there’s a will there’s a way,” he said. “Folks in state government from the governor on down ought to be looking for ways we can have a more responsible, sustainable path.”
Kitzhaber spokeswoman Rachel Wray says the permit in question is issued by the state lands department “a standards-based review process.”
She says isn’t aware of any plans for the governor to get involved in that permitting process.
Last month, the Oregon Department of State Lands notified the company that it will also need to lease state land in the areas where the project would operate over state-owned land submerged in water. That will require additional state approval.
The Morrow Pacific project is the smallest of three proposed coal export facilities that mining and shipping interests want to build in the Pacific Northwest. The Gateway Pacific project proposed north of Bellingham Washington would ship 48 million tons a year and the Millenium Bulk terminal in Longview would ship up to 44 million tons of coal. All three projects would receive Wyoming or Montana coal hauled in by train. The terminals would transfer the coal to ocean-going vessels bound for Asian markets.
“Maybe that hillside is a danger to me,” says Ben Van Dusen, looking towards the steep foothills of Mt. Index less than a 1/4 mile from his home. “I didn’t think it was but maybe it is.” | credit: Ashley Ahearn
MT. INDEX RIVER SITES, Wash. — The landslide in Oso, Wash. served as a devastating reminder of one fact of life in the Northwest: landslides happen.
In some places, it’s a risk people have learned to live with — places like the Mt. Index River Sites, a loose cluster of homes along the Skykomish River northeast of Seattle in the Cascade Mountains.
Map image showing a landslide deposit west of Index.
Credit: Tony Schick
Since December, landslides have destroyed a dozen homes and wiped out the only access road to this community. No one was hurt.
Loren Brayton pushes his camouflage hat back on his head and puts down his chainsaw for a minute to talk. He’s cutting away tree trunks that are blocking the road to his cabin site.
“All that slid last night. I got stuck on the other side,” he said.
Brayton’s family has owned a sliver of rocky property next to Sunset Falls since the early 1970s. He’s building a cabin there that he hopes to retire in someday.
“I’ve spoken with three geologists. I also drilled into the granite and rebarred in. I’m anchored. These guys built on clay,” he says, gesturing at the destroyed homes littering the hillside above where he’s standing, “So they moved. I won’t.”
Surveying the devastation behind Brayton — the hillside a wall of muck and debris, tin roofs folded in half, bits of houses jutting out amidst stumps and mud-slathered couch cushions — Brayton’s sentiments about the viability of his dwelling seem to faintly echo the sentiments of the three little pigs, but Brayton isn’t worried.
Loren Brayton. Credit: Ashley Ahearn
“When it’s time to go you’ll go. When you’re dead you’re buried under dirt anyway.”
For Brayton, the natural beauty of this place — replete with salmon, bald eagles, osprey and quiet — is worth the risk. But he does acknowledge some parallels with the devastation in Oso, about an hour and a half away. There, the death toll from the March 22 landslide is approaching 30 people.
“For all the people here, there was personal property lost and there was real estate lost. We had no deaths. So I compare this to Oso, but I feel for them more than I do for us. We’ll recover,” Brayton says.
The Skykomish River pounds down over Sunset Falls, a not-too-subtle reminder of how much power water has over this landscape, and how devastating this river can be. Floods occur fairly regularly here, damaging property and forcing people to evacuate. Landslides have taken out other sections of this dirt road in the past.
For the 230 or so people who live on the other side of this slide, ATV is the only way to get in and out. Many of them are without power or water and have been, off and on, for weeks.
But the access road is private so there’s no government money available to fix it. Since December the community has spent close to $60,000 clearing landslide debris off this road again and again.
“I watched our contractor for two months dig one lane through. Faster than he could put it in his dump truck and haul it away, more would come down,” says Lynne Kelly, who has lived here for 30 years and now serves on the community board. “It just keeps coming down and I think people have finally figured out that at some point it has to stop. There is no money.”
