A couple of new air connections from Cascadia stand out:
— Nonstops between Seattle and Austin daily on American Airlines, beginning in April. The first such connection between the cities is driven by business demand, the airline said.
— Nonstops between Vancouver and Manchester, Glasgow and Gatwick at least once per week during ski season on Zoom Airlines, a Canadian low-fare carrier. During the summer the airline offered tourism-focused nonstops from Vancouver to Belfast and Cardiff.
Officials in Vancouver seized 50 containers of hazardous garbage bound for China, a portion a what they called a “very large” toxic industry doing business through the port.
The waste from 27 companies across Canada reportedly includes computer monitors containing lead, lead-acid batteries, fluorescent lamps with PCBs and toxic scrap metal. An international treaty bans shipment of toxics to developing countries, which can be cheaper than recycling in Canada.
A Seattle-based activist trying to curb toxic exports told the CBC that Canadians could still ship the materials through ports in the U.S. because it hasn’t signed the treaty. A new American law requires exporters to notify the government before shipping hazardous materials but there is little enforcement, according to this recent report.
From the better-late-than-never category: one of the the sharpest summaries of what went wrong at the Port of Seattle this Christmas season.
Peter Callaghan of the News Tribune says the port commissioners “received bad staff work, got bad legal advice and used a bad process” to deal with questions over Christmas trees in the Sea-Tac terminal. “The number of unintended — and bad — consequences just might set a record for a single public-policy decision by an elected body in the state of Washington,” he writes.
The uproar distracted attention from questions of whether the port is effectively doing its job with Sea-Tac.
In a setback for expansion of port capacity in Puget Sound, an environmental review has temporarily blocked Weyerhaeuser’s plans to export logs from the Port of Olympia.
The small port signed a five-year lease with the timber company last year and was expecting $1.5 million in new revenue and 36 new jobs. The operation is delayed until late 2007 the delays have cost $750,000 in missed revenue.
The delay has an impact on shipping capacity in Puget Sound overall. Shifting from the log business would allow more space for containerships in Tacoma and would boost the growing port business in Olympia. Critics say the project is unnecessary since the area has few industrial producers, fault the port’s decision-making and opposed plans to dredge the inlet.
Travel from the U.S. to Canada slumped in October to the lowest level since records have been kept, likely thanks to border hassles, confusion about passport requirements and a stronger Canadian dollar.
According to Statistics Canada, there were 2.3 million trips from the U.S. in October, down 12.1 percent from a year earlier. That’s the least travel since 1972. The number of same-day car trips fell 18 percent while the number of overnight trips fell 2.1 percent.
The dropoff hurts tourism and trade across Cascadia and could hinder attempts by Washington to take advantage of the surge in visitors around the 2010 Olympics. Delays at the border highlight the need for Washington and B.C. to convince the federal governments to fund better infrastructure and use much clearer standards to screen travelers.
Strength in the Canadian currency also discouraged travel in October, as the dollar rose to 88 cents against the U.S. dollar. Still, travel from seven of Canada’s top 12 overseas markets was up, though the total number of visits from countries other than the U.S. was off 1.9 percent to about 370,000.
The business of supplying wreaths and garlands is one of Cascadia’s largest underground industries, a capitalistic frenzy complete with undocumented workers and violence.
That’s the picture, according to Marketplace, of the wholesale market for wild forest greens, a business about a fourth the size of Washington’s apple industry. A Washington State University professor says it’s like a gold rush, with 175 different forest materials that can be sold, from yew bark for the cancer drug Taxol to decorative moss.
Unlike with apples, labor practices and environmental impacts in the woods go largely unchecked. To curb violations of forest permits and abuses of workers, the Washington department of labor wants to regulate the supply chain. Warehouse owners who would have to pay more predictably say that would crush their industry.
The interior and northern sections of British Columbia need more control over the billions of dollars they generate for the province in order to build more sustainable communities, according to an editorial today in Opinion 250.
Unlike rural Oregon and Washington, which get more state funding than they contribute in taxes, the B.C. regions have little sway over the revenue they generate, which keeps the province afloat, according to the article. The forestry industry alone contributes C$5.4 billion a year to the provincial government, it says. The province has funds for the 2010 Olympics, new ferries and other programs but needed to privatitze the extensive B.C. Rail operation and hasn’t paid enough attention to stabilizing rural communities.
In a season when the gulf between the haves and have-nots is more noticed than usual, the News Tribune has a report showing rising inequality in one of Pierce County’s most desirable areas. It highlights the role of sprawl and ineffective transit.
The paper found the percentage of Gig Harbor-area households earning less than $25,000 remained flat at 10 to 14 percent during the last 15 years, while the percentage earning more than $100,000 has risen to 28 percent from 16 percent. Meanwhile the middle has shrunk to 60 percent, a trend it says is similar across the county and state.
The have-nots stay in Gig Harbor area for many reasons, including for quality schools. The story notes that housing is expensive and a toll on the new Narrows bridge will hit poor residents especially hard. It also notes that there are few social services in the area and cars are necessary to get to jobs or appointments across the water in Tacoma.
Circulation of Seattle’s two major daily newspapers, in general decline for years, took another hit Friday when it dropped to nearly zero.
A Thursday-night windstorm knocked out power to the papers’ printing plant after only 13,000 copies of the Seattle Times and no copies of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer had been printed. The papers’ Web sites directed readers to electronic versions online. The News Tribune of Tacoma was able to publish and at Sea-Tac Airport there was no noticeable shortage of New York Times, Wall Street Journal or other publications with alternate production.
It’s hard to overstate the significance of a daily paper not publishing — an event that is supposed to happen no matter what. For example, many in the Northeast managed to print despite the 2003 blackout. In Seattle, the lapse seems sure to push more readers to the Internet, at the expense of the dead-tree versions that still carry most newspaper advertising.
Six years after the first cruise line decided to make Seattle a summer home for its ships, the Port of Seattle is nowhere close to breaking even on its investment in the industry, according to a report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The paper says the reason is sweetheart deals with vendors and terminal operators, where they take more financial risk and also gain more potential gain. Defenders of the arrangements say the true economic benefit to the region is from the 350,000 passengers who visit the city each year, though that number is likely to fall.
