||| FROM JOE SYMONS |||
I write to the SJC Planning Commission (PC) and if the email address so directs, to County Council (CC). I urge the PC to disallow OPALCO’s request for an EPF designation.
I feel strongly that such a designation would not be in the best interests of the county. Future electricity options need to be discussed thoroughly by the OPALCO membership prior to any modifications of the CP.
Results from surveys of locals in the summer of 2025 show that approximately 85% of those surveyed state that the county is either maxxed out re population or too full (by implication, too full means that the population exceeds functional and sustainable limits and, theoretically, should be reduced).
You and fellow commissioners have, with the exception of a finding in 2000, recommended multiple times that no funding be requested of CC to support a DCD analysis of what the largely-unchanged 1979 density map reveals in terms of buildout. That work has already been done privately. It requires a few seconds of computer time applied to already existing county TPN data, so the actual “cost” would be de minimus. The real cost, however, is in the consequences of avoiding a serious and likely game changing conversation about what the county can sustain and, in terms of GMA and the CP, recognizing that the CP’s Vision Statement should have teeth. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that a substantial, perhaps egregious, inconsistency exists between the Vision Statement and the UDC’s silence re the 1979 density map. CP’s are vulnerable to PFR’s regarding internal inconsistencies in a county’s CP, but adversarial battles rarely produce desired outcomes.
Bite the bullet. The current SJC buildout population is north of 130,000 and this number does not include the 10% ADU bump nor the impact of visitors.
Growth resistance conversations are increasing. Get out in front of this long-overdue willful ignorance of the direction we are going. Actually require SJC to limit population growth to what OFM and SJC agree is the population being planned for. Right now the CP is basically a betrayal imposed (with silence as to why) on the residents of the county. It sounds good, but it has no teeth, but that’s not what locals think. They think that their assistance wordsmithing the CP will actually matter. As members of the PC, you have the opportunity and responsibility to ensure clarity and thoroughness in guiding what planning could and should mean here, not just an excercise, delegated to an out-of-county (and out of state) consultant who is slamming the CP, due to have been completed last year, out with minimum public guidance and conversation. The 2016 CP, completed 8 years after it was due in 2024, had a planning horizon of 20 years, presumably planning for about 3000 new folks to take residence in SJC by 2036. The population of the county, 16000 in 2016, has already reached its planning goal of adding 3000 new people, 10-12 years before 2036. SJC really doesn’t care because the plan is a chimera. A real plan would not issue any more building permits that what it is planning for. No real plan has ever existed in SJC, save the sacrosanct density map 1979 ‘plan’ that has never been examined, much less reviewed for consistency and meaning in a county that for 3-4 decades has been the fastest growing county in the state. (see https://www.
OPALCO’s EPF request continues the silent creep of infrastructure planning that encourages population growth; solar panels take space, buried fiber-optic cable is invisible, but that unlimited fiber bandwidth is another part of encouraging growth.
I believe locals will benefit from a thorough public discussion of the challenges and benefits of creating a sustainable, long term livable and thrivable, island community grounded in quality of connection, not quantity of separate consumer-driven individuals. The absence of such publicly-driven conversations reveals either ignorance or fear.
We all deserve better. You can set a new transparency tone. Please do.
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I’ll say it again. “of those surveyed” is no way to perform sentiment analysis of a population. If you are to be taken seriously, please publish your survey methodologies which show that you have implemented widely accepted techniques such as random sampling, stratification, or other methods. Please also include a margin of error so we can understand how closely your survey may match the overall sentiment of a population. Otherwise, we are left to assume your survey is simply a blunt force tool to push your agenda.
Electricity is essential to modern life, and as our community transitions to cleaner energy, siting renewable generation projects has become essential too. The EPF designation ensures these critical facilities can be planned and built. It still has a transparent public process.
The EPF designation does not bypass public review or limit public input. All existing requirements—environmental assessments, wetland protections, safety standards, SEPA reviews, archaeological studies, and all related mitigation measures—remain fully in place and must be met.
We hope that co-op members who want to see local, renewable generation will support OPALCO’s efforts to have local renewable projects to be designated as essential public facilities.