Lynne Kelly. Credit: Ashley Ahearn
The community has fought over what to do about the road — whether to keep clearing and repairing it or give up altogether. They’ve gone to court over how the costs of road maintenance should be divvied up among residents. There’s talk of building a bridge over the Skykomish so that people who are blocked in on the far side of the slide can have another means of accessing Highway 2.
But that would cost almost half a million dollars, and there’s not enough money in this community to pay for it. Kelly’s not optimistic about the chances of getting a loan. “For Sale” signs dot this dirt road.
“People are just wrapping their heads around evacuating and changing their lifestyle and as much as I hate to say it, the Oso slide has been a big wake up call,” she says.
Moving elsewhere isn’t an option for everyone. Ben Van Dusen sits in a lawn chair looking out over a collection of old cars slowly rusting in the rain. When the clouds part briefly, out pops craggy white Mount Index towering over his property. Van Dusen has a million-dollar view, but when he bought this little house 19 years ago he paid less than $60,000 for it.
“It’s like standing below Yosemite or the Matterhorn and I never get tired of looking at it,” he says, sipping his tea.
Life may be beautiful here, but it hasn’t been easy. In the past Van Dusen has had to evacuate because of flooding. Landslides took out the road a half-mile away in 2009.
“This is a dangerous place and that’s become much more apparent to me now. Maybe that hillside is a danger to me,” he says, looking towards the steep foothills of Mount Index less than a quarter-mile away. “I didn’t think it was but maybe it is.”
But Van Dusen says he can’t afford to leave. He delivers magazines and is starting to get some gigs as an actor, but things have been really hard since the recession.
“I’m about ready to go under. I turned the hot water off. I’m living without hot water. I don’t have TV, Comcast, I don’t have any of that. I get DVDs from the library. I use Wi-Fi in town for Internet access so I’m cut to the bare bones here,” he says.
Van Dusen says that as much as he loves the quiet and the wild spirit that drew him here in the first place, he wishes the government would buy all the residents out. People were meant to visit, not live here, he says.
“I would relocate maybe to Skagit County or somewhere out in the flatlands,” he says. “Someplace where I could grow some food and work on these cars.”
The Wild Fish Conservancy sued the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, contending that the agency’s planting of early winter hatchery steelhead violates the Endangered Species Act.
In response, agency officials have decided not to release more than 900,000 juvenile Chambers Creek steelhead in Puget Sound rivers.
Kurt Beardslee is co-founder of the wild fish advocacy group. He says that’s a good sign that fishery managers are taking the lawsuit seriously.
The lawsuit claims that planting this highly domesticated species of ocean-going trout will endanger wild steelhead, chinook and bull trout.
Fish and Wildlife officials say they plan to continue to rear the fish in hatcheries until they are old enough to be released in trout-fishing lakes. That could change, depending on the outcome of the lawsuit.
John McMillan/NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center A wild steelhead, relocated to the Little River, a tributary of the Elwha River, and tagged so it can be tracked. Notice the radio tag.
SAN FRANCISCO –– A confederacy of wild-fish advocates has asked a federal appeals court to stop the release by federal agencies of hatchery steelhead into the Elwha River, saying they could damage wild populations.
The appeal was filed after the advocacy groups failed to stop a release of hatchery salmon last week.
Lower Elwha Klallam tribal hatchery managers released 77,000 coho smolt into the river, beginning the process just before a judge ruled that federal agencies and conservation groups should discuss how many smolt should be released.
Last Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle rejected seven of the advocacy group’s eight motions to stop a hatchery plan that had been developed by several federal agencies to help Elwha River fish runs recover after the removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams.
Settle did rule that federal agencies must review their plans, saying they had not adequately studied the effects of large-scale release of hatchery-reared salmon on wild-fish populations.
Settle ordered the two sides to confer to find a compromise between the government’s plan to release 175,000 hatchery steelhead and 425,000 hatchery coho and the conservation groups’ proposed release of 50,000 of each species before the spring fish runs begin, and to establish a plan for the fall runs.
