L&I issues $650K in fines after ag worker death in East Wenatchee

A Washington commission will send a recommendation to Gov. Jay Inslee this week on the proposed Horse Heaven Hills wind turbine farm that would leave intact more than three-quarters of the originally requested number of turbines.

The proposed turbine farm has drawn scrutiny for its possible impact on Native cultural sites and on wildlife in the area, as well as its visibility from the Tri-Cities.

With scant discussion, the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council approved the recommendation 4-3 Friday.

Scout Clean Energy of Boulder, Colorado, originally made plans for two scenarios, calling for a maximum of 147 670-foot-tall wind turbines or 222 500-foot turbines along a 24-mile east/west stretch of the Horse Heaven Hills just south of Kennewick. However, the Evaluation Council decided in February to implement two-mile buffer zones around 60 to 70 ferruginous hawk nests in that area and remove turbines along the north slopes of the hills.

The company says those buffer zones cut Scout Clean Energy’s number of turbines by roughly half. At that time, the company said those changes would trim the projected 1,150 megawatts of wind power to 236 megawatts.

Inslee sent the February recommendations back to the Council, wanting to increase the number of turbines back to the original estimates. In recent months, the Council has discussed trimming some ferruginous hawk buffer zones to 0.6 mile around the nests. In 2021, the Washington Fish & Wildlife Commission changed the status of ferruginous hawks from threatened to endangered.

The recommendations approved Friday call for a 0.6 mile buffer around the nests, plus a 0.25-mile buffer around historic Native American fire sites, plus a one-mile buffer alongside Webber Canyon, another culturally sensitive spot for Indigenous nations.

If 500-foot turbines are installed, that would trim the number of turbines by approximately 50, from 222 to roughly 172. If 670-foot turbines are installed, that would cut the number of turbines by approximately 34, from 147 to roughly 113. More precise figures will be calculated later.

Scout Clean Energy’s original proposal also included two 500-megawatt solar panel farms on the east and west sides of the 24-mile stretch. The Council ordered that the eastern solar farm be removed because of its proximity to sensitive Native cultural sites. 

The wind farm has drawn strong opposition from numerous Tri-Citians because the original plan for the turbines would also disrupt a currently pristine view of the hills from the urban area. This Horse Heaven Hills matter has become the most contentious disagreement among several in Washington between wind and solar farms on one side and wildlife preservation on the other.

Washington’s latest carbon auction raised $237.2 million, bringing 2024’s cap-and-invest revenue up to $561.7 million with one more quarterly auction to go.

Carbon-emitting corporations, including oil companies, bid every three months on state allowances for their pollution emissions. In 2023, the first year of the new program, quarterly auctions brought in about $2 billion. 

During 2023, quarterly auction prices ranged from $48.50 for roughly one metric ton of carbon in the first quarter to $63.03 in the third. Those prices were significantly higher than had been expected when the program was designed, and were blamed for adding 21 to 50 cents per gallon to Washington’s traditionally high gas prices.

But both auction prices and related fuel prices have gone down in 2024. 

The 2024 first-quarter auction price was $25.76 per allowance, which raised $135.5 million for the state budget. The second-quarter price was $29.92 per allowance, raising roughly $189 million. The third-quarter auction, conducted Sept. 4, ended up with a $29.88 price per allowance with 7,939,271 allowances sold, the Washington Department of Ecology announced Wednesday.

Reasons for the lower 2024 auction prices are unknown, but one theory is that bidders are unwilling to spend money on a program that could disappear at the end of 2024, after voters decide on a state initiative to repeal the cap-and-invest program. Others believe Washington’s carbon market is stabilizing and that bidders are becoming more savvy about the way they approach the quarterly auctions.

While larger auction prices have been linked to higher gasoline prices, too many extra factors cloud any precise correlations. Numerous economic, geographic and other factors affect the rise and fall of Washington’s prices at the pump. For decades, Washington’s gasoline prices have been among the highest in the nation.

