Wild Olympics Campaign

A few years ago, representatives from several local environmental groups got together to think about what might be done to permanently protect the remaining wild Olympic Peninsula watersheds and forests from further degradation.  The result of that brainstorming coupled with about three years of extensive outreach to and feedback from stakeholders, policy makers, and politicians is the Wild Olympics Campaign, a broad proposal to give permanent wilderness designation to 134,000 acres of Forest Service lands, designate 23 new watersheds as Wild and Scenic Rivers, and to make thousands of acres of privately- or state- held lands eligible to be purchased by the government for preservation if the sellers are willing and public funding is available. I went out with my recorder one day to talk with some of the stakeholders in the proposal--for and against:

Wild Olympics Stakeholders

(25 minutes)

KPTZ Compass

After about eighteen months of struggling to produce a regular weekday morning newscast with a very small volunteer staff, the decision was made to abandon the effort in favor of producing a weekly radio news magazine, which after a vigorous creative exchange came to be called KPTZ Compass.  Here are the first two editions:

KPTZ Compass 1
(25 minutes)

KPTZ Compass 2
(26 minutes)

Early KPTZ Newscast

KPTZ Community Radio is an all-volunteer operation, and I was there at the beginning—volunteering to do the morning news every Wednesday.  It was a crazy-ambitious idea: from the outset we tried to have a five-to-eight-minute original newscast every week day.  What this meant for me, as it turned out, was pretty much spending all day every Tuesday researching and writing the next morning's newscast.  At the beginning, we would read the newscast live on the air at 8 a.m., recording it, and then edit out all of our flubs for the 9 a.m. repeat.  This is one of my earliest newscasts, from June 22, 2011, with DJ Peter Guerrero introducing me, and then following with the Community Calendar, for those of you who want to know what we get up to in our little town:

KPTZ Newscast, June 22, 2011
(11 minutes)

Learning from Hope

This is the story of a killer whale named Hope, who was found washed up on the Dungeness Spit in 2002, and whose carcass was eventually found to have the highest toxic load ever measured in any marine mammal.  This piece was produced at the opening in October, 2012 of an exhibit at Port Townsend's Marine Science Center that features Hope's articulated skeleton, along with her cautionary tale.

Learning from Hope
(11 minutes)

Return of the River

In one of my first assignments for KPTZ, then a brand new community radio station, I went early in the morning on Wednesday, June 1, 2011 to witness the historic final shut-down of the hydro-electric plants on the Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams, the first step leading to the ultimate demolition of both dams in an unprecedented effort to save endangered runs of salmon.  About a dozen representatives of the media gathered at the top of the lower dam that morning, next to the enormous metal penstocks through which the river roared on its way down to the tall powerhouse far below. We were all handed hard hats to wear and then briefed by dam supervisor Kevin Yancy.  Here is an excerpt from that report, followed by interviews about a year later, once the Elwha Dam was gone and the Glines Canyon halfway demolished, with filmmakers John Gussman and Jessica Plumb, who are making a documentary about the dam removals titled Return of the River.

Return of the River

(28 minutes)

Biomass

In the autumn of 2011, Massachusetts pediatrician Bill Sammons came to Port Townsend to speak about the perils of biomass-burning power plants like the one the Port Townsend Paper Corporation proposes to append to their current pulp mill operation—a controversial project that was created a serious rift in the community.  I interviewed Dr. Sammons at the Community Center just before the program:

Biomass--interview with Dr. Bill Sammons
(30 minutes)

Cappy's Trails

The woods out behind the Jefferson County Fairgrounds are laced with a network of paths known as Cappy's Trails.  My dog Barkeley is a big fan, as is the whole family, and we have spent countless hours wandering the marvelous maze.  But who is or was Cappy? Find out:

Cappy's Trails
(8 minutes)

Community Rights vs. Corporate Rights

A torchbearer for what might be a new chapter in the American Revolution came to town recently to tell a crowded meeting room at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship about a kind of legal uprising against the power of corporations that is spreading across the country.  Paul Cienfuegos is an evangelist for what he calls the community rights movement.  Here's the KPTZ radio segment I produced about his presentation:

Community Rights
(7 minutes)

And here is a link to a recording of the full presentation:

Paul Cienfuegos' talk on Community vs. Corporate Rights
(2 hours 25 minutes)

Fixing the Future

On a recent Sunday afternoon, a Who’s Who of the sustainability and local economies movement of Jefferson County came together to fill the Rose Theater to watch a film and then went next door to the Silverwater Café to talk about it at a marathon mixer.  The  organizers of the event, which included Local 20/20, the Chamber of Commerce, Team Jefferson, and the Main Street Program,  hoped the film and the mingling that followed would spur innovation in the ongoing creation of a vibrant and independent local economy right here in Jefferson County. Here's the radio segment for KPTZ Compass I produced about the event:

 Fixing the Future
(17 minutes)