CHAPTER 1 – Transportation

Eco-Commuting is Walk-to-Work. Significant reduction of commuting car traffic will not happen as long as it is necessary to commute. What minor reductions are possible should by all means be done if only because of the logic of doing something, but the priority should be on taking the first step toward significant reduction. That step is to produce a charter for the City of Vashon-Maury. That will serve ad-hoc while I explain what I mean. Getting out of cars is to end car culture. That means undoing a hundred years of incorporation of cars into every aspect of life. That means total re-organization of employment and that’s the same as re-making society. For a bedroom island that means make a living here, or leave. By any similar line of reasoning the result is that untrammeled mobility must be terminated. The goal is a cohesive community. Such a community is able to take a responsible stand on matters of world survival. Life on Vashon-Maury presently limited by rainfall will then be regulated by means for livelihood. The Virginia V will be the flagship of a new mosquito fleet. There will be a skate park in Vashon Town. The Luna will expand into the Senior Center from which the seniors will get jobs at K-Two making condoms from re-cycled car seats. A hundred electric trams will serve every hamlet, crevice, and hippie bush. Vashon highway will have a ten-foot bike lane. Public toilets will be located within sprinting distance of all bus stops and policed by retirees from the DDES. That organization will no longer serve, make that screw, Vashon-Maury. The real estate business will be regulated by Emma. Water regulation will be taken from the state and done here by elected officials who will have to be registered hydrologists. Septic fields will be replaced by composting toilets or communal treatment. Fire and emergency dispatch will be brought back to the island. There will be a recovery and retraining center for riffed auto mechanics; Vashon Auto Parts will quit selling Japanese parts and concentrate on vintage cars. There will be a new Community Hall with the best dance floor in Western Washington entirely run on local sun, water and doo-doo. The role of the Community Council will be upgraded in accord with all this.

CHAPTER 2 – Food

Corporations are killing us. Name any questionable ingredient in brand name food or domestic article and there is a lobby pushing it. We are slowly being poisoned, and it is the working poor who are hurt the most. What to do? Plenty. Immediately, the Charter will establish information boards at Thriftway and Beck’s. These will display the full text of The (Jim) Hightower Lowdown series on corporate ownership of brand names and contributions to the Dems and Reps. Next, increased space for the Vashon Growers Market will be sought, and a program established to foster increased cultivation based on growing household awareness of the poisons in commercial food. A nutritionist position will be established at the Vashon Clinic to plug the gap in conventional medicine that ignores prevention. Concurrently, a new kind of restaurant to be called the Seven Women will be installed at the Sound Foods/Minglement site. From a rotating contest pool women cooks will each cook one night of the week. Instead of “Italian Night” it will be “Alice’s Night”, when you eat what Alice cooks or stay home. Think of the savings. The men cooks can stay downtown with the big menus. Finally, at Vashon College there will be a community sponsored course in organic farming and food preservation. The latter will include homey alternates to conventional refrigeration which will seek to end the modern custom of using the refrigerator as a pantry.

