And the new Triangle PCO is...

...yet to be announced.

Did you all vote for Mark Lindquist for (democrat) Precinct Committee Officer?

I checked the election board results this evening. They're not posting the PCO finals until September 10.

So, we'll wait.

Election Night

Looks like the good governor has come to the Colman Triangle for her election night soiree. The parking lot at the Northwest African American Museum was full of local TV trucks this evening as my daughter and I took went walkabout in the neighborhood. The KOMO reporter wouldn't talk to my three-year-old daughter, but someone else confirmed the reason for the party.

The Stranger's Eric C. Barnett confirms on Slog:

I’m at the Northwest African American History Museum at the former Colman School in South Seattle, and we’re waiting for Gov. Christine Gregoire to show up for her third event of the night. She’s running late from her last event—a hoity-toity “high-donor” private fundraiser at an undisclosed location—and the crowd is milling around in an increasingly hot room, drinking (mostly wine) and talking (mostly about Darcy Burner). “We Are Family” is blasting from the speakers.

Last week we had Senator Murray. Tonight Chris Gregoire.

All within spitting distance of our local crack house.

One step at a time.

South Precinct Community Newsletter

South Precinct Email Community Newsletter

August 13, 2008

Dear Community Friends,

Light Rail Testing

As reported in this morning’s Seattle Times, Sound Transit will begin testing link light-rail trains in Rainier Valley on Thursday August 14, adding a new to the traffic on Martin Luther King Jr. Way South. The trains will share streets with cars, buses, motorcycles, bicyclists and pedestrians.

The Light Rail tracks pass through 18 intersections and 10 pedestrian signals, plus three stations in the median. Trains will run as often as every six minutes in each direction, at a top speed of 35 mph. Although engineers have designed state-of-the-art signals and walkways, the sheer volume of activity makes this a hazardous five miles.

Left turns from MLK are allowed only on left-turn arrows, to reduce conflicts with trains going straight. Electronic signs show a train icon whenever trains are approaching. There are several "Z-crossings," where short fences channel pedestrians and force them to look in the direction of approaching trains. There are refuge islands in the median where people can stand, if they can only make it halfway.

Safety During Testing and Operation of Light Rail

With light rail testing and the start of service in the summer of 2009, Sound Transit has launched a safety education and awareness campaign for community members and students. To spread the safety message, Sound Transit has bought billboard space, talked with school and community groups, and hung fluorescent warning signs at crossings. Safety brochures have been produced in 12 languages. A light rail safety brochure should have already arrived in your mailbox. The light rail safety education is designed to:

• Bring awareness that light rail trains are quiet, so people should always be alert and look both ways before crossing the street

• Explain the function of the overhead electric power lines, called OCS (overhead catenary system)

• Demonstrate safe pedestrian behavior and light rail crossing safety signs and signals

• Inform the public about safe pedestrian and driving habits and signals.

The key safety messages that Sound Transit wants to impart for South Seattle residents are:

• Link light rail trains move faster than they appear and can’t stop as quickly as a car: cross only at designated crosswalks

• Trains have the right-of-way; obey all signals and warning signs

• Trains are quiet; always look both ways

• Tracks are for trains; never walk or play around trains or tracks

The Sound Transit community outreach team is also available to speak to small or large groups. Please call Carol Doering at 206-398-5095 to schedule a time, day or evening. You may also email her at carol.doering@soundtransit.org. You can also call and/or email to get the safety brochures in the various languages.

Why Traffic Safety Information is in a Police Department Newsletter

We want to give you information that is pertinent to community public safety, not just crime related information. Nothing is more important than the safety of the members of our community. So, if it means we advise you regarding traffic issues so we can raise awareness and hopefully prevent accidents or fatalities, seems like a good use of ink for us.

Until next time, Take Care and Stay Safe!

Mark Solomon, South Precinct Crime Prevention Coordinator

The Squeaky Wheel

Recently I posted about vacant lots in the Colman Triangle, with just a little extra attention paid to the lots owned by Tim O'Shea on Holgate between 24th and 25th. I've written about this lot in my own blog, and this summer have taken to calling him about once a week to clean up his property, and always got "it's on my calendar." And nothing would happen. Last week my neighbors and I stepped up the pressure: several calls daily, promises for more. I was just about to post old Tim to rottennieghbor.com.

On Monday, Tim came by with a crew who spent most of the day clearing the jungle that's grown up around his sometimes-vacant buildings.

There's more to do chez O'Shea: still people squatting there, and the lots are a menace, nuisance, annoyance...but at least the grass is cut.

Good work, squeaky wheel.

Mailbox? Mailbox?

My mailman will not retrieve outgoing mail from my mailbox. He just won't. And my mail won't send itself, so I have to help my letters into the postal flow in other ways.

