||| FROM JOE SYMONS |||
I write to invite a conversation about OPALCO’s future vision as indicated in the most recent Ruralite magazine.
The page 8 letter from the OPALCO board notes that SJC’s size is 175000 acres. I don’t know where this number comes from. A download of the SJC tax parcel data, summing all tax parcel acreage for the county, comes to about 110,000 acres.
Far more important, tho, is what I consider to be a glossing over of what “conservation” means esp. in the context of utility system planning re the comp plan (CP).
As some may know, I’ve been fairly OCD about SJC’s consistent refusal to acknowledge the buildout potential baked into that CP and how the county is going to meet their legal obligation to provide services to somehow meet an impossible need.
Before the 1999-2007 litigation over the CP, in which SJC lost virtually every legal thrust and had to settle lest the state supreme court leave them, and every county in WA, with a decision no one wanted, the buildout population was 175,000 in a county which at that time (~2000) had a population between 12 and 13k. After the litigation, the buildout population dropped to about 130,000 not counting ADU’s and not counting the impact of visitors. (proof?: see doebay.net/bigpicture.pdf)
Even if every new structure built in SJC were built to passiv haus standards, there’s no way “conservation” is going to make up the electrical supply gap; throw 5kw panels on every one of those new structures and you still won’t meet demand.
The obvious way to reduce future demand is to reduce future population. It’s so obvious that it is not even on the table for discussion. Think of the titanic slowly sinking. It’s going down. There are not enough lifeboats. Period.
In that scenario, the ship should have had either a proper complement of lifeboats, which they didn’t, or a hell of a lot less people, which they didn’t.
OPALCO should break the wall of silence and not emphasize more supply, but emphasize less, a LOT less, demand, which translates in land use terms to a Serious Discussion of the density map which SJC has virulently refused to even look at much less inform the residents about the “iceberg field” that the county is sailing forward into (and is already noting how cold the water is) and what it would take to avoid a disaster. I am reminded of the observation “we didn’t have time to do it right in the first place, but we always have time to do it over.”
Harry Potter comes to mind: “He who shall not be named”, our man Voldemort, which lives in the unexplored regions of the mind which Kubla Ross identified in her 20th century work “On death and dying”, placing Denial as the first step in refusing to acknowledge the ugly trajectory in store for those with a terminal disease.
SJC, and OPALCO, are in serious denial. What will it take to get past this?
The consequences of failing to choose a wise path are in front of our faces every day; perhaps you know that about 50% of the Orcas population qualifies for the food bank.
OPALCO has the opportunity to initiate and participate in an on-going, county wide, serious and action-oriented process to build toward sustainability, not wish it away with contempo slogans while kicking the can down the road and presuming that someone else will be in charge of taking the heat. In all cases spare the current admin and board and perhaps pray for suitcase nuclear power?
The conversation has to begin with defining “full”, as in, when is the county “full”? What happens when it is “too full”? What does “too full” look like? How do you back away from “too full” if you’ve never allowed yourself to imagine it? The signs of breakdown are all around: salt water intrusion, wells running dry, ferries unable to meet the demand, no workers for the summer crowds because no housing, and so much more, much of which no one wants to wrestle with, or, in reality, even imagine.
I’ve been here over 50 years. I’ve seen the population grow over 5x, from less than 4k to about 20k now. Picture doubling that. 40k means 2x as many activity centers and rural lands population, and even there the county would only be 1/3 (that’s just one third) “full”.
It’s not just more people, it’s people with different life style aspirations and the money to make their personal life meet some high-end rural standard, with reliable power and high bandwidth. I’m not sure we should be proud of that given that there is no possibility for all to receive a fair share of those resources.
Chom somehow got access to user data, i’m guessing anonymized but still by user, to be able to show how a very few folks who either don’t know or don’t care can cause huge hiccups for everyone else (I’m thinking demand charges). What else is hiding beneath the individual demand waves? What are the full range of options for power management and equitable sharing?
The article states that “OPALCO is not able to legally cap energy use” (by state law). Are their no options? no non-resident rates? no progressive rate structures? Does TOD rate structures simply use a pocketbook approach? Can outsized users not pay more? Even if they did, does that solve the problem that effectively there are no brakes at all on population growth and its negative impacts? OPALCO’s revenues are fine but the county is a rolling blackout, hungry, and salty water mess?
