Cascadia today: A climate friendly solution for diapers + Glacier Peak losing glaciers + Justice Mary Yu retires
Good morning! I'm back after a lovely getaway in the kitschy but magical faux Bavarian town of Leavenworth in the eastern Cascades. Lots of good hiking, vegan bratwurst, and reading by the Wenatchee River. It was nice to see the Hotel Leavenworth flying the Cascadia flag among other nations of North America. Prost!
Seattle company turns diapers into climate-friendly biochar
I was able to write a feel-good article for once! At the Tyee I wrote about the Seattle-based company Diaper Stork, which is piloting a program that turns compostable diapers into biochar – a climate-friendly substance like charcoal that can be used to amend soils and filter water. The company is teaming up with Seattle-based coffee roaster Fulcrum to use a biproduct of the roasting process to create the biochar by cooking the waste at high temperature in an oxygen-free process known as pyrolysis. The carbon-sequestering service could help reduce some of the 20 billion diapers that end up in landfills in the US every year.
Costs for I-5 bridge replacement over Columbia soar
Costs to replace the aging freeway bridge over the Columbia (Nch'i-Wána) River between Oregon and Washington could soar as high as $10 billion, Washington State Standard reports. Both environmentally conscious Democrats and penny-pinching Republicans are starting to balk at the costs, and wondering if the plan should be scrapped and start over. And as Sound Transit faces a $30 billion shortfall, some have proposed rethinking the oversized stations the transit agency has planned. Meanwhile, the city of Seattle has failed to consider what would improve service on the perennially late route 8 bus in the city: dedicated bus lanes on most of the route.
Glaciers continue to shrink across Cascadia
Thanks to accelerating climate change, the glaciers of the North Cascades continue to get smaller, KUOW reports. Glacier Peak, a remote volcano in the central Cascades of Washington (know as tda-ko-buh-ba in Lushotseed) may have no more glaciers in 50 years, says researcher Mauri Pelto. Pelto has been sounding the alarm on climate changes impact on glaciers in Cascadia for decades:
“We're just watching, essentially, the collapse of the glacier system. The change has been so fast.” – Mauri Pelto
Sturgeon are dying on the Fraser River
An article at CBC documents on an uptick in reports of sturgeon seen dead on the shores of British Columbia's Fraser (Sto:lo) River. Biologists and First Nations are trying to determine if the die-off of the huge, prehistoric-looking fish is actually a trend or just an increase in reported deaths.
Mary Yu steps down from WA supreme court
Washington State Standard has a profile of longtime Washington Supreme Court justice Mary Yu, who is retiring, and was the first Asian American, Latina, and LGBTQ person to serve on the court. Yu gained fame in 2012 as a King County superior court judge who performed the first LGBTQ marriages in Washington state in 2012. I wrote about the tenth anniversary of the event and interviewed Yu and others about that day for Cascade PBS. --Andrew Engelson