Find out more about this designation: https://www.opalco.com/quick-fact-essential-public-facilities/2025/09/
Find out more about some the big issues OPALCO is facing: https://www.opalco.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Reliable-Energy-for-San-Juan-County-1.pdf
Consider OPALCO’s situation. It recognizes that measures enhancing resilience need to be taken. It faces a government unit that represents every point of view and so is not inclined to act. While many feel that all can and should throttle back, our economy and safety are overriding concerns and therefore in spite of deadlock, the impasse must be broken. Given this situation, OPALCO is left to make the decision, and I think the county council would be wise to allow OPALCO to use its best technical judgment to enable it to serve the county. At some point, or after some event, the county council will have to act.
This is a situation where triage should be exercised, but can’t be while each opponent is fighting for every inch of its own area of interest. Such a situation usually results in imposed, rather than negotiated dissatisfaction.
Everyone that has their knickers in a twist about this EFP issue, which looks to be a completely reasonable detail to me, should try generating their own electricity and see how easy it is.
OPALCO is our own cooperative, if you don’t like what is happening then you should attend meetings and find out what is actually going on. If you still are unhappy with the decision making once you know the situation, then run for the board! It’s YOUR co-op! The membership elects the board and THAT is how we change things in a democracy.
Whining about a few acres of solar panels on Decatur or Bailer Hill is the very definition of NIMBYism. There are lots of “public goods” that I don’t want to look at or fund but I live in a place where decisions are made by the majority, so I make my peace with what I consider unnecessary, wasteful expenditures of public funds on projects. Clearly I have a minority opinion regarding installing salmon culverts to nowhere, outrageous executive salaries, million dollar fire stations that are unmanned, and every road widening project ever. We don’t always get what we want in a democracy! But as Churchill is credited with saying, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
I get it; the island feels like it is changing, especially to those of us who have been here a while. But in Life, EVERYTHING is always changing, there is no going backwards and if we are honest, the only balance in any ecological system is a dynamic one. Clinging to some mythic past is obviously misguided when it comes to society (MAGA) and it is equally misguided when it comes to ecological systems. There was no perfect time. This part of the world is still rebounding, geologically and ecologically from the most recent glaciation. 3000 feet of ice covered the Salish Sea, scrape marks are gouged into the rocks on top of Mt. Constitution! The last 15,000 years has been Life building up from raw, ice-scraped rock. Every lichen, moss and beetle was an invasive species at that point! WE are just the latest in a long line of invasive species that has changed and continues to change the local biome. I’m not claiming we are changing it for the good of all Life or even ourselves but clearly there never was a perfect time that we should be trying to return to or recreate.
In my experience, a wide diversity of organisms tends to engender a more resilient biome. Perhaps the same is true of political opinion in an electorate?
Well said Ken Wood. As a nearly life long conservationist if I have learned anything it is that we are coping and having to adapt to very destabilizing events due to population and ecological overshoot. Back in the 60s these unfolding dangers were clear but there was a great deal of hope. Around here I see so much extremism as a backlash to so much that we can no longer realistically prevent and that carries over into smaller, but critical, fights where so many are willing to toss out the good in search of the perfect. We live in a rare place where an individual does count and can be persuasive and public discourse is still alive (barely) . We can create an intentional future if only we can compromise for the betterment of the entire community and steer leaders and organizations to make the timely decisions toward that vision as the Comp Plan prosaically describes. Slowing growth, increasing conservation of key resources and building a sustainable local economy are critical ideas that seem to be a bridge too far given our delusions, oil and water population mix and inability to deal with less complex issues. Time is of the essence but we seem to prefer dithering. Cries for degrowth here are simply not realistic and diversionary. Our economies are barely functional now due to the strange realities of our demographics and discordant social values and begging for middle class expansion and more business opportunities that necessitate modest growth of the right kind.
“Everyone… should try generating their own electricity and see how easy it is.”
That’s not the issue. You provide a false dichotomy, one which does not recognize that people have legitimate complaints.
“OPALCO is our own cooperative, if you don’t like what is happening then you should attend meetings… then run for the board! The membership elects the board and THAT is how we change things in a democracy.”
Democracy is the ability of people to speak out. We deserve better.
“Whining about a few acres of solar panels on Decatur or Bailer Hill is the very definition of NIMBYism.”
“Whining” is not an accurate description of what people are doing… many of them have adequate , (and educated) reasoning behind their opinions. It is you who are whining at the fact that people feel differently than you about a subject. NIMBYism? How would you feel if this was being done in your backyard?
““Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
Give me a break. We don’t live in a democracy, and the people deserve better than to live in a lesser of evils world.
“I get it; the island feels like it is changing, especially to those of us who have been here a while. But in Life, EVERYTHING is always changing, there is no going backwards and if we are honest, the only balance in any ecological system is a dynamic one. Clinging to some mythic past is obviously misguided when it comes to society (MAGA) and it is equally misguided when it comes to ecological systems. There was no perfect time.”
