FROM THE ROCKING CHAIR

Quartermaster Harbor’s Water Quality

By Laura Worth and Robert Bornn

...Speaking of water quality, did you know that in the 60’s being a teenage boy on Quartermaster Harbor meant that one of your weekly chores would be to row out to the middle of the harbor with other boys and dump the family garbage?   Yep.   As crazy as it sounds for the decade when environmentalism was born, that’s what happened.     Nowadays science shows that decay from this kind of dumping, whether it be food or yard waste, ultimately uses up the oxygen content in our water.   Not a good thing for animal life.

Looking at water quality issues through the eyes of history, it’s sometimes possible to see more clearly the folly of our current practices, too.   We chuckle about yesterday’s naive dumping in the harbor.   Yet, unfortunately King County still does not provide for recycling yard waste on Vashon and a lot of it still gets dumped in the harbor or burned at great cost to our health and environment.   We need better on-island options.   Maybe there’s something we can ask the nonprofit Sallen Group to do about this with their new partner, Vashon Reclaim and Recycle.  

But in the meantime, how about fewer manicured lawns, more brush piles for native habitat, and composting?   And while we’re at it, here’s a great list from Vashon’s own Climate Project of even more little and big things we can all do to neutralize our carbon footprint. Perhaps a little inconvenient, but not so painful if we just get started by picking some of them that capture the imagination!

Robert Bornn is a Vashon systems designer of authentically green homes and an artist
www.bornn.com and 463-4284.  

They are founders of BuildingCircles Organization ( www.buildingcircles.org), designing affordable and sustainable, nature-integrated homes for independent living.