It has been known for centuries that slaughter is incompatible with homes and most business.  Since slaughter was first moved “outside the wall” of cities, it has also been known that it cannot be left in areas without proper supervision. Health risks must be reduced, not just traded around.

A solid majority of the County Council insists on ignoring centuries of land use planning, the environment and the public’s health, safety and welfare.  All to placate the ideological fantasies of a few hardcore propertarians who lack the capacity to even accomplish their stated aims.

What are these aims?  They say it’s to provide local product, which apparently translates as a slaughterhouse on every farm and dairy!  There is no demand for unlimited slaughterhouses and these farmers don’t have the money to build even one.  So the real hope is that a blanket rezone might make it possible for a big slaughter company to buy out some lucky farmer(s) and create the same kind of market-control slaughter environment that has already left local producers here and elsewhere without access to adequate facilities.

Smarter communities are already struggling with the realities of the market, not huffing hairbrained freebooter ideas of an unfettered marketplace and a ponzi scheme of unsustainable increased animal production.  These communities find it difficult enough to build and support one small facility between two or three counties.

They do a needs assessment, organize a coalition of producers, consumers and regulators, find the best spot, adopt the best branding standards, and design a business plan specifically to support local production.  They know excess capacity will open the door to consolidation and the same market control that already prevents local production of premium meat products to benefit local consumers.

Want to integrate some issues here?  I propose there must be reasons that Whatcom County farmers and legislators act so stupidly, unlike other communities.  Did you know that at least 400 tons, and possibly 600 tons of mercury are completely unaccounted for in the G-P cover-up?  Did you know this was spewed into the air at the rate of at least 24 pounds per day, directly upwind of virtually all of Whatcom County’s farmland.  Did you know that G-P packaged their wastes into ‘proprietary’ compounds for dust supression on their forest lands throughout Whatcom County?  Did you know that G-P used private contractors to export 100 cubic yards daily of woodyard waste, hog boiler ash and who knows what else to largely unregistered and unregulated landfills throughout the county?

What can explain the Council and farmers senselessly seeking a measure that cannot achieve their stated aims and which threatens the environment and human health - all without adequate review?

It must be the mercury!

So that “supply and demand analysis”.  Was that what was used to determine we needed a new 8800 acre park on Lake Whatcom?  I find it curious you call for economic studies now but you didn’t then.

The reconveyance was studied carefully for years, and it will result in old growth forest. What type of analysis was needed here?

In contrast, there was no SEPA review of the impacts of a 88,000 acre rezone for slaughterhouses and meat packing plants of unlimited size and number, an industrial activity that is known to harm the environment and create public health risks.  There is STILL no quantifiable determination of the county’s slaughter needs. which is pretty shocking considering the scope of the proposal. I think rationale people can see the clear distinction.

Wendy,
You wrote “the supporters of the rezone do not want a supply and demand analysis that would confirm whether, and to what extent, more slaughterhouse facilities are necessary”. 

I asked the County Council to do an study of the dollars that the recreation community brings to this area.  Recreation dollars where used as a rallying cry for why we needed the reconveyance.  Proponents of the Reconveyance did not want/care that this study was done.

I simply asked why we should now do the same for the slaughter house issue.  Do we need more slaughterhouses?  We don’t know.  Do we need 50 miles of mountain bike trails?  We don’t know. 

You know, Delaine, you need to consider your comments more carefully. When you oppose a measure and lose, it’s nonsense to accuse a supporter of not having done your work for you.

You are in effect arguing that Wendy should have worked against a measure she supported and that because you were unsatisfied with the quantitative analysis on the reconveyance that none should be required for slaughter, either. Your conclusion should be the opposite even before comparing the apple and orange environmental implications - which, of course, you fail to acknowledge.

Actually Tip, I did ask the County Council to do an economic analysis of the recreation in our community, as well as, asked them to hire a consultant to find out why we have so much park land that we have no access too.  So I did do my work.  I was simply pointing out the inconsistency in wanting an economic study for one thing and not the other.  I’d be all for a “supply and demand” study for slaughterhouses in the area. Bring it on…...

P.S.  Here is what Ken Mann said on his FB page about the topic.  Pretty much said the same thing as me except in reverse…..

“The same people who wanted an all-out economic impact analysis, parcel analysis, and plebiscite for Reconveyance now pooh-pooh the relevance of Health Department or Dept Ecology analysis while contemplating re-zoning farmland to allow slaughterhouses. (By the way, I support allowing slaughterhouses.)”

The “except in reverse” part is kinda important because it undermines your point, suggesting instead that it was the people opposed to the reconveyance who tried to manipulate the political process.

Who among us would not appreciate a free upzone of our property by a compliant County Council ?  No bothersome fees for a text amendment.  No time or dollar investment in private counsel to champion our case before the Planning Commission and Council. 

The slaughterhouse issue is not about food, sustainability, local produce or any of the other fuzzy words that have been bandied about since the inception of this ridiculous proposal last summer.  It’s all about money. 

Does anyone deny that allowing an industrial use on an ag parcel will not increase the value and commercial attractiveness of that parcel?  I can assure you that, given the choice, an overseas “investor” would pay more for an ag parcel with a permitted industrial use than one which was limited specifically to agriculture. 

This is yet another example of privatizing the profits and socializing the costs.

