HyleBlog - Friends of the Hylebos

Why Am I Promoting Other Organizations?!

That's easy. The Friends of the Hylebos philosophy is that nonprofits are working together to make the entire world better. We've all just got pieces of that huge job.

And when it comes to fund development, I truly believe that it likes the old saying about love: the more you give, the more you get.

So, with that, last night my wife Anna and I were honored to be invited by Mike and Jen Hrachovec to attend the Water 1st Beer 2nd fundraiser for Water 1st International. Where to start?! For those who know me, I'm a casual guy and this was my type of event. Completely casual! The group's Executive Director was dressed in blue jeans and a tee shirt. And there was a band and dancing! And, as the name implies, there was a lot of beer!

We've got to do one of these! was my first thought. My 2nd thought was what an incredible organization, leveraging donations to bring simple technology to developing nations to provide the most basic of human needs - water, clean, pure water - to rural villages, transforming lives in the process.

Rocky introduced me to the group's ED, Marla Smith-Nilson, who said, "oh, another water guy" when Rocky explained about Friends of the Hylebos. I had to smile. We were all water people in that room, and Friends of the Hylebos is, among the many good things it does, a water organization, ensuring that our watershed keeps churning out clean water and filling Puget Sound with the good stuff. That's a great gig.

I also ran into Janne Kaje an old friend of mine, a fisheries biologist with King County who ages ago, did some anaylsis and reports for the Friends. Somehow, our conversation ended up proclaiming me as having the best hair in the Hylebos Watershed.

I like that. Also, saw Sean McClean, who will emcee this year's Ruby Dance for the 2nd year. I regretted that we had to leave early because I had really wanted to spend more time talking with Sean.

Alright one more organization before I go to Pasco to watch soccer...Today's Mirror features a very tongue-in-cheek Thinking Locally...but I give out a very serious shout out to our local historical society.

Peace out!

A Brief Flirtation With Snow

A little snow this morning just to remind us who's in control. Strangely enough, with all the snow we've had here in the lowlands, I read that the snowpack in the mountains is about three-quarters of the average snowpack for this time of year.

Anyways, it's all just a memory by late afternoon. The sun is out and the skies are blue and nearly cloudless.

Aside from the snow, the other excitement would be Hillary's order of plants, which is sitting outside of our office building on a large pallet. It was a bit of a surprise that the order came to us in a manner that wouldn't fit through the door. I think Hillary said she was going to pitch a tent and stand guard over the plants overnight until they can be moved to the East Hylebos site.

It's not a Hylebos project, but here's some news on the Camp Kilworth preservation effort. A judge's order has, at least temporarily blocked the sale of the property to the city.

Education in Schools and in the Outdoors

What a start to the day! Laurie Austin and I were out very early to attend the Communities In Schools' Literacy Breakfast with a few hundred of our closest friends.

The event really drove home the powerful work that CIS is doing to improve the ability of at-risk kids to achieve academically. The two high school boys who introduced the award for Mentor of the Year were great. Particularly, when one of the boys described the changes in his life by telling how he used to get in trouble in middle school, but in high school he was doing well with grades and hadn't been suspended...yet. The 'yet' produced a lot of laughs, but we all understood that he wasn't going to get suspended again, because of the work that the CIS mentor Pete Gonzalez had done with this boy.

I'm proud to be on the advisory board of Communities In Schools Federal Way and proud of the work that they do.

Listening to the stories of kids who had been touched by CIS, I was reminded of the role that we play at Friends of the Hylebos, in helping to create a better future, a healthy future for the communities of the Hylebos Creek Watershed. But more than just the physical aspects of healthy forests and clean air and water, we're ensuring the existence of places that are so important for children.

Many of us have had the experience of connecting with nature as a child. Whether it be from climbing trees, exploring the shorelines of Puget Sound, or tromping through muddy wetlands looking for frogs. I think of natural areas as magical zones of mystery and discovery.

The world we give the next generation has to be more than the right angles of buildings and the temperature-controlled habitat of the shopping mall. Your work with the Friends as a volunteer, and your support, is helping to ensure that the future generations will still have plenty of forests to explore, wetlands to slog through, and frogs to chase!

By the way, a big Hyle-thanks to John and Aline Carnahan, who graciously invited Laurie and I to sit at their table.

Office Closed For President's Day

The Friends' office is closed for President's Day. In related news, Honest Abe has also been named best Prez in history.

On to environmental matters,

Excellent piece of journalisticating in the News Tribune today. The subject was gravel mining, perhaps the biggest of all Pacific Northwest & Puget Sound NIMBY natural resource extraction issues

Thanks to the ebb and flow of glacial ice over Western Washington during the past several millennia, gravel is a resource with which the Puget Sound region is naturally blessed.