According to emails filed in U.S. District Court on Thursday and Friday of last week, attorneys for the conservation groups were informed of the hatchery coho release when they attempted to set up a meeting to discuss release numbers.
Court filings showed that tribal fisheries managers began releasing coho smolt March 24 and finished March 27.
Since then, conservation groups Wild Fish Conservancy, Conservation Angler, Federation of Fly Fishers Steelhead Committee and Wild Steelhead Coalition have asked the U.S. 9th District Court of Appeals to issue an emergency injunction to stop the planting of steelhead, a large seagoing trout, from a $16.5 million hatchery built to stock the river.
Settle rejected such an injunction March 12.
“Hatchery fish, even those from wild parents, are far less successful surviving and reproducing over time than wild fish,” said Kurt Beardslee, executive director of the Duvall-based Wild Fish Conservancy.
“Left to their own devices, wild fish are already making it through the sediment plume and reaching spawning grounds.”
The release of the coho was “unfortunate,” Beardslee said, adding that the groups now are focused on the steelhead appeal.
Attorneys for several federal agencies and the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe told the court in responses filed Monday that wild species of Elwha River fish could die off without the introduction of hatchery fish.
“Numerous reviews and a broad consensus of scientists have found that hatcheries are necessary during dam removal to prevent the wild Elwha salmon and steelhead populations from being extinguished by sediment as the dams come down,” said Jim Milbury, spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s West Coast fisheries program.
The groups’ original lawsuit, filed in February 2012, named the federal National Park Service, Department of Commerce, Department of the Interior, NOAA’s Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, saying they should stop planting fish reared in the hatchery.
The groups’ claim against the tribe was dismissed in February 2013.
As part of the largest dam-removal project in U.S. history, federal and tribal agencies developed a plan to restore the fish runs and built a $16.4 million hatchery west of Port Angeles.
The Elwha River once produced 400,000 spawning fish, a number that declined to fewer than 3,000 after the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams were built without fish passage structures in the early 20th century.
In a declaration to U.S. District Court filed Friday, Larry Ward, manager of the tribe’s hatchery, said the coho released in March were “of optimal size and coloration for release” last week. He added that conditions of the river were favorable.
Lower Elwha Klallam attorney Steve Suagee said the goal of the hatchery is to provide a “gene bank” for the wild species.
“The fish that are being produced in the hatchery are all native genetically to the Elwha,” Suagee said. “If we don’t release the smolts and the wild fish are killed by the sediment, then you’ve lost the wild fish.”
Suagee said Tuesday a decision on the injunction could come as soon as next week.
Suagee said the fish were released then to avoid putting them in the river while it was filled with sediment that had built up behind the dams and is now being carried down the river, what he called “the single biggest threat to the fish.”
“For the coho, everything came together last week,” Suagee said. “It was time to go.”
A new tribal Internet gaming consortium is steadily taking shape as part of growing movement of such efforts that are sure to capture the attention of federal regulators and, probably, the courts.
The effort, called the Tribal Internet Gaming Alliance (TIGA), is pursuing what organizers say is the most conservative approach of a recent batch of tribal online gaming pioneers that include the Inter Tribal Gaming Association (ITOGA), founded by several already successful California, Michigan and Oklahoma gaming tribes, and Great Luck LLC, championed by the Alturas Indian Rancheria Tribe of northern California.
“We have immediate, short-term, and long-term goals,” says Jeffrey Nelson, a lawyer with the Indian affairs firm Kanji & Katzen who has played a major role in organizing the TIGA endeavor over the past year. “Immediate: A networked virtual currency play platform where tribes will not have to share their player databases, yet can benefit from shared costs and attract online players into their casinos. Short-term: Development of class II real-money games (poker, slot-like bingo and traditional bingo) where TIGA will take bets from the collective gaming eligible Indian lands of our member tribes. Long-term: Better ability to lobby and compete in statewide, national and international online gaming markets.”
Rather than making an immediate large cash profit, TIGA organizers want to establish a coalition of tribes pursuing the likeminded-interest of shaping federal Internet gaming policy. With signals coming frequently from legislators in Congress indicating they want to tinker in this field, TIGA organizers think the right approach is to have a foot in the water, while not rocking the boat.
