Thursday, February 26, 2015

Fighting the Navy

Over the course of the past couple of years, the U.S. Navy has steadily expanded its operations in the Puget Sound region, from more than doubling the size of the nuclear weapons handling dock at the Bangor Trident submarine base on the Hood Canal, to increasing the number and frequency of training exercises with noisy Growler fighter jets stationed on Whidbey Island, to increasing testing and in-water training using explosives and sonar, to proposing to use Olympic National Forest lands as a training ground for electronic warfare.  Each of these expansions has met with almost universal public opposition, and critics have questioned the legality of the piecemeal environmental review process.  Here are several programs I produced for KPTZ Compass on the Navy's increasing militarization of the Sound, and the public push-back:

Whidbey Growlers
(30 minutes)

Electronic Warfare Non-hearing
(30 minutes)

Trouble with the Navy
(29 minutes)

The Navy's Marine Messes
(30 minutes)

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Tarboo Plant-a-Thon

My favorite stories are those of communities joyfully working together for a common cause...and of those sorts of stories, this is my favorite so far: the tenth annual Tarboo Creek Plant-a-Thon, at which some 200 volunteers came together to help restore salmon runs in a troubled watershed.

Tarboo Plant-a-Thon
30 minutes