CHAPTER 3 – Water

Management of our scarcest resource has so far consisted of studies and contention. Okay, our people have been working hard to plan for the future, but with the false water god lodged in Olympia what have they in fact accomplished? Cheesh, it’s our water, our island, and the true god is rain. That said, we are the ones at major fault because we have not addressed conservation. We can blame the county rules for some of that, but still. The charter will now address first conservation, then supply. As true Americans, being able to let the tap run and the hose squirt is a birthright. Skimpy showers are un-American. Acceptance of a water budget is to admit mortality. On the other hand, how much fun is there in flushing a toilet load using drinking water? The goal, therefore, is not to set up rules and limits, but simply to be reasonable. Here is the charter idea: make usage visible. You don’t drive a car without a gas gauge, so don’t use water without a water gauge. It goes in the kitchen with repeaters in the bath and garden. Gives rate and total and instant warning of a leak. Now, the technology for this is the same needed for remote meter reading, so the charter will package supplier and user expense and benefit. Private wells should opt in. That’s it for conservation. Turning now to supply and recycle, the charter will seek a new culture of water based on knowledge. Kind of like a religion in that it’s a matter of informed attitude not rules. The founts of this knowledge are ground flow, surface flow, and the nature of water. There shall be created a people-friendly model of the two islands’ groundwater that takes in account the layered clay and gravel and the hydrostatic pressure of the sea. Many wells go below sea level into a region where there are no barriers to pressure. Concurrent with this project, a required course in island hydrology is established in the schools with an optional equivalent at Vashon College. Certification of the latter for state hydrology license is desired. The model is physical and large. Surface flow related to aquifer recharge has to be included in the groundwater model. The surface flow here considered is a lot owner’s concern and joy. Enough water falls on a minimum town lot to sustain a family, but the cost of storing it limits the yield. So you do what you can, and you want to, right? Turning to this fount of knowledge there are found the arts of catchment and gray water treatment. The cornerstone of the charter’s method is to separate on-lot treatment of gray and black water. Blackwater treatment should be encouraged to relocate from huge drain field to compost and mini-field. Gray water treatment starts in the house and finishes in the garden. The owner becomes adept at placing plants and soil so that settled and filtered graywater is recycled for irrigation use. In the kitchen the present scullery is to be replaced by physical wiping and hot jet rinse. Cuts down on detergent use. Veggie scraps are ground for compost, not fed to the septic tank. The nature of water enlivens and informs all the foregoing. Did you know that de-ionized water is a perfect electrical insulator? Or, how about the difference between shallow well and deep well water: the former can be used in a solar heater, but not so the mineral-laden deep water. As to bugs, there will be a testing facility on island for homeowners use. As to nitrates, property that recharges a public aquifer must get its groundwater tested. Period, no matter how misty the isle. From knowledge shall all good laws flow.

CHAPTER 4 -- Electricity

Electricity is unique among sources of energy in that it cannot be stored very much. Exacerbating that, electricity demand is the most variable of energy media. This is why utilities will go to almost any length to keep generating capacity at average demand instead of peak. Lengths include time of use savings for industry and conservation for homeowners. Additionally, industrial users are provided with use monitors that allow self-regulation of usage. Time of use pricing has only recently become feasible with the universal adoption by utilities of remote meter reading. Vashon electric meters for some years now have had add-on data transmitters by CellNet. As this company name suggests, cell phone technology is used to transmit the watt-hour reading to the utility. Your home meter is just one more cell phone. For the island homeowner PSE subsidies conservation measures of all kinds with the exception of use monitors. It won’t let the homeowner use the cell signal, which would otherwise be a handy input to a usage meter inside the home. But as will be noted, this stinginess is not entirely a bad thing. The Charter stresses usage monitors inside the home, and pooh-poohs, make that eschews, grid-tie solar installations. The conservation benefit of usage monitoring by the user is widely accepted to average a fifteen percent saving -- widely except for Vashon where there has been next to no interest. There are two benefits: real-time rate for the whole house, and appliance tune-up. Real-time rate, that is, kilowatts, for the house primarily reminds us of lights left on. Next in importance is continuous readout of the accumulated power bill in dollars. Having entered the kwh rate of about nine cents, the monitor will read accumulated dollars. Appliance tune-up and purchase choice information is possible if the monitor you have installed is able to single out an appliance of interest. (Mine does both whole house and appliance). Monitors are available for around two hundred dollars and are readily installed. The reason PSE stinginess is not problematic is that using the CellNet signal won’t do appliances. A monitor specifically designed to measure refrigerator efficiency is on the market and is being used to facilitate a US government conservation program called something I forget. (Mine does this too). The trick is to average the usage. It turns out that a good refer (clean coils) using a couple of kilowatts while the compressor is running will average less than a hundred watts. One light bulb. Compare then, the cost of one refer with the cost of leaving a few lights on as you patter around from room to room. Compare then the oddly discomforting light from a fluorescent bulb with the warm glow from a real Thomas Edison toaster, and grin and bear it (The discomfort may be from the flicker as well as the spectrum). The refrigerator? Yes, dirty coils can run the cost up almost half again. Peanuts, but still. The Charter would establish an information and buying service to help get monitors in every home. Turning to photoelectric panels, they are great for providing essential electricity during power outages and a waste of money used to feed the grid. Consider that photo panels catch ten percent of a comparable fraction of the sun’s radiated energy. Peanuts compared to solar hot water panels which are very efficient and cost peanuts, well, brazil nuts. Here’s more: photo electricity for limited essential use costs about $1500 to install while photo electricity for grid tie costs about $20,000. You would be better off putting an electric eel in a tank and running wires to it. The Charter would provide an information and buying service for emergency photo electricity. I hear that some Australians bought out PSE. P U G E T S O U N D Energy? Shame. Illogically this reminds me of that PUD idea. Did I ever explain why I opposed that feel-gooder? It was because it preached energy independence but proposed no solar. Solar will be taken up in a later chapter of the Charter.

