Lily Point Calling Blog

“There is no political solution, to our troubled evolution

Have no faith in constitution, there is no bloody revolution

Our so called leaders speak, with words they try to jail ya

They subjugate the meek , but it’s the rhetoric of failure

We are spirits in the material world “–  Sting

Last month the fate of Lily Point was brought before the Whatcom County Hearing Examiner, where the appeal of an environmental Determination of Non-Significance (DNS) for a proposed 103-unit development at Lily Point culminated nearly four months of emotional and misinformed opinions from a fragmented community. The dialog was then transformed into a broad and comprehensive appeal from a handful of Point Roberts residents and the Point Roberts Conservation Society.

In April the community discussion about the project started out as a town hall meeting of nearly 100 people. After that night many people struggled with what the development would mean for the future of Lily Point. The fallout from many different opinions sent many residents into hiding, and others into wild and erratic conclusions about what should be done.

Similar to many national discussions, the polarized opinions, based on emotions and lacking in facts, only leads to anger and more misinformation, which takes the discussion away from what is important and what the real issues are. For Point Roberts residents and their Canadian neighbors, Lily Point is a microcosm that is symbolic of everything that ails the entire region.

Case in point, how many people know that when the British Petroleum (BP) oil platform blew up that all the people killed on the platform deck had recently received safety awards? Safety that in reality was only on paper, and the very lack of it was what cost them their lives.

A common theme in today’s world trends to those responsible for safety and protection are actually being irresponsible and not doing the job they are paid to do. So when County officials tried to fast track a major housing development at Lily Point without any Community input and in the same breath stated that an environmental impact statement wouldn’t be required, all the science and safeguards recently developed to protect our natural environment were denied the light of day.

The reverberations were heard all the way to Seattle, as the reasoning for the decision boiled down to money. It appears that the County didn’t want to burden the developer with the cost of doing the reports, or use up a limited County Planning budget to review them.

In the big picture, the Salish Sea is in serious trouble from decades of state, county, and city governments pretty much giving a green light to all development in all areas of our once abundant natural world. As much as environmental groups and nonprofits try to raise awareness of the destructive aspects of how we live on the earth, our government tends to see things through the prism of cash flow and budget projections. What has evolved from this myopic view of the land is that only when a lawsuit if filed, and only when the community speaks through a lawyer, do our government employees actually take note and listen.

To the average person, the word ”lawsuit” spins into many different directions all emanating from the basis of fear and coercion. In the case of the Lily Point development, once the appeal to the DNS designation was filed most people saw it as an attack on the developer by a bunch of tree huggers causing trouble and protesting the individual right to make money. Next, many people thought that this was now a fight, an aggressive act, and so we now needed to bring peace to the process; we needed to negotiate and settle our differences through communication.

It was from this platform that the dialog of needing to negotiate differences took off in several directions and away from the real issues that needed understanding –like the disruption of the forest, the impact on the spawning grounds, and the health of the wetlands, how would the septic system work and where would the storm water go? These are the type of serious issues that prompted the Washington State Legislature to create the Puget Sound Partnership (PSP), who is tasked to restore the health of Puget Sound by the year 2020. One of the first things the PSP determined was the need to protect the remaining critical habitats around the 2,500 miles of shoreline in the Puget Sound. Because over 90% of the remaining land is in the hands of private ownership, an early mantra of the PSP became, “the only way to protect the land is to buy it.”

So after a year or so of extensive studies and research, that is exactly what the State started doing in 2008 — buying up as much critical habitat land as possible. One piece of land shot right to the top of the State’s list and 24 scientists were brought in to further back up the research that identified this special place. So special that purchase of this land had to be done in two phases, culminating in the #1 and #3 investments from State funds for land purchase, and representing 27% of all the money paid for the top 20 critical habitat designated properties. Where was this special place? It was Lily Point, but only the eastern 140 acres of Lily Point. The western 102 acres of Lily Point remained unprotected.

So the only way to protect the land is to buy it. What is it that the land needs protection from? Development. Why? Because its well known now that development destroys the function of the ecosystem. The secondary threat comes in the form of pollution that comes off the property. All the chemicals, prescription drugs, oil deposits from cars, brake dust with mercury, phosphates, all combine to flow with the storm water right into the Sound. These are some of the things that most people just aren’t aware of. It wasn’t just protecting it from development, as much as it was protecting it from a certain type of development. The Point Roberts Beach Club is the type of development that has been identified as the major contributor to our sick ecosystem. A proven destructive development pattern taken right out of the suburbs of Seattle and placed over the western half of Lily Point. This larger point never made it into the community discussion and so the motivation behind the appeal was misunderstood almost from the beginning.

