📢 Cascadia Voices 05/31/26

Newspaper opinion editors jump at the serendipity of a point/counter-point opportunity, a chance to share different perspectives on the same page regarding an issue or concern. The opportunity occurs often within our letters to the editor section, providing readers with two or more views of the same subject.

This week, among our letters, that juxtaposition concerned the approach to addressing kidney disease: One reader encouraged a public health approach to disease prevention as a way to address the strained budgets of local government and resources of health care providers. Another reminded that kidney disease prevention is a fine goal for Type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes, on the other hand, is an autoimmune disorder that cannot be prevented, yet still requires consideration on our public health agenda.

It’s these perspectives — “yes, and” moments — that are invaluable in informing the public. We’re here for it.

But also vital to the public discourse are those perspectives that take opposing positions, as presented in two guest commentaries this week regarding the permitting of projects by AltaGas (ALA Energy) to handle the import and export of liquified petroleum gas at its Ferndale Terminal at Cherry Point. A recent decision by a Whatcom County hearing examiner sent the permits’ environmental review back to the county planning department for further review, a decision that brought parties from each side of the debate to our pages, providing CDN’s readers additional information they need as they advise their representatives in local government.

Spokespersons for three area environmental groups — David Stalheim with Whatcom Environmental Council, Eva Schulte with Friends of the San Juans, and Marlene Finley with Evergreen Islands — write in support of the hearing examiner’s decision that sent environmental review of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) handling projects at Cherry Point by AltaGas back to the county for additional study. “We know the risks involved with equipment leaks. And yet, Whatcom County deferred to AltaGas’ consultants to determine whether the tank is safe. Your barbecue tank expires and can’t be refilled without recertification. Having an independent expert examine whether this 350,000-barrel storage tank is safe is not too much to ask,” the group wrote.

From the other side, Chris Prokop, an AltaGas vice president, counters that the administrative judge’s decision “raises broader questions around the integrity of the county’s permitting process and whether businesses and communities can have confidence in a system that is supposed to be grounded in science, expert analysis and clear, consistent rules.” AltaGas, Prokop writes, has followed the permitting process laid out by the county in good faith. “We believe environmental protection and economic opportunity can, and should, coexist. Those goals are not mutually exclusive. But achieving that balance only works when decisions are grounded in facts and a permitting process people can trust.”

Along with his leadership of the Cascadia Daily News newsroom, former Executive Editor Ron Judd was a prominent voice within CDN’s Opinion section.

His departure (CDN, May 27, 2026) will mean changes, including the loss of his regular opinion column and his satirical Hammer column each week.

What won’t change is CDN’s commitment to continuing to offer these pages — in print and online — as a soapbox where readers and community members can provide their perspectives on the issues facing the communities in Whatcom and Skagit counties.

That’s where we will continue to count on you. Please keep sharing your thoughts in letters to the editor. We ask only that you be civil, have a point, make it clearly and do so in 250 words or fewer. Letters can be sent via email to [email protected].

Some subjects require more than 250 words to adequately address. For those, we invite submissions for guest commentaries. For consideration, please submit commentary drafts to [email protected].

Other inquiries regarding the Opinion section can be directed to Deputy Editor Jon Bauer at [email protected].

Tell us what you think.

Cascadia Daily News is planning a special project for July 3, 2026, in recognition of the nation’s 250th anniversary, that will focus on the role of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and the part the free press plays in our democracy. As part of the section, we’d like to include the thoughts of our readers in the form of letters to the editor that express how they plan to mark the semiquicentennial as well as their thoughts on where the nation stands in its quest toward Abraham Lincoln’s “more perfect union.” The usual rules apply: Be civil, have a point, make it clearly and, fittingly, in 250 words or fewer. Email: [email protected].

His absence raises serious concerns about the publication’s future direction.

Consequently, I am considering canceling my subscription. I plan to reassess this decision in two weeks once I have had more time to process the news.

I hope the leadership team understands the impact of this change, as it feels like a significant loss for both CDN and local journalism.

Evan Touger
Bellingham

Read more letters to the editor here.

Submit a letter to the editor (250 words max) or guest commentary (500–800 words) online at cascadiadaily.com/submissions.

With fuel prices at near-record highs ($4.46 a gallon nationwide; $5.75 in Washington state) some have proposed suspension or reduction of the federal gas tax (18.4 cents a gallon), the Washington state gas tax (59.4 cents a gallon) or both.

The Atlantic’s staff writer Henry Grabar, in his recent piece, “The Gas-Tax Reckoning,” writes that pausing the federal gas tax — 18.4 cents a gallon — as proposed by President Trump and Republicans and Democrats in Congress in response to nationwide high gas prices would be a lose-lose proposition. The federal tax is so relatively low that it fails to discourage gas consumption and, at the same time, is inadequate to cover the federal outlay for highways and mass transit. Nor will it matter much to pocketbooks. “It won’t do much to bring down the price at the pump — but it will accelerate a crisis of infrastructure funding that no one wants to solve,” Grabar writes.

Also in the most recent Atlantic, the magazine sent Getty Images photojournalist to Yellowstone National Park throughout May to capture several scenes including the rainbow hues of “thermophiles,” microscopic organisms in the Grant Prismatic Spring; a sauntering grizzly bear; a horse drive through the streets of Gardiner, Montana; a park service ranger on horseback patrolling for elk; a “bison jam” along a park roadway and a traffic jam at the park’s entrance. I’ll take these Yellowstone scenes over any of a certain televised “Yellowstone” multiverse.

New York Times opinion writer — and Columbia University linguist — John McWhorter highlights a book set for release this August: Florence Hazrat’s “On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobans, How Punctuation Remade the World,” which recounts how the interpretation of a single comma’s placement played into a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case that is now precedent for all Second Amendment cases. The book alleges that the late Justice Antonin Scalia used a comma to bend the amendment’s wording on firearms to his liking. “Hazrat argues that commas should play no role in interpreting the amendment because punctuation was not as conventionalized when it was written as it is now, and there were different versions of the amendment with two, three and even four commas.” Let no one tell you that punctuation isn’t an important consideration in writing. Period.