But gravel mining on the shores of the Sound draws the wrath of environmentalists like almost no other activity. For adjacent landowners, few developments are more despised.

“Gravel pits are just big open wounds,” said Don Russell, an opponent of a mine expansion proposal near DuPont. “It’s as if somebody grabbed hold of your skin and ripped it off.”

The second in the series ran today

Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin

We have another birthday boy of distinction. Today is the 300th birthday of Charles Darwin, originator of the theory of evolution and one of the giants of the biological sciences. There is an unofficial Darwin Day Celebration and movement (Darwin Day is not a paid holiday around the Friends offices, so we are working today).

In honor of its discoverer, evolution (the process) is speeding up. Nice work, evolution!

Who's A Birthday Boy Today?

Why, it's Abraham Lincoln! Our 16th president was born 200 years ago today. Though he came from modest beginnings, born on a Kentucky farm far from the seats of power in society, the largely self-educated but well-read young lawyer became the first (and tallest) Republican President elected and during the greatest crisis the country ever faced - the Civil War - became perhaps our greatest leader ever.

He was also a talented wrestler and said to quite skilled with an axe. Happy Birthday, Honest Abe!

Scouting A New Project

Fast start to the week, my friends. Early Monday, Hillary and Rocky and I were tromping through the wetlands scouting out a possible (and really quite wonderful) restoration project. This would be a 2010 project. We've got a lot of parts to put together to make this work. But, I hope to be reporting on definitive plans in the future. Stay tuned.

Some NewsBits:

One of the unknown, but plentiful denizens of the Hylebos and surrounding environs gets a feature in the NW Magazine, the lowly mountain beaver.

How will things change for the environment under the Obama Administration? Here are some thoughts.

How will things change for the environment under global warming? Here are some startling early results: birds on the move. On the upside Puget Sound area birders will get to update their bird lists with new species.

On Tuesday, the National Audubon Society released a report based on this annual count indicating that half of 305 selected bird species in North America -- a sample that includes robins, gulls, owls and other common species -- are on average spending winter about 35 miles farther north than they did 40 years ago.

Birders discovered that one species also found in the Northwest, the purple finch, has shifted its winter grounds more than 400 miles to the north -- from about the San Francisco Bay Area to Olympia.

Federal Way City Center Access Project Open House

This isn't on our list of projects we're focusing on, though we have checked in from time to time to see how the project was developing. However, I thought some of you HyleBloggers may be interested in attending the open house. What follows is from the City of Federal Way's email:

Federal Way City Center Access Project Join us for an Open House!

You're invited to our upcoming open house to provide feedback on our plans to make the Federal Way City Center safer and easier to get around. At the open house, you will have the opportunity to: Review the recommendation for the preferred alternative.
New visual simulations of proposed future improvements.
Learn how we will comply with the Section 4(f) and 6(f) requirements for any potential use or conversion of park property and comment on the de minimus process and preliminary finding.
Review future milestones.

Date: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 Time: 4:00-7:00 p.m. Presentation at 5:30 p.m.
Location: Truman High School Cafeteria 31455 28th Ave S. Federal Way, WA We hope to see you there! Please contact Maryanne Zukowski at 253.835.2707 or citycenteraccessproject@cityoffederalway.com with any questions about the open house.

City Center Access Project: The City of Federal Way is planning the City Center Access Project to improve safety and reduce congestion at the I-5 and S. 320th Street interchange. For more information about the project, visit our website: www.cityoffederalway.com (follow the link for City Center Access Project).

Links Fixed

Thanks to an alert HyleBlogster tipping me to broken links from this site to the park and directions pages on our website. Those have now been fixed.

I met today with the Buds & Blooms Committee. We're going to celebrate Hylebos Day in conjunction with the Buds & Blooms Festival taking place May 9th and 10th. I'll have more details on this later, but this is a brilliant way to enhance the public awareness of the park and draw people to the park.

More on Phase II Ruling

Robert McClure builds on yesterday's blog post with a longer article about the PCHB's ruling on Phase II Clean Water Act permits for smaller cities (Seattle is a Phase I entity). It sounds as if the Board stepped back from requiring the smaller entities make low-impact development a requirement for builders. Then, he included this nugget:

Builders were not involved in the litigation before the hearings board. But industry officials have said many of their members already are employing low-impact development techniques. In fact, builders' representatives have said, more developers would use those methods if many governments didn't make it such a hassle to do so.

This jibes with my experience and I think it's sad that the agencies that are supposed to be on the frontline of protecting stormwater, won't be required to use this essential tool and, are in fact, a major obstacle to its voluntary use by the private sector.

We ain't going to get to a cleaner Puget Sound this way...