CHAPTER 5 – Heat

Only recently has it become obvious that internal burning of fossil carbon to heat our homes must be outlawed. Fortunately, solar collection with electrical boost is cheaper. Purists will ring their hands over the fossil carbon fraction in that electricity, but so what. There are three ways to keep the electricity bill down: Passive solar construction, solar collection, and high efficiency wood burning. Use separately or in any combination. Now how many solar heated homes turned up the past two solar tours? Count them on your hands. So what is holding up the works? The answer may be cultural -- the supply of furnaces is overwhelming innovation. Put differently, people will say there’s not enough sun, but what they really mean is they are not sure how to go about adding solar to a house not built for it. Case in point: BlueRidge does not offer solar tie-in. Fact is, using solar collection for space heat /is/ tricky. To conclude this assessment, the priority is on adding solar to existing homes. New construction can go to town on passive solar -- bravo new warm nests -- and for little more money than the old, fight nature, way; the problem is the blindered gas & oil hogs we live in The Charter would prohibit new installation and replacement of gas furnaces, gas water heaters, and gas dryers by, uh, one year from now. Instead, the program to encourage alternates would include a library section and courses at Vashon College. Subjects would include the drying of clothes, the physiology of warmth sensation (radiation vs conduction), solar hot water conversions, the chemistry of hot water, wall radiant heating, masonry wood heaters, pellet characteristics, and of course, passive solar design and remodeling. The Chamber of Commerce could have a field day of new industry right here on Vashon. Maury could stay rural.

CHAPTER 6 - Health

If it is possible to justify why health care has become an insurance commodity then one can believe that the moon is made of green cheese. In order to free us from the morbid grip of the health insurance industry, the Charter would finance preventive health care and hospice by means of a community tax. Zero co-pays. Beyond that, there would be Medicare and private arrangements. My own plan would be to make monthly payments into a personal savings account for medical emergencies, and cancel the Boeing-Aetna that now takes half my pension. As mentioned in the food chapter, nutrition would be considered a mainstay of health care. Living the good style would be an individual’s ante into community health. Prescription drugs, well now, how about that, damn. Okay, Some generics would be covered by group purchasing. Beyond that, the Charter idea is that once prevention gets established, drug costs could come down enough to be mostly paid by the community preventive health plan. Dream on, folks. For example, there are some great herbalists on the island. It could be a whole new world in which most of the paper involved in health care would be toilet paper. I read last week that one of our fine doctors has been pushed to the wall and is on that account joining an “Advantage” program. An absolute rule in the Charter plan would be adequate compensation for our health professionals. This draft won’t get into nursing home and ambulance, because in these areas I have opinion but no common sense.