What will it take to break out of the Emperor’s New Clothes mindset?
**If you are reading theOrcasonian for free, thank your fellow islanders. If you would like to support theOrcasonian CLICK HERE to set your modestly-priced, voluntary subscription. Otherwise, no worries; we’re happy to share with you.**
Good statement of the problem, Joe. The solution is not so simple as I know you know. OPALCO has responsibility to supply power, but no regulatory power to control land use or development, or the amount of power used by its customers. You’re watching OPALCO trying to respond to what is beyond its control. To put it more bluntly, the county runs a lengthening elephant parade, and OPALCO walks behind with wheelbarrow, broom and dustpan.
I don’t think you have the right acreage numbers buy that’s for OPALCO to answer. People who feel that OPALCO’s expressed needs are overstated or unreasonable need to read the paragraph immediately above, and learn something about the fragility of the Northwest Grid. … in winter when much of our population, most likely the heaviest noncommercial users, is absent.
Thanks for mentioning the ferries, Joe. I think that’s where the Big Breakdown will occur first — maybe as early as this summer.
Bravo Joe Symons,
thank you, for talking sense to the county leadership and to us all. Signs of the overload are visible everywhere. Time to pause the population growth and match it to available resources, whether ferries, power, or enough employees to handle the seasonal and tourist traffic, and have adequate, affordable housing for year-round residents.. County Commissions and leaders are supposed to be thinking ahead sensibly and from what you say, joe, it;s head=in-the-sand leadership right now.
OK Joe…….So just how, do you plan to go about accomplishing your stated goal of stopping more growth? Legally, with minimum court challenges that will actually stick?
I agree with many of Joe’s points. But describing painfully obvious post-modern socio-economic problems is an exercise in futility when viable solutions may not exist at all. Island living from a community perspective, from a “build self-reliance to blunt the constant ravages of the larger economy” vision, is not what happens on the ground here.
After just 18 years of living here, aging and adjusting to constant change I no longer see the glass as half full. At best. The complex demographics, one arm tied behind our backs regulatory tools we have at hand, population turnover, 43% empty residences built for self-aggrandizing speculation, 4% local food production, inflating prices and a foolish focus on summer tourism point to a grim future. Did I mention the exurban delusion of landscape beauty representing ecological health?
Given the circumstances I think that OPALCO should drop big expensive experiments to attempt to address 4% of the growing problem. Many Bailer Hills solar panel/battery storage is a way more reasonable and affordable strategy to minimize larger grid crashes. We have about 111, 680 acres of County land (one thing we have a lot of) but the County has too get real, and fast about incentivized land development solutions.
If only power was our only Gordian Knot problem! If only cascading effects of climate change were not accelerating! If only the surrounding marine ecosystems weren’t terribly diminished! The current mix of economic sectors here are propped up and supported by calcified thinking (the Town of Friday Harbor is the poster child) and will lead inevitably to a general collapse and depopulation of tax payers who cherish the power of community but cannot afford the fool’s gambit that we are living in this bucolic place.
Correction: In the April Ruralite incorrectly stated the acreage in San Juan County. The correct acreage in San Juan County is 111,360 acres, not 175,000 acres.
I have seen a rotating series of non-legislative, regulatory hurdles raised to inhibit property development and building construction in San Juan County over the last 35 years, primarily coming from what used to be called the “planning department” but also the county and state health departments and the ridiculous WA state energy codes. In the early ’90s the hot button was Water Availability, with Eastsound Water, Rosario and other Orcas water systems unable or unwilling to provide new hookups. When we fought back about that suddenly it was okay to use a well that produces just 200 gallons per day or to use rain catchment and tanks, even to just install tanks and haul water. Before that we had to fight tooth and nail for the Owner Builder exemption. In the intervening decades the roadblocks thrown in the way of development include absurd energy codes that allow you to build a 10,000 square foot glass house as long as it’s insulated “to code” but they will red-tag your 500 sf cabin because it doesn’t have R-38 ceiling insulation. Then it was septic systems. If you want to install a gray water system for watering trees you also MUST have a certified septic system sized for that gray water “just in case”, even if you use a composting toilet. Costs for a 3 bedroom septic system now start north of $20,000 and go WAY up from there. And then there was the “fish bearing streams” that turned out to be road ditches and “wetland setbacks” that required yet one more overpaid “expert” to tell builders where they can and can’t site a home.