Small tribes that have not been able to establish major gaming enterprises to date may be especially interested in joining TIGA, Nelson says, for the relatively safe leverage it provides in getting involved in this field without much legal risk at zero cost to join.
As opposed to ITOGA and Great Luck, TIGA does not plan or even want to take wagers from places that are not in its reservation-based network, which currently includes two tribes, the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe and the Bad River Band Chippewa Tribe. Six council representatives from the two tribes have elected Duane Chapman from Lac du Flambeau as the TIGA Interim Chairman—an interim title because the group does not yet have the three tribes necessary in TIGA’s treaty to make its business committee formally operational.
“Geofencing technology is robust enough to allow TIGA to take real-money bets only from the collective gaming eligible Indian lands of its member tribes,” Nelson says, noting that geofencing refers to different types of technology where platform operators can verify the physical location of the customer, whether that person is sitting at a desktop or on a mobile device; some examples are GPS, cell phone signal triangulation and ISP identification. “With that comes the ability to fence certain areas where you either will not take bets, or conversely where you will only take bets,” he adds. “So TIGA can have a database of gaming eligible Indian lands of its collective member tribes, and [it can] take bets only from customers who are physically present within those areas.”
TIGA also has some international ideas brewing. Letters of support for the alliance have already come in from the Isle of Man and the Kahnawake Gaming Commission in Canada, which means that tribes in TIGA could have avenues of performing gaming within these nations in the future.
Some tribal Internet gaming entrepreneurs and even tribal leaders have questioned why TIGA is choosing a long-term approach to taking part in an online gaming field that is ripe for development right now.
Nelson responds that TIGA is operating under the current parameters of federal law, while also preparing to help shape and compete in any new legislative initiatives.
“If there are any legal challenges, I would expect to win them,” Nelson says. “We are offering a way for tribes to get involved and get ahead of the competition without jeopardizing anybody’s gaming license or future ability to get a gaming license in other jurisdictions.”
Nelson says that it was important to tribal organizers that tribes in TIGA also be able to participate in other Internet gaming activities, and they may belong to groups like ITOGA and Great Luck as well.
Like TIGA, ITOGA and Great Luck organizers believe they are operating within the parameters of the law, yet they are admittedly taking more chances than TIGA.
Lee Helper, an organizer with Great Luck, explains that the class II games his venture offers are available to “anyone anywhere” and “do not have to be on Indian lands.” Great Luck organizers think they are legally sound in offering this service because their online gaming servers are located on sovereign Indian lands, and the games they offer are all web browser accessed and electronically enabled.
ITOGA, meanwhile, has built itself up based largely on the four tribal safe harbor provisions of the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGA). Like Great Luck, ITOGA depends on Internet servers based on Indian reservations, and for a while it intended to it go farther by accepting wagers as loan transactions through tribal-owned payday lending operations. But as scrutiny of the tribal payday lending field has increased, ITOGA decided to shelve that plan, according to a November article in the Washington Post.
Rob Rosette, a lawyer for ITOGA, has made the case that since the federal government has not explicitly said that tribes cannot operate class II gaming over the Internet—and the UIGA provides a path for doing so—it is worth being aggressive here.
Still, some Congress members appear unhappy with the early Internet gaming efforts of both tribes and commercial entities. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) recently introduced bipartisan legislation that would reestablish the 2006-11 federal interpretation of the 1961 Wire Act. Under that interpretation, licensed online gambling in states including New Jersey, Nevada, and Delaware would become illegal. Joe Valandra, CEO of Great Luck, said in a press release that tribal jurisdiction over class II games could be “severely compromised” as well if the bill were passed.
In light of such hurdles, Nelson says TIGA members are happily taking the safe road, yet he notes that it has taken longer than he expected to get three tribes to sign on as founding treaty members.
“Tribes are being careful and doing their due diligence,” Nelson says. “[I]n Indian country, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