CHAPTER 7 - Jobs

In 1965 a contingent of restless Boeing employees descended on the old cotton town of Huntsville, Alabama, to siphon off some dollars from a gusher that had appeared overnight at the nearby Redstone Arsenal, aka the moon shot. There was a neat old hardware store on the town square kiddy-cornered from Cotton Row, the block of the cotton brokers. One day in the store I had fallen into conversation with a clerk, a young fellow in his twenties. The question concerned to buy or not to buy a bulky, expensive something or other. He couldn’t understand my reason not to buy which was that the job would soon move. He said, “ah don’ know ‘bout you, but ah’ll always have a job.” I tell this because one of the more irritating things about neogloballiberaliizing is ordinary Western goods made in China. “Made in China” was supposed to mean that it was Chinese. A fan, maybe, or even some china. Not my socks. Jobs are moving objects, and if you lag behind then the job keeps moving and likely ends up in China. But here we do the best we can and that means we need a car. Cars used to be made in America the Beautiful’s rust belt. Next they were made in Japan, and now in order to save shipping the Japanese jobs have moved into America’s Bible Belt where they retain the Japanese non-union culture. Those jobs still up in the rust belt are moving south leaving the unions behind like stuffed “union suits” in a museum. Dear fellow menwomen, have I your ear? You are supposed to live, work, and shop no farther from your bed than you can walk. Confined willy nilly by decree to an island, menwomen look around and think, hey, lots of ways to make this work. Eggs? Strawberries? Venison? Raccoon coats? Whatever is local is fair consideration. A marine biologist I know told me the other day that Vashon has the best unspoiled salmon littoral in Puget Sound. And in fact, some Indians are raising ecogeoducks on Vashon. An ecogeoduck eschews eelgrass. But Indians don’t pay well, so let’s keep thinking. Barter is an intriguing possibility. Veggies, apple products, weaving, pottery, escort service that also sells chickens; name, “The Egg and I”? People developing their fullest potential? Natural sciences come naturally to an islander and could be the basis for a university that would use the island as a living laboratory. An island has more beach per person than does stateside. Hydrology could be raised to the level of a pagan religion with Neptune running it. One fancies Misty Isles as a campus: Botany of Desire University. Are you wondering where’s the buck? Nothing so far seems able to bring serious dollars on-island. But hey, something will turn up. Speaking of islands and water, how about think tanks? The trick with that is to force the tank’s highly paid denizens to spend their filthy lucre here; no fair taking it stateside. The art colony concept I think is already maxxed out. A better direction is that of survival-based industry. One example could be a think tank devoted to the underlying concepts in changing energy sources from combustion to solar etc. I put it that way in analogy to what happened when the vacuum tube went transistor. It was soon glaringly obvious that the change was not just to a smaller and cheaper vacuum tube, but instead was a revolution in life style. So as we wean from the torch to the sunbeam there has to be a coincident change in the way we use energy. The first year of an energy conversion think tank would be devoted to figuring out what I am trying to say. There will come to pass a new kind of dwelling called the Northwest Longhouse. Just as the Indians learned how to live in rain and mist so we must learn what kind of shelter fits. Gradually the stick-built castles would disappear and the island would green with soft textures and salal. Did the longhouses have gutters? I see that you are getting the idea. The challenge of Vashon-Maury architecture is to extend passive solar from the sole property of the elite to include the working slug. The result, a derivative of the Indian longhouse, could be exported. Have to pay the owners of the name “longhouse” a user’s fee or be scalped at Safeco Field. Recycle grist, dump water, and septic pumpout are at present trucked off-island. Now, menwomen, what kind of lunacy is that? The island wears a catheter and a colostomy bag? The technology we develop to deal with our doo could become a high value export. More recycle: A smithy or two would be nice. Fine carbon cutlery of vintage ‘57 Impala springs. The arts of metallurgy form a spectrum ranging from the so-clever farm tool dinosaurs to the exotics at Silverwood Gallery. Anybody spring for a genuine Damascus letter opener? Current green roof technology is an elite playpen. By the time you membrane and fuss it costs thrice a three-tab job. Back in Norway they spread some birch bark, some dirt, and put up a goat. The NW Longhouse could have a green roof that leaks to good advantage on to something that appreciates water. Rent-a Senior. A tram picks them up for their jobs watching the public toilets, bus stops, Jensen point and other parks. They get a break on the tab at the nursing home. It’s sort of like potty teaching. Cell phone and Sodoku supplied, courtesy of, I don’t know, maybe get somebody to underwrite. Buying services. Island home improvement businesses add a catalog section, pick up there. Literary and talent agencies. Why self-publish when you can walk right in and sit right down with a live agent? Puget Sound Water Tours. Cater to rowing cruises on the inland waters of Puget Sound and beyond. Lodging pre-arranged. Idyllic rendezvous with stateside natives. A popular trip would go up Port Susan and portage at Stanwood. Something to write home about if you still have postage after settling with the Vashon press gang. Recording studio. We’ve got the talent, so pile up some bales, check the reverb, and “take one”. I’ve saved Kay Two to the last as couldn’t think of what that place would be good for. Sorry about the condoms. Well, for starters, Bill Moyer could make puppets there. It might make a fine natural history museum. The thirty-foot island hydrology model, bio displays such as native flora, fauna, bugs. Food preservation court, all kinds method. My what a place, charge a shameful admission. What do they get at the Seattle Aquarium? That’s the kind of money we’re talking about. These are just some of the things to think about. There’s more, and I’m sure some of you out there are already thinking of some wonderful trumps to this call.