On Wednesday, Washington’s average price for regular gas was $4.16 per gallon compared to a national average of $3.25, according to AAA. Oregon has economic and geographic factors somewhat similar to Washington’s, except for a cap-and-invest program. Its gasoline sold at an average of $3.76 per gallon this week. 

“Despite efforts to repeal this landmark climate law, the [cap-and-invest program] continues to bring real, tangible relief to our communities as we respond to the impacts of climate change. ... While the repeal effort may have placed slight downward pressure on the price of pollution permits during the auction bidding process, more notably, prices have remained consistent with California and Quebec’s price trajectories,” said a joint press release from Climate Solutions, Washington Conservation and The Nature Conservancy.

Washington is talking with California and Quebec to become a three-party alliance, which is expected to decrease and stabilize auction prices.

Highline Public Schools will resume on Thursday after being out since Monday due to a cyberattack.

According to the district, technology staff detected the breach and disconnected its network from the internet, disrupting phone systems and limiting access to applications required for the safe operations of schools.

In a statement on the district website, school officials expressed regrets about the disruption and noted that it delayed the first day of kindergarten. 

“We recognize the burden this decision places on both families and staff, but student safety is our top priority, and we cannot have school without these critical systems in place,” the district said in its statement.

One of the parachutes connected with the hijacker known as D.B. Cooper will be on display at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma later this month. 

It’s the first time in a decade that the parachute has been on display. It is one of the most requested items in the museum’s collection, according to a museum press release. 

The infamous hijacking took place on Nov. 24, 1971, on a Northwest Orient 727 airliner between Portland and Seattle. A man who had reserved the ticket under the name Dan Cooper told a flight attendant he was carrying a bomb in a briefcase and demanded $200,000 and four parachutes, which he received upon landing at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. 

The plane took off for Mexico City with only the pilots and Cooper on board. With two of the parachutes and the money, Cooper jumped from the plane – possibly over southwest Washington, where some of the money was found years later on a riverbank – and was never heard from again. After a decades-long investigation involving hundreds of suspects, the FBI closed the case in 2016. 

The parachute on display will be one of the two that Cooper left on the plane. It will be on display from Sept. 22 through March 16, 2025. The Washington State History Museum is at 1911 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma, WA 98402. 

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, a Turkish American woman and a recent graduate of the University of Washington, was allegedly shot and killed in the occupied West Bank on Friday around noon local time, a UW professor told Cascade PBS.

“I taught her once, but she’ll be forever my teacher,” said Aria Fani, UW assistant professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures.

Eygi recently graduated from the UW earlier in the spring, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, according to Fani. She was part of the university student encampment on campus by the UW Progressive Student Union and the United Front’s “Popular University for Gaza.”

Fani was not shocked to know Eygi was in the West Bank but was devastated by the news of her death. He said he is still in the denial stage after receiving the news.

“Even as she was spending time with her family in Turkey, she still remained committed to fighting injustice, and this is after a year of activism on campus that really wore her down on multiple levels,” Fani said.

University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce released a statement of condolence to her family.

“Aysenur was a peer mentor in psychology who helped welcome new students to the department and provided a positive influence in their lives,” Cauce wrote. “This is the second time over the past year that violence in the region has taken the life of a member of our UW community and I again join with our government and so many who are working and calling for a ceasefire and resolution to the crisis.”

Eygi was participating in a protest on a hilltop in the town of Beita against Israeli settlements when she was shot in the head and pronounced dead in Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, according to Fouad Nafia, the hospital’s doctor, The New York Times reported.

Eygi lived in Seattle and had recently arrived in Israel to volunteer with pro-Palestinian activist group International Solidarity Movement, according to The Washington Post. The group blamed Israeli troops for Eygi’s death.

The group released a press statement that cited a protester who witnessed the shooting, “Our fellow volunteer was standing a bit further back, near an olive tree with some other activists. Despite this, the army intentionally shot her in the head.”