When do I get MY free upzone?  Why is it just the farmer that is given preferential treatment?  I would love to supplement my income by selling used vehicles on my RR1 property, but I suspect my neighbors would object to the increased traffic, pollution from stormwater runoff and a variety of other inconveniences large and small that would detract from my neighbor’s peace and enjoyment of their property.

The slaughterhouse proposal should have been killed months ago.  But, thanks to a Council that just can’t bear to say “no” to any request from the “property rights” cabal, it has taken on a political life of it’s own.  No other County allows slaughter as a permitted use, but apparently Whatcom County thinks they’re smarter than everyone else.  Perhaps if anyone on Council had an agricultural background, they would see the folly of the current proposal.  Instead, all they see is votes.
 
And a free industrial upzone is a great way to garner support from the ag community, particularly in an election year.

If the reconveyance didn’t happen, it would have been a bummer.

Put in context, the piddling amount of forestry jobs created to log 8,000 acres does not remotely equate to the environmental impact—and well-documented prospects of cataclysmic landslides—which would threaten the drinking water source for the entire city of Bellingham. Bellingham, by the way, is THE economic engine of this county and, to date, the City has already dumped more than $28 million, for a measly 2,000 acres, to buy properties within the watershed and remove them from the roster of potential development and its well-known impact to our lake’s water quality. (Fun fact: Of the 658 purchases made so far by the City of Bellingham, only two purchases were made jointly with Whatcom County.)

Those 8,000 acres, then, represented a freakishly good bargain. By any metric you might care to use, preserving that land as forest, for essentially the cost of pushing paperwork in circles, is a good deal for us tax payers who, it is worth noting, are PAYING FOR the current program of property acquisitions ... $28 million, and counting ... plus the devotion of exquisite mitigation resources from our Bellingham Public Works Department to dampen the impacts of the development already in the watershed. It should have been a slam-dunk, no-brainer, proposal. But the Tea Party clan, which sometimes likes to bemoan the darn Guv’mint taxing stuff all the time, instead yodeled furiously about a handful of timber jobs. (They may win yet, apparently, since Jack Petree, representing local timber interests, has filed an appeal against the reconveyance.)

My personal opinion is that if municipalities in ever-enlightened New Jersey are smart enough to put razor wire around their water supplies, then we can probably do it, too. Outside of Third World nations few societies are still so blindingly stupid that they would threaten their own lifesource—their drinking water and the potable water used for industry—for any reason whatsoever.

So, as stated earlier, I think it would have been a bummer if the reconveyance did not pass.

All said, however, comparing the impacts represented by potentially logging those 8,000 acres within Bellingham’s watershed to the impacts of flatly allowing slaughterhouses on every inch of the 88,000 acres of Ag lands in Whatcom County is not vaguely an “apples to apples” comparison.

Giving farmers a blanket right to install industrial scale slaughterhouses, damn-near anywhere, is a twee bit different than complaining that a half-dozen loggers will lose a few paychecks if the day ever came when DNR decided, or dared, to log that unstable slope again. Given the well-known social and environmental detriments that accompany a slaughtering operation, and the fact that the scale of this proposal covers a massive swathe of landscape which, often, directly abuts residents and other businesses, I think the comparison quickly becomes closer to “apples and minotaurs” when looking for rough equivalents.

I’m not offended by Delaine’s red herring, nor by Ken Mann’s pander to console a small pool of radicalized farmers who he believes to be his voters. It is a free nation, after all, and even a dumb debate is better than a decree skewering us from faceless tyrants on-high. Still, if we want to play silly numbers games then let’s do it right.

The gamble for the reconveyance, in economic terms, was guessing whether Bellingham, Washington,—noted repeatedly as a Mecca for recreation in several national surveys—could potentially gain external revenues from creating a new park AND protecting its own damn water supply. If we remove all the sentiments to protect chipmunks, Mother Gaia, trees, or whatever, this baseline analysis is roughly tax potential vs. job potential. The only “hippie” notion in this construct is that it is heretical enough to consider that Bellingham, as a cell in the otherwise alien body of Whatcom County, is part of the overall community which we all, hopefully, wish to be financially healthy.

The economic gamble for these slaughterhouses, in the current mark-up of this proposal, is whether property values in and around the 88,000 acres of Ag lands in Whatcom County will be impacted by this fanatical re-zone. Do theses special interests, and their apparently urgent need for slaughtering facilities, really merit shitcanning the financial security and peace of mind of everyone living on and using this massive hunk of real estate? Aside from the lucky few who pencil a contract to build one of these meat factories on their own land, is it not the case that everyone else in this area will get clobbered by the simple math of saying; “Yes, this land—and all of these neighbors’ properties you see around it—could one day be a rendering plant for dead animals. Name your price for my home, please, because I’m having a hard time selling it!” Conversely, should the County Council one day regret this dumb move, what sort of fees, fights, and folly will it take to try to reverse such a vast vesting of property rights if the deal goes queer on them? 

We should debate the need and the scale of these facilities, certainly, and consult the knowable best research to consider impacts on water supplies and/or the environment. We know what logging is, after all, and we know the effects both good and bad of the logging resource industry. We don’t know much about slaughterhouses around here, however, so, even though I don’t know many County folk, it seems prudent as a member of this region and a stakeholder in its economy to ask what nail we are trying to hit with this 9-million ton sledgehammer and, for that matter, what the long-term effects might be for our farmers and their neighbors.