On August 13^th, first day of the hearing, the Whatcom County court room was empty except for a handful of witnesses that testified. So extensive was the testimony to the lack of oversight and science in the developments supporting documents, that after six hours of testimony the Point Roberts Conservation Society’s expert witnesses didn’t finish. Several thousand pages of documents covered the rich and extensive history of Lily Point — the abundant wetlands, the unique old growth and young old growth mixed forest, the herring spawning grounds, the juvenile salmon habitat, the riparian forest, and the feeder bluffs. These features are all the very same things that compelled the State to spend 4.2 million dollars to preserve the eastern part of Lily Point. Also the geology seemed to gloss over the fact that the bluffs are very unstable and landslides are inevitable. The PRCS also brought up the 9,000 years of aboriginal use of this land were there are archaeological sites, steaming pits, tree burials, and the cedar strip trees.

Lily Point is famous for its bald eagle population, but few people know about how many other species this special habitat supports. In addition to numerous Barred owls, bats, and song birds, there are four other species that have been identified by the Washington Department of Ecology and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife as candidates for protection — Band Tailed Pigeons, Northern Goshawks, Pileated Woodpeckers, Pine Martins — plus the supportive habitat critical to their survival.

The witnesses detailed environmental testimony was in stark contrast to the developer who informed the County through a short questionnaire that they could have filled out in 10 minutes, that there were only song birds and squirrels on the property.  From this inadequate description, the County, in effect, said, “Okay we see no problem with you putting in 103 homes, cutting a 40-foot wide road through the old growth forest, sending all the storm water into the spawning grounds, cutting down most of the perch and nesting trees for the bald eagles, and building directly over established wetlands.”

Public relations efforts from the County included passive planning jargon buzz words, like “Low Impact Development”, and empty placating phrases such as “we’ll cover it with mitigation efforts down the road.” But the reality is everyone is kicking the can down the road and letting someone else in the future deal with it. Let’s keep the illusion of boundless and endless resources alive, let’s keep using up resources faster then they are regenerating, and let’s continue to destroy the very ecosystems that enable regeneration.

Even though our consumer fueled economy has crashed all around the world, we continue to make decisions based on economics and not by common sense and a regard for the future. Every day that we don’t do what is right is another day where we’ve lost an option to reverse our perilous course.

“If you don’t have a moral question in your governing process, then you don’t have a process that is going to survive. If you’re not spiritually connected to the earth, and understand the spiritual reality of how to live on the earth, it’s likely you will not make it.”

–Oren Lyons

The Point Roberts community is certainly not alone in failing to having the essential conversation about our future, and our responsibility to future generations. How are the Whatcom County Hearing Examiner and the County Council going to address the moral question before them? And will the Point Roberts community awaken to the consequences of the County’s decisions?

There are a handful of people who have delved into these questions and found a new awareness and reality that has transformed them.  It includes a new appreciation for the history of Lily Point and the amazingly rich habitat that supports all kinds of life they had no idea about. The knowledge that a tree is a part of a community of all the flowers, shrubs, and little plants that surround it. The realization when you clear cut  trees and then go back and plant a tree, you have not restored the community of organisms that the tree was a part of.

Understanding about ecosystems is a dialog that we all need to continue and to spread to other communities. We need to learn about cultures that in the past we’ve overlooked, and to move the conversation across political borders and understand that nature has totally different borders. We all need to learn what is working in other parts of the world, and implement good ideas, and share them within the community.

Yes, we are spirits in the material world that Sting sang about some twenty years ago. Yes, it is important that we acknowledge that we didn’t heed the warning of John F. Kennedy nearly 40 years ago when he said, “we cannot afford to become a country that is materially rich, and spiritually poor.”

So Lily Point is calling out to everyone, and more and more people are starting to tune in and join the dialog. Those of you who missed the Whatcom County DNS appeal hearing still have the chance to get up to speed and learn about the rich history and special ecosystem that was named Lily Point back in 1910. Yes, there is a way to develop the land responsibly and to respect the habitat that supports us all. We’re just not there yet.

I’m happy to announce that the Ivy Li song, “Lily Point Calling” is now available on iTunes, http://www.LilyPointCalling.com/LPD/Lily_Point_Calling.html, where everyone can learn about the meaning behind the lyrics. The Point Roberts Eagles Facebook page content is now being posted on the Lily Point Defenders website, http://www.LilyPointCalling.com/LPD/Eagle_Eye.html, so people who don’t use Facebook can keep up to date on our eagles. Our August traffic to the website saw 11,829 hits, and has expanded outside the U.S. and Canada to Japan, Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Spain, and nine other countries.

The Dead Zone is coming, shellfish to an end, engines keep running, salmon growing thin, Orcas stop swimming, but I have no fear, cause Lily Point’s drowning, and I’ll live there forever.   — from the song Lily Point Calling

Many of my friends ask me, “Where is Lily Point? What is Lily Point? Why should I care?”