The Israeli military released a statement on social media platform X that “forces responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them.” They are also investigating.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew shared on X condolences to Eygi’s family and said that the U.S. Embassy in Israel is investigating the cause of her death and prioritizing the “safety and security of American citizens.”  

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Öncü Keçeli also shared an official statement on Eygi’s death: “The Israeli authorities who commit crimes against humanity and those who unconditionally support them will be held accountable before international courts.”

A hand recount in the Commissioner of Public Lands race shows that Democrat Dave Upthegrove has the votes to face off against former U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, the Republican who came in first place in the August primary. The mandatory recount found nearly identical results between the second- and third-place candidates.

Upthegrove defeated Republican Sue Kuehl Pederson for second place, with 396,304 votes to 396,255 – a difference of 49 votes. The total was finalized and updated after King County certified its votes on Wednesday. Upthegrove gained six votes in the recount and Kuehl Pederson gained four. The unofficial count was posted to the Secretary of State’s website on Tuesday, and was certified Wednesday at noon.

The recount was triggered when the initial count found that 51 votes out of 1.9 million cast separated them for second and third place after the primary was certified last month. Both campaigns “cured” thousands of ballots in the weeks between the primary day and the certification deadline by contacting voters whose ballots were rejected because of fixable errors.

In a primary, the state requires an automatic hand recount when the difference between the second- and third-place candidates is less than one quarter of one percent and also less than 1,000 votes.

In a top-two primary, the two candidates with the most votes face each other in the general election, regardless of party. This year in the Commissioner of Public Lands primary, about 42% of voters chose one of the two Republicans, and about 57% of voters chose one of the five Democrats. No single candidate got more than 22% of the vote.

The Commissioner of Public Lands position oversees the state’s Department of Natural Resources, which includes managing nearly six million acres of state-owned public lands and the state’s response to wildfires.

The general election is Nov. 5.

Update 3 p.m. September 4, 2024: This article has been updated with the certified and finalized recount numbers.

All services at the Seattle Public Library have been restored after a cyberattack took down all systems in May, according to the library’s account on social media platform X.

The public can now access public computers and all services that had been unavailable since the attack on Memorial Day. Other restored services include wi-fi, printing, the online catalogue, e-books and audio books. The library is also allowing people to return their books and other physical materials, after asking patrons to hold onto them during the outage.

After the cyberattack, the library had limited service through the end of the school year and during the summer, disrupting many heavily used programs. In 2023, the library logged more than 13 million checkouts and offered 340,000 public computer sessions at its 27 locations. During the ransomware attack, all public computers were shut off and people were unable to access their library accounts online.

Seattle Public Library had no clear idea of when all its services would return, but slowly brought them back up over the summer.

The Washington State Debate Coalition (WSDC) is hosting three free public debates ahead of the Nov. 5 general election. The debates will cover the races for attorney general, superintendent of public instruction and the Seattle City Council Position 8 seat. 

Debates will be in-person with live broadcasts from media partners, including livestreams on cascadepbs.org. Those attending in-person can submit questions for the candidates upon registering. 

The Coalition was founded in 2016 by Seattle CityClub and has produced public election debates all over the state, for both local and statewide races. The Coalition is supported by media, educational and civic organizations. 

A fourth debate scheduled for October between gubernatorial candidates Bob Ferguson and Dave Reichert has been cancelled. The debate would have included the participation of Cascade PBS and three other news outlets. 

Premier media partners for this year’s debate series include Converge Media, FOX 13, KUOW, RainierAvenueRadio, TVW and the Washington State Standard. 

For more information or to register in-person, visit seattlecityclub.org.  

• Seattle City Council, Citywide Position 8: Candidates Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Tanya Woo will participate in a live debate at the Seattle Central College Auditorium on Wednesday, Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. The debate will be moderated by Cascade PBS city reporter Josh Cohen, John Hopperstad of FOX 13 and Angela King of KUOW.  

