West Seattle, Washington
24 Monday
Seattle City Light still hasn’t posted a peep about the power outages on this side of WS Friday night & Saturday morning, but King County has posted a press release noting the bigger outage caused an overflow at the Murray Street pump station @ Lowman Beach. NOON UPDATE: Warning signs (photo below) are still up at Lowman.
First, the light stuff: Semi-rare midweek in-store live @ Easy Street; Marissa Nadler, 6 pm.
Now, serious business: King County hosts a community meeting for south West Seattle folks (others welcome too, of course) to find out more about the improvements in the works for the Barton (near the Fauntleroy ferry dock) and Murray (at Lowman Beach) pump stations, all in the interest of avoiding future CSOs (combined sewer overflows) which now total 14 million gallons a year just at those two stations. Learn more @ 6 pm, The Hall at Fauntleroy.
Last but by no means least, the Westwood Neighborhood Council summons all who are interested in the huge upcoming (right after next school year) Sealth HS/Denny MS project — 6:30 pm, SW Community Center.
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Just noticed this P-I article that mentions two WS Democratic (yes, we know that’s kind of redundant) politicians — State Senator Erik Poulsen and King County Councilmember Dow Constantine — are reportedly thinking about running for State Commissioner of Public Lands. Dow C has a re-election run to get through first, later this year; Erik P just got re-elected last year and holds his current office till 2010.
City leaders have decided not to build another transfer station in Georgetown, good news for the folks there who’ve been fighting it; but they’re telling all of us, in order to really make sure we don’t need it, we’ve got to throw away even less trash than we do now.
6-8 pm @ Southwest Library – all are welcome at the next meeting of SWS, which describes itself as “a newly-formed group of West Seattle citizens who want to make a difference locally, working within our neighborhood to become more self-reliant while using fewer natural resources.”
Five months after we posted about a landowner’s application for a permit to chop down more than a dozen trees (and surrounding greenery) on a steep slope over Beach Drive — below a house on Atlas — the decision’s in.
It says in part “this … will result in adverse impacts to the environment,” but since those “impacts” are “not expected to be significant,” the greenery removal gets the green light. (The decision mentions one public comment of concern was received, focusing on slide risks in the area; appeals are also possible on decisions like these, and the city site explains how.)
Over the next four days (Wednesday through Saturday), we’ll see the lowest tides of the summer (yes, we’re aware summer technically is still about a week away) — all -3 feet or lower, with the absolute lowest a -3.8 on Friday morning (check the full tide chart here). Seattle Aquarium beach naturalists will be out on Friday (and over the weekend) at Lincoln Park and south of Alki Point; one of our favorite low-tide spots is Lowman Beach, one of the areas where submerged structures start to emerge, as seen this morning:
Next Monday, if you’re out for a walk on Alki around 9-something am, watch for a woman heading out into the water. No, not a polar-bear swimmer … a County Public Health employee. We’ve seen her the last two Mondays – today, wading quite some distance from shore – taking water samples, then returning to her official county government car. Trying to find out where we can see the test results!
That’s what a spirited crowd did last night at City Hall, according to this P-I article, which mentions that somebody from WS was part of a contingent advocating a farewell to foam (containers).
In southeast WS, a sensor is tracking earth movement, and this story says that it’s moving northeast at a rate of up to four inches a decade. Scientists are keeping an eye on it and dozens of others around the NW in hopes they may get some clues about predicting earthquakes. If you want to know every geeky little thing about this site, including its latitude/longitude, go here and click on its log (symbol “SMAI”); you can also look at its charts here (choosing SMAI from the left-side menu). By the way, if you ever want to see a map of the most recent NW earthquakes (hours/days/weeks ago), keep this site handy.
-Funny, we were just talking about Fauntleroy Place: A city council committee agenda that just landed in our inbox mentions a “possible vote” next Monday morning regarding the “alley vacation” that is a key part of the FP project.
-Another council committee has a briefing at 2 pm today regarding the latest version of the citywide skatepark plan. Two (updated from first version of this post; thanks to the reader who corrected us) proposed WS skateparks are currently on the list: Roxhill and Delridge.
-The city kicked off a push for low-flow showerheads today. If you haven’t tried ’em, you might be surprised. We converted to one during a remodel a few years back and it’s really not that dramatic a change.
Happy June! Lots to choose from in a full slate of WS weekend events, one click away.Read More
Spotted off Don Armeni this afternoon, the Greenpeace vessel Esperanza (its live webcam helped us verify it was what we thought it was). Greenpeace’s big push this weekend has been awareness-raising regarding the International Whaling Commission meeting that started today in Anchorage.
West Seattle-based naturalist Stewart Wechsler is featured in a Times article today about a plant restoration project at Seward Park. He also does naturalist work at other city parks including Camp Long here in WS. We first met Stewart while chaperoning a school field trip at Camp Long some time back; when it comes to the troubled state of our natural world, he is truly one of the people who, to paraphrase the saying, lights a candle rather than cursing the darkness.
Just saw this on tv and couldn’t resist sharing the link – provided you see this in the early afternoon (and provided the cam stays pointed toward Alki): This afternoon’s mega-low tide, from a webcam across the bay.
From backyard chicken-raising, to salmon-cooking, a plant sale to raise $ for pets, and way beyond, we bring you dozens of choices for the last weekend before Summer Fun officially kicks in — call it Spring Fun, The Finale (plus a few noteworthy non-entertainment events), all a click away:Read More
Our fellow low-tide fans will want to know that a 3.6-foot “minus tide” is on the way just after noon tomorrow, and the afternoon low tide on Saturday is almost that low too. (Check the tide chart here.) If you’d like to explore Saturday’s low tide with an expert guide, West Seattle-based naturalist Stewart Wechsler is promoting an all-ages “Beach Safari” across from Me-Kwa-Mooks, 12:30-2:30 pm — it’s a Seattle Parks program so you need to preregister through Camp Long (by phone @ 206-684-7434).
You don’t have to drive 22 miles — like these Issaquah elementary-school kids spotted on a field trip this morning — for a low-tide walk at Constellation Park (p.s. looks like it’ll be even lower about this time tomorrow morning):
An update on the Fauntleroy Creek page says 20 of the creek’s coho are on their way out to the “saltwater phase of their lifecycle.” Check out the creek overlook (part of the view shown in recent photo below) next time you’re down by the ferry dock or the south end of Lincoln Park; it’s a little bit of wildness amid all our urbanity, kept up by a lot of hard (volunteer) work.
West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician says shopping at farmers’ markets (like ours) fights global warming. (Especially if you take the bus to get there!)
Metro is marking Earth Day with free bus rides all day tomorrow. Worth checking out even if you don’t regularly use buses and don’t plan to; we use Metro for weekend trips downtown on occasion simply because it’s a relief not to have to hassle with parking.
As we hinted a few times already, SO MUCH happening in West Seattle this weekend, you might as well not bother going anywhere else. World-class shows (like the members of COTR appearing at Cafe Rozella), free swimming, Earth Day celebrations galore, and … how can you pass up the first-ever Pet Rodeo and Snooty Walk? Full list with links, a click away:
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