Each question becomes progressively harder to answer, and it will take months of blogs and videos to reach and penetrate the urban haze that has been slowly obscuring our vision of the natural world over the course of a lifetime.

It’s hard to compete with the main stream media and mega Hollywood budgets that have to take people on an action packed roller coaster ride to even begin to hold their attention. Now I see that Avatar, already the biggest box office smash of all time, is being re-released with new “never seen before” footage.

Well, right now the main plot of Avatar is being enacted at Lily Point. But as many people who really know what’s going on, it might as well be on some distant planet in the never-to-be-seen future. Instead of millions of people lining up for another view of amazing cinema magic, the fate of Lily Point has been placed in the hands of a small group of watchmen who have put their personal lives on hold to try to shine some light on the reality of what is happening.

Someone asked me last week, “Who are you?” Always a tough question to answer, for I often see myself as a lonely voice that is only a few decibels above the proverbial tree falling in the forest. Lily Point is under threat, but not any more so than all natural lands that continue to disappear all over the Salish Sea, and throughout the world. Lily Point is symbolic of so much more than its physical presence, just as 9/11 is symbolic of so much more than a building being blown up. Who am I? Someone who is willing to write about Lily Point and all that it represents. Someone who is willing to shed light on a story that doesn’t make the pages of the Vancouver Sun, Bellingham Herald, Delta Optimist, Seattle Times or even the local All Point Bulletin.

Who am I? Rosa Parks sitting on the back of the media bus? Perhaps William Blake sitting in his London flat writing in obscurity and never getting any respect until long after he died. Okay, you’re probably hearing Lloyd Bensten in the back of your mind saying, “I’ve read William Blake, I studied him in college, and Alex, you’re no William Blake!”

Fair enough, but I’m not claiming to be someone with the answers. I’m only someone looking for answers to the questions that our Planning and Development officials don’t seem to be asking. Answers to questions about why Fish and Wildlife personnel and County Planning staffers are overlooking ordinances, regulations, and the policies that have been written into comprehensive plans and sub area plans for years.

Who was William Blake? He is the unsung hero of Lily Point who said, “For every thing that lives is holy” and he penned the poem,

The Lily
The modest Rose put forth a thorn
The humble Sheep a threat’ning horn
While the Lily white shall in love delight
Nor a thorn, nor a threat, stain her beauty bright.

But where Blake really resonates in this story is in his writings that originated at the same time that George Vancouver first sailed past of the shores of Lily Point in 1792 and named it Point Roberts. Alfred Kazin explained Blake this way, “Blake’s need of certainty, whatever its personal roots, is also one of the great tragedies of modern capitalist society; particularly of that loss of personal status that was the immediate fate of millions in the industrial England of the ‘dark satanic mills.’ Blake was only one of many Englishmen who felt himself being slowly ground to death, in a world of such brutal exploitation and amid such inhuman ugliness, that the fires of the new industrial furnaces and the cries of the child laborers are always in his work. His poems and designs are meant to afford us spiritual vision, a vision beyond the factory system, the hideous new cities, and the degradation of children for the sake of profit. An England that has never recovered from its industrial revolution.”

Who are we?  Many of us are descendants of the same English Empire that braved the crossing of the Atlantic to escape the very exploitation and misery Blake writes about. However, now we have evolved from exploiting children to exploiting the natural world for the sake of profit. We can’t see the intricacies of the natural world anymore, we have lost the vision to see nature, and so we need scientists and biologists to explain to us what we can’t see.

The keepers of the Empire attempt to counter scientists’ empirical data with demands to “show us proof.” For every biologist and scientist who reports their findings there is another one who is paid to counter those facts, to paint them as opinion, and to subject them to reasonable doubt.

Lily Point Calling, from the natural world
Come out of denial, you boys and girls
Lily Point Calling, don’t sub-divide us
Phony credit mania, has bitten the dust

Lily Point embodies all of these things and is at the heart of the current battle to save what is left of the natural world, and to put a stop to the expansion of the mechanical tools that remove nature to make way for roads, houses, strip malls, clear cutting, agriculture, coal mines, strip mining, salmon farms, oil platforms, pipelines, and oil extraction from tar sands. Wildlife is pushed into an ever decreasing habitat, an ever increasing level of pollution, and a web of life that is ravaged through the inevitable shrinking of populations of all creatures from starvation.

Proof of Life? I found myself having to prove to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife agents the presence of bald eagles in the most prolific and most significant bald eagle habitats in North America, i.e., Lily Point! That story I will reserve for another blog, but for now I will leave you with my inspiration, my compass to understanding our past… William Blake, who said, “ When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius; lift up thy head!”