• Attorney General: Candidates Nick Brown and Pete Serrano will participate in a live debate at the Seattle Central College Auditorium on Thursday, Sept. 19 at 8 p.m. The debate will be moderated by Cascade PBS state politics reporter Shauna Sowersby, Laurel Demkovich of the Washington State Standard, Libby Denkmann of KUOW and Hana Kim of FOX 13.  

•  Superintendent of Public Instruction: Candidates David Olson and Chris Reykdal will participate in a live debate at the Edmonds Center for the Arts on Thursday, Sept. 26 at 7 p.m. The debate will be moderated by Cascade PBS associate news editor Venice Buhain, John Hopperstad of FOX 13, Sami West of KUOW and student panelist Kellyanna Brooking. 

Seattle’s newest experiment with citizen-led budgeting took a step forward on Aug. 16 when Mayor Bruce Harrell sent legislation to the City Council that will provide $27.25 million for six projects chosen by community members.  

The process, called participatory budgeting, allows community members to submit and vote on projects to fund. The city’s current effort grew out of the 2020 protests for racial justice as a response by the mayor and Council to protesters’ demands to shift funding away from policing and toward community priorities on health and safety.  

Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights managed the years-long process, including hiring a third-party organization to manage the initiative, hosting meetings, accepting proposals and finally voting on winning projects. Last fall, more than 4,200 people voted on 18 finalist projects to select the winning six. The city will spend:   

• $7.2 million on a community center for Native youth and Duwamish cultural education; 

• $7.2 million on a “community-operated restrooms program.” Community organizations selected by Seattle Parks will provide attendant oversight of at least five public bathroom sites, including two to three existing public bathrooms and two to three new mobile bathroom trailers;  

• $7 million to create and operate five publicly owned urban farms. Additional funds will be used to pay for training for small-scale agriculture producers;  

• $2 million to further expand CARE, Seattle’s new dual-dispatch police alternative that sends mental health professionals to respond to public behavioral health crises; 

• $2 million to expand “housing navigation services” to help people experiencing homelessness find and move into housing; 

• And $1.85 million for improvements to emergency shelters for youth experiencing homelessness.  

“Participatory budgeting moves us closer to building systems that increase agency for underrepresented communities in Seattle,” said Office of Civil Rights director Derrick Wheeler-Smith in a press release. “These projects are an opportunity for the city to be accountable to promises made in 2020 to create new ways to get civically engaged and invest in urgent needs of our most prevented and persecuted communities.”  

Seattle first tried participatory budgeting in 2015, with $700,000 for youth priorities voted on by Seattle residents and students ages 11-25. The effort expanded slightly in 2017 when the city set aside $2 million for parks and street projects that residents voted on.  

Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail 1 line will open its extension from Northgate to Lynnwood on Aug. 30. This 8.5-mile extension includes stops in Shoreline and Mountlake Terrace before ending at the Lynnwood City Center, where the transit center is located.

The new stops mean Link Light Rail now connects directly to Snohomish County for the first time. Sound Transit offers the Sounder commuter rail service that connects Everett and Tacoma to Seattle by train, as well as runs a light-rail system in Tacoma called the T line.

Lynnwood Link’s opening-day festivities include a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 11 a.m. with remarks from elected officials, board members and stakeholders. Riders can stop at the new stations in the afternoon to celebrate. Each station will have different festivities including activities, exhibits and entertainment hosted by community organizations.

The 1 line includes the Link Light Rail’s first line through Seattle. This extension will now allow riders to ride this line from the stations south of Seattle, like Angle Lake and SeaTac/Airport, to as far north as Shoreline and Lynnwood.  

Earlier this year, the long-anticipated 2 line opened, connecting Bellevue to Redmond. Also known as East Link, the 2 line will open more stations next year, including Marymoor Village and Downtown Redmond. The Interstate 90 bridge Link connection from Seattle to Redmond is also expected to open at that time, after that project was pushed back due to faulty concrete.