I've made mental notes to myself about where there are mailboxes close to home. There's one at the QFC parking lot, one on that hill near Colman Park...the one at the 23rd & Union post office (not close to home, but there's a drive-thru box you can send stuff late). But I wasn't near any of those, and I had a Netflick to return, and I really, really want the Netflix people to send me the new season of The Wire right away, so I was motivated to find a mailbox.

Not too motivated, I guess, or I'd have gone to a known location. But I had a lot of bike riding to do today, and was sure I'd see one. No doubt about it.

This morning I rode from home to Westlake, then back by a different route. Granted, I wasn't being too diligent, and I may have ridden past several. The ones I knew about are where they're supposed to be, and there's one down at the southern tip of the Triangle. But that's it.

This afternoon, while riding to Capitol Hill to pick up my daughters from daycare, I was on a mission. Home, through Judkins, up 19th and down into Capitol Hill....nothing. I was looking, too. I walked several blocks of 12th, Netflick in hand, and found nothing. Again, nothing on the way home (the sixty pounds of cargo in the trailer kept me from riding around in search of a blue box).

Mission: failed.

So I did a little research and thought I'd share. In the image are all the mailboxes in the 98144 ZIP code. As presented by the USPS in a semi-authorized mashup with Google maps.

Triangle dwellers, you probably already know how to get your mail out, or maybe you've figured out the secret code to get the mailman to pick up your letters. If not, then I hope you'll find the map useful.

PlayGarden will welcome special visitors this week

The Seattle Children's PlayGarden will begin a week long session of our Farm In the Garden camp tomorrow. We are very excited to host Senator Patty Murray for a tour of the project. She will tour the site, visit with parents and observe camp from 10:00-10:30am. At 12:00 we will host City Councilman Tom Rasmussen and on Thursday the 14th, our new Superintendent of Parks, Tim Gallagher will join us. We have a fun filled week planned. If you're "in the neighborhood" please feel free to stop by.

Cancer in the South End

There has been some buzz in the press and local blogs this week about the recently-released Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry study, which finds, according to the P-I article published in this morning's print edition, that:

Residents of a broad swath of South Seattle from Seward Park to West Seattle face elevated cancer risks because of air pollution, according to a soon-to-be released government study.

The risks are significantly elevated in pockets of industrial pollution – and skyrocket within about 200 yards of highways, says the long-awaited study by state and federal scientists.

The affected areas are shown in the map I've grabbed from the P-I article, and risks appear highest, theoretically, in the industrial areas around Georgetown, which get pollution from factories, roads, and airplanes.

I decided to bring the study to the Colman Triangle blog because of the red, high-risk areas on the map at the north end of the Triangle (at I-90). I read the P-I article, and was curious, so I dove into the ATSDR report for more information, which I think is worth sharing.

Non-Cancer Risks

The press has focused on cancer, which I'll get to below, but the freeway at the north end of our neighborhood offers more hazards to our health. The bulk of non-cancer risks come from a chemical called acrolein, with exposure coming from car exhaust and cigarette smoke (note, are you still shopping for reasons to quit smoking?). From the report (bold type by me):

Similar to cancer risk, non-cancer hazards are highest near major roadways. Hazard indices decrease with distance from the center of highways, but exceed one (meaning risk is greater than baseline) up to a few hundred meters on either side of major highways. Acrolein is the primary contaminant associated with non-cancer hazards from road sources. The following four pollutants are the main contributors to non-cancer hazards from mobile sources in descending order.

• Acrolein
• Formaldehyde
• Diesel Engine Exhaust, Particulate Matter
• Nitrogen Dioxide

I've linked three of the agents above to the ATSDR info sheets about them. There aren't any well-defined cancer risks to these pollutants, but they do make breathing unpleasant and can affect folks with lung disease (asthma, COPD...) and children more than the rest of us.

Cancer Risks

There are a few things floating around the Colman Triangle that bring an increased cancer risk. From the report:

Diesel particulate matter, benzene, and 1,3-butadiene are the chemicals that contribute to the bulk of risk.

What kinds of cancer, you ask? Benzene is associated with leukemia (and anemia; benzene suppresses bone marrow production of red blood cells), while 1,3 butadiene appears to be associated with a "variety of tumor types."

Keep in mind that cancer results from long-term exposure, and that there are many other, non-cancer but unpleasant effects from shorter-term exposures (follow the links to read about these).

What to make of this?

I'm not a toxicologist or epidemiologist, so my ability to interpret the ATSDR study is limited to my training as a regular old physician (family doctor) and concerned citizen with two kids whose well-being I cherish more than my own. From what I've read, here's what I take away:

1. Our little neighborhood sits just south of a major interstate with tons of diesel traffic passing through, leaving us with a variety of pollutants in our air, water, and soil. The risk of toxic exposure drops with distance from the freeway (it's about 200 meters from the center of I-90 to Massachusetts), but risks still exist beyond the "red zone." We're also bounded to our west and east by Rainier and MLK, which carry plenty of pollutant-spewing trucks and cars.
2. Most of I-90 is covered in our neighborhood, which is