My point being that the county and state have, either deliberately or inadvertently, been discouraging budget conscious building for at least 35 years. All of these regulatory shenanigans probably have slowed the aggregate amount of development but it has also skewed the islands towards being a place that only the rich can afford to build. The comp plan SAYS we value diversity and inclusivity, affordable housing and all the Good Things of Life, but what are we ACTUALLY creating? Every parcel of land that is removed from the possibility of development will raise the price of the remaining developable properties. Preservation is antagonistic to Affordability. Finding a new equilibrium between those two desirable but mutually inhibiting goals is the challenge.
Michael Riordan: I am curious to hear more about your concerns with the fragility of the WSF system, would you expand on that? My own experience is that the more intricate and complicated any system is, the more likely it is to break down and (worse) the more likely it is to fail catastrophically, rather than in repairable ways. It does seem that Efficiency is the enemy of Resilience. Centralizing services looks economically efficient to pencil pushers but it creates systemic fragility. The absurdity of a 300 foot long ferry that sits, along with all but one of it’s crew, doing nothing useful for hours if not days at a stretch is a perfect example. Either the regulations need more flexibility (Is it ACTUALLY necessary to have an oiler’s assistant (for example) onboard every time the ferry moves?) or there needs to be an uneconomic level of redundancy, like the thousands of boats of all sizes and shapes in the Mosquito Fleet. Inefficient? Sure, but probably less than you might think. Resilient? You betcha!
“Less” and “smaller” are so antithetical to the myth of human supremacy, people can’t even conceive of them. And so we continue to support (and maintain our addiction to) the massive pyramid scheme that is the global economy and infinite growth on a finite planet, and our own participation in it here in the County.
Expecting the pyramid scheme to continue is, however, foolish. Like all pyramid schemes, this one will fail, falling over from its own top-weight. And when that happens, everyone will exclaim, “Oh, my! The Emperor is indeed naked.” Only then, it will be too late.
We who live here in San Juan County might get “lucky” (while the non-human world suffers for our luck); perhaps we can build and grow and build and grow and build some more, and keep extending the due date on the reckoning of our addiction’s rock bottom. When we will hit rock bottom in our addiction to growth is anyone’s guess, but it seems likely to happen well within this century. Even if we choose not to end our participation in this addiction, we would do well to at least admit we have a problem.
“The modern economist … is used to measuring the “standard of living” by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is “better off” than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.” – Buddhist Economics
E. F. Schumacher is maybe the only economist that every made any sense to me:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._F._Schumacher
Electricity use in the county will increase, but TOTAL energy use will decrease. Here’s why…
While there are no perfect solutions, Washington State and the county are working to stop burning fossil fuels. Most of the fossil fuel pollution in San Juan County comes from just two things—driving and heating. Electric driving and heating use much less energy—300 to 500 percent more efficient than gasoline and propane—and they cost less to operate.
The electrification of transportation and heating is the ultimate energy efficiency move, simultaneously reducing county fossil fuel imports, pollution, and GHG emissions. Washington State is transitioning away from burning fossil fuels. The county has the highest EVs per capita in the state, and heat pumps are the #1 most requested energy rebate.
Thanks for your comment, Jay.
Unfortunately, I believe your claims of 300-500% increased efficiency are wildly overblown,
Our Orcas Island residence is a large old house originally designed and built by none other than Starr Farish. Starr was a visionary and iconoclast. Originally, he intended to heat the house geothermallly using a heat exchange system with a heat sini/source submerged in the quarry pond across the road. The exchanger was a complicated mess off soldered copper pipe. That didn’t work so well so he installed a wood-burning hydronic furnace to heat both floors and domestic hot water (DHW).
The second owner installed a Vissmann oil-fired hydronic furnace to heat the floors and DHW. That was the system in place when I purchased the place in 2003.
In 2023, we removed the Viesmann furnace and in that year and 2024, we installed 8 heat pumps. Five are Mitsubishi forced air “split” units, one is an electric HW heater to supply HW to radiators, and two are DHW heat pumps.
I keep very complete records of our expenses and the results are set forth below (totals by calendar year)
2020: OPALCO $2374, Oil $3700, Total $6074
2021: OPALCO $2598, Oil $4816, Total $7414
2022: OPALCO $3036, Oil $4604, Total $7640
2023: OPALCO $5462, Oil zero, Total $5462 (construction phase)
2024: OPALCO $7192, Oil zero, Total $7192
2025: OPALCO $2545 YTD.
That”s the real data. My take is that there is no free lunch when it comes to energy use. Note that we spend our winters in Kauai, so we leave all thermostats at their lowest setting (60 degrees) when we are away. There are many advantages to our new systems, including no diesel stench, better control of individual living spaces, and no need for oil trucks to rumble down our driveway.
Ken, to your comment above: You say, ” Preservation is antagonistic to Affordability. Finding a new equilibrium between those two desirable but mutually inhibiting goals is the challenge.” That is the dynamic we’re experiencing, but it’s not the way it has to be. Land supply vs. affordability doesn’t have to be a zero sum game. We can have growth limits and affordability too. And supply can be legally regulated, without any complex “shenanigans”–via a comprehensive plan which recognizes a buildout number that says “Full-No Vacancy” and works toward that limit over a period of, say 20 years, by gradually metering the number of permits granted. That’s exactly what comp plans are supposed to be for. It’s also what the County is currently doing with vacation rental permits.
Now–affordability? It’s true that our biggest problem is that our economy is increasingly tilted toward the people who can still afford to move here while many already here can’t afford to stay. But that’s not because of a limited supply of available land. There are still about 7,500 vacant parcels in the county, with the potential for a couple thousand more by subdivision. The question is: will our resources sustain that?
The current Growth Management Act regs mandate that we not only accommodate half of our anticipated 20-year population growth in our “Urban Growth Areas,” but, now also dictate that we accommodate them in proportion to various income / affordability levels–for example, say 35% of new housing in Eastsound must be affordable for those in the 50-80% income range. I’m not defending that particular well-intentioned folly; just saying that if we can do that, then why can’t we meter the issuance of building permits, county-wide, based on relative need and “affordability”? …and there go the majority of your spec homes and vacation homes until we can build enough affordable housing to house our own.
First off, thank you, Joe Symons, for your well thought, tireless, and well-researched work over many decades, and this brilliant, eloquent letter that lays it all out clearly once again in plain-speak and poetic metaphor – as you have done so many times before. I was wondering when people were going to say something about OPALCO’s predictions of almost certain doom, while at the same time telling us to ‘switch it up’ and pushing all electrification over conservation/putting on the brakes. It’s also good to see some intelligent thinking and lively dialogue and respectful debate going on in the comments.
I get it – OPALCO board and CEO are in a rock and hard place – and so are we who must pay for the electricity and live with the threat of something really bad and long lasting coming. By pushing all electrification, and not telling the whole story about the cost of heat and hot water, or that there is no real ‘clean’ energy, OPALCO is perpetuating myths of sustainable ‘green’ energy and encouraging the bulldozing and deforestation and their own all-electrification goals, while at the same time doom-prophesizing a big crash when a cable snaps or whatever, and Bonneville drops us – and how much more we’ll have to pay and pay… But… “switch it up!” (?!) – and no backup heat, to boot.
OPALCO may only be pushing a wheelbarrow behind the indiscriminate bulldozer of uncontrolled runaway growth, but they are pushing it hard and fast behind that bulldozer of County land use and the usual-environmentally-watered-down Comp Plan. Switching to digital meters was but one step toward this end. I have lots more to say about that.
I’m sorry to say and think all this. OPALCO’s programs for low income and the poor help me and many others pay our bills and be able to stay on Orcas. Project Pal is brilliant: for less than 12 bucks a year per person, if everyone rounded up their bills, this project can continue to help a lot of people. I’m not ungrateful. But the fact is, there are some weird dichotomies. Conservation is not being discussed, encouraged, or incentivized.
This is unsustainable until we deal with growth, land use, and income disparity. In an era of fear porn, how tiring it all is to keep getting the message that we must comply, pay even more, and turn away from the obvious incongruities.
I’m not buying it that we can have no effect on land use policy and regulations or that we can’t dial back densities. I’m tired of hearing there is nothing we can do because, “Growth Management Act.” How hard have we or our former Councils tried? The GMA left plenty leeway for our Local leadership to do it. And we wouldn’t even need to have this debate or discussion if tourism growth weren’t pushed so hard by the Tourism/Real Estate/Development Industries, which did all they could to influence land use policies and discourage year- round economies that weren’t tourism-based. They have not only failed us from long into the past, (except for a few individuals who actually tried) – the people who want runaway growth and who profit from it, are calling the shots and influencing land use policy with threats of lawsuits – a microcosm of what’s rapidly blowing up the land-grab macrocosm in an ugly and inhumane way. Enforcement only seems to apply to people who can’t afford to sue when it comes to owner-builder homes and code violations. It’s that simple, glaring, and discriminatory. (continued in next comment)
(comment continued from above) Another poo-pile we’re stepping around was brought up in Joe’s letter and in some comments – income disparity. San Juan County has ‘graduated’ to the dubious distinction of being NUMBER ONE in the state in income disparity. Think about that. I’m curious to know where we rank in the entire country. In our rapidly being deforested UGA, OPALCO and the building industry itself are pushing yet more solely electric domiciles, more speed, more broadband – endangering our rural character and quality of life. Gentrification is a real thing.
The glut of new high-end homes, the mushrooming of VRBOs and luxury condos for people who can afford them (and can afford to let them sit empty for the majority of time while people who contribute year-round to the local day-to-day economy are houseless) Local mom and pop businesses are folding, due to lack of housed employees, and we’re losing essential services because of skyrocketing ‘market-driven’ real estate prices and no housing for workers. The land speculators have lawyers to sue their neighbors and the County, for daring to interfere or suggest Rights of the Environment or address legitimate concerns of risk to others’ down-slope properties.
The long time residents whose homes were nice, yet modest, know the whole story – and what their homes and lands are worth nowadays, due to ‘market value.’ Chances are, they would never have been able to have afforded these homes themselves in today’s markets.
My usual ongoing diatribe about Eastsound riparian forested wetland watershed UGA and how it continues to be trashed, directly connects and relates to OPALCO’s agenda, to Climate Change, and to a LOT of elements of the Comp Plan; also to Public Works’ engineering projects being directly at odds with environmental concerns and any land or tree use protections. We’re still waiting for that tree ordinance and our Planners are overworked with all of this.
I’ll say it again: we didn’t HAVE to become a UGA. We could have become a LAMIRD. Instead, all-electric homes are being built and pushed onto the segment of the population least able to afford them – the working class who fall woefully under even 80% mean income – even with the low income energy assist rebate and other programs, which don’t help people in that income bracket anyway because they ‘make too much.” Yet they pay and pay – for utilities – Eastsound water, sewer, heat, curbside pickup. Most of our workers fall far below the ‘mean’ income. With no backup heat. Yet over 50% of us are mandated to live in a UGA. BTW, there’s serious discussion about expanding Eastsound UGA sprawl to meet this projected growth ‘need.’
Are we rural or not? Are we even ‘suburban’ anymore? Where does the Rest of Biological Life fit in to urbanization plans on tiny islands 55 sq miles and less? We need to Have the Discussions and effect some real actions, not just more talk and workshops which are the minimum obligation of the County and a legal formality. If not now and for the last 50 years, when?
In spite of the problems outlined by Joe’s excellent posting, the new ingenious idea that some entrepreneurial short-term thinker has recently conjured up in an effort to bring more regional tourists, (as you may have noticed from the front page of our local papers), are people advertising the short-term rental to the public of their private boat moorings… this putting a different twist to the Visitor’s Bureaus infamous quip, “feet on the streets”, one they came up with several years ago to describe their mass-marketing efforts throughout the greater Seattle area.