CHAPTER 8 –- City Hall

Although introduced earlier ( I did? ) The Hall wants its own chapter for the reason that of all the components of the Charter this one can be begun immediately. The process of constructing this gracious building will itself enliven the Charter. The nominal reason for doing this is that it is a moon shot. Back around 1960 a sputnik-challenged John Kennedy said let’s go to the moon. His reason had nothing to do with science and a whole lot to do with making him a hero for one-upping the hated Soviets whom we had been taught to hate by the Kennedy family and friends. In the case of The Hall, it will make me look good. The other reason also is based on the moon shot, and it is this: Just as going to the moon was to prove it was possible, building an eco Hall will put into hard copy all these sustainability hot tamale ideas that have been floated here on Vashon the past few years. Translation: it will put Vashon on the map big time. Another reason, quite irrelevant I suppose, is that Vashon needs a decent performance and town hall space like a bad itch needs a good scratching. Unfortunately, Vashon may not have the will for it. Reflect that the best hall on Vashon, the VFW post, has been struggling to afford even a good roof. This is all the more reason to demonstrate community pride by building The Hall. The design of an eco hall is a narrow plateau between the chasms of art statement and compromise. I give you the new Seattle library catastrophes. The worst of them, the big one on fourth avenue, is a revolting off-color maze with far too many zombie terminals. The one in Ballard is cold, uninviting, and its vaunted roof leaks. The one on 35th in West Seattle looks like a warehouse. I suggest that we don’t open the design competition to world famous architects. There’s good menwomen right here, and all that’s necessary to keep them on the plateau is they have to build a big model and let the island proletariat have a go at it. Exactly how eco it needs be is a nice question that might need a strong community consensus. One criterion is minimum impact to the land which means no septic field and no sewer. This will set off a nice look into rain management. Another is zero gas combustion. Another is a disappearing parking lot. What! You forgot what started this vision thing? The parking lot must be convertible to serve “Chartered” transportation whatever that will turn out to be. This criteria musing could run on a bit, but I’m already encroaching on my ignorance sector. Just let me muse about what could go on in The Hall. The multipurpose room could be ballroom, theatre, court, and meeting hall. Smaller rooms would serve conventional community uses of which you know more about than I do. But one thing I do know is that youth should be honored members. Last but not least, The Hall will have public rest rooms that are policed 24/7 by pairs of helpless old people with good hearing, cell phones, and bad attitudes.

Chapter 9 - Politics

The foregoing chapters sketch a dream of the future in which the island reverts to a slower and richer life bounded not just by a water use limit, but by human imagination. That future is thirty years away, one generation. But these years cannot even begin under the present state of national disgrace and a Community Council in denial. Where is the Council as Maury tries to fight off Glacier? Where is the Council in the current doctor shortage? Where is the Council on construction of obscenely huge homes? Where is the Council on citizenship of a country that is bent on military destruction of all opposition to hegemony of world resources? Is it somebody else’s job to kick us into action? Ron Sims is a great guy, but he’s got his own problems. The Council is us, menwomen. Let us decide that Vashon-Maury shall have a future. Consider this from Reuters today: "Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters, writes: 'Climate change could end globalization by 2040 as nations look inward to conserve scarce resources and conflicts flare when refugees flee rising seas and drought.'" When do you think will be a good time to start?  Submitted 11-7-07    Yep, this polemic has been around a while.