“…in life, everything is always changing…?” “…there is no going backwards…?” “…and if we are honest…?” “Clinging to some mythic past…?”
More false dichotomies… here’s some honesty for you. Honestly, I don’t know how one can claim that a movement to protect our islands, (and our environment) from over-tourism and overgrowth amounts to “whining,” or that it is perhaps undemocratic, or simply “clinging to some mythic past” is a lesson in misguidance, as if there’s no credibility to be had in the face of what we see coming down the pike. The fact that we’re even talking about this is evidence of the misguided direction that we are going.
“I’m not claiming we are changing it for the good of all Life or even ourselves but clearly there never was a perfect time that we should be trying to return to or recreate?”
Seriously? “…there was never a perfect time that we should be trying to return to or recreate?” Another false dichotomy.
“Things are changing and it doesn’t matter if it’s for the better or not?”
There has never been a more perfect time for people to express their dismay at how things are going. We deserve better than a bunch of realtors and vacation rental owners like yourself telling the rest of us how we are going to live our lives, telling us that we need to embrace the future, to just shut up and get used to it.
We get it… we’re in the way of progress, and progress is good. There’s never been a better time to turn our heads the other way and let the dominant narrative play out.
“…if I have learned anything it is that we are coping and having to adapt to very destabilizing events due to population and ecological overshoot.”
When you say “population” I’ll take it for granted that you’re referring to “population growth,” or “overpopulation.”
“Slowing growth, increasing conservation of key resources and building a sustainable local economy are critical ideas that seem to be a bridge too far given our delusions?”
“Delusion” is what is taking place already. It doesn’t really matter what “we” the people think. The decisions are made by three people, and pre-emptive legislation that was put on the books by lawyers representing corporations, corporations that do not have our best interests in mind.
“Cries for degrowth here are simply not realistic and diversionary?”
There is nothing “extremist” in our pleas for degrowth. It’s absolutely essential. It is the only mechanism (tool in the box) that will save us from ourselves (from our misguided economy, misguided growth, and misguided tourism policies).
“Unrealistic, delusional, and extremist” is what we are doing now. In the face of slow death we continue to ignore the obvious and continue to over promote the islands in the hopes that the changes, (or better yet, let’s call them “problems”) will somehow magically take care of themselves.
“Growing into oblivion” is the phrase that comes to mind. As Elizabeth once said, “I’m a proud NIMBY.” I am too! SJC can take their grand political scheme (scam), elsewhere, for it’s not working here, (or anywhere else for that matter).
The trouble with rhetorical dissection of broad ideas is that the essence, the interconnectedness of elements of that broader idea, are lost .
My general view, expressed many times here, is that our modern circumstances leave few viable options for adaptation for that which is coming.
Hard choices are piling up. Degrowth of human economies and overpopulation will certainly occur as a result of epidemics and catastrophe. But coping with necessary decisions for today and the hear future must be considered in the context of our island realities not a myriad of ideas as to what ought to be that result in eloquent handwringing, inertia and kicking the can down the road some more. The best days are behind us, natural resource options are gone. Preparing for inevitable growth makes the EPF designation necessary for quality of life adjustments while intelligently struggling with just which local enviro protections are critical and which are not for such small, short term grid enhancements to buy us some time as a community to engage in really important work; drastic reform our dysfunctional, summer tourism and high end investment home mockery of a stable and resilient local economy. At this moment in our history , substantial growth of middle class families , growth of small tech and service industry businesses with year around wages is the only path to success. That gets harder and harder every passing decade now with the choke hold of the pro-summer tourism fools in our midst. Positive, synergistic, regenerative growth of a functional community able to withstand the coming challenges. I tire of this rehashery.
Imagine– imagine living in a world where we’re made to follow a predetermined pathway that’s designed to enable the few at the expense of the many, (socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor). One in which success is defined as exorbitance, a short-sided one that puts more value on our day-to-day than it does our future, (in spite of where it’s obviously taking us). Where those who are willing to stand up to the status quo and say “enough, we deserve better” are considered to be unrealistic, delusional, extremists, obstructionists, and whiners. One in which compromising and meeting the other side halfway only ensures a continuance of the status quo. Imagine it and it will be so.
“One reason people insist that you use the proper channels to change things is because they have control of the proper channels and they’re confident it won’t work.” Jon Stone