We’re each in control of the ripples that we create in the world through our individual thoughts, words, and actions. Whether it be our vote, our combined purchasing power, our choice of vocation, or our investments… we each make choices that reverberate throughout our community and affect the greater world beyond. There’s power in numbers and the number starts with 1.
Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered portrays a better world in which economies of less create a better world for people, using “less” as a guiding elemment instead of “more.” Much of what he has to say is also echoed throughout “Caring Economics: Conversations on Altruism and Compassion, Between Scientists, Economists, and the Dalai Lama” ( https://www.abebooks.com/9781250064127/Caring-Economics-Conversations-Altruism-Compassion-1250064120/plp ), and in a stretch, also the Bible.
But, as Elisabeth states above, “’Less” and “smaller” are so antithetical to the myth of human supremacy, people can’t even conceive of them.'” As a result we often find that our actions are not reflective of our words, either as individuals (as is clearly evident by some in this thread), or as leaders of our community, state, or nation). It’s true that we’re all a part of the problem… but it’s also true that some are more so than others.
We know what the problems are, yet the lack of acknowledgement and continued short-term thinking on behalf of our elected officials is a mindset (a policy) that only assures the solutions that are being offered are not solutions designed to deal with the root causes of the problem(s). Therefore, they’re not long-term solutions at all. “Kicking the can down the road,” is the phrase that often comes to mind.
And pointing your finger and saying, “OK Joe……. So just how, do you plan to go about accomplishing your stated goal of stopping more growth? Legally, with minimum court challenges that will actually stick?”, ignores the fact that the problem, though being one shared by all, is also one that only a few have the background and the ability (the credentials) to attest themselves towards, (with the lawyers, economists, scientists, and politicians amongst us being those that come quickly to mind). It’s not incumbent upon Joe, or myself, or other citizens to do the work our elected officials should be doing, (looking out for our community’s long-term welfare).
There have been many solutions offered by the people to the problem(s) at hand over the years, and the response is always the same, “Our hands are tied.” We’ve now heard that so much that it’s obvious that this will continue to be the status quo, convenient, default response by our elected officials to every complex issue that arises. O.K. so what do we do about that?
In line with what Bill Appel stated above when he said, “OPALCO has responsibility to supply power, but no regulatory power to control land use or development, or the amount of power used by its customers,” this then leads to the question that we all kinda/sorta know the answer to, “Who has the power? If you were to ask me the question, “How do you plan to go about accomplishing your stated goal of stopping more growth?”, I would say that a good start would be to ask our elected officials, 1) to acknowledge that they understand the problem (spell it out, no double-speak allowed), and 2) why aren’t you approaching the people who do have the power to makes changes, (or allow you to make changes), that are relative to this?”
To our elected officials, I ask– “Are you listening?” It’s time for “less,” not “more”. The root problems that are relative to the coming of our expected electrical blackouts, (overpopulation, overtourism, AI data plants, etc.) are known, but are being ignored. This will affect each of us in many ways, both as individuals, and as problems related to our essential services (water, sewer, propane, gas, our food markets, medical facilities, the sheriff’s department, the supply chain, etc.).
Difficult you say? Of course it is. But that’s not a reason to ignore it. It’s time for the people draw the line, and for you (our elected officials) to quit kicking the can down the road, and clearly acknowledge the problem(s), and only then can you start being a part of the solution instead a part of the problem.
“The quality of life is inversely related to the ease in getting there.” North Burn, Waldron Island, 1975.
The simple truth in all these words point toward the unusual opportunity to make your views known in a small community. Since arriving here I embraced what I considered to be a perfect community size (after living in some much smaller or larger towns) by volunteering and sharing my hopeful views with the County Council, the Land Bank Commission, the Food Bank, Trails Committee, etc. and tried to effect real change via important local elections and critical ballot measures.
I the last few years I have become more circumspect primarily because I realized that many good ideas swirl around to find a place to die on this island, in this town and in local govt.
However, this thread and topic has been re-inspiring. If many more citizens actively participated in our flailing attempts to address our most serious issues we cannot help but find some success that will affect the lives of those that follow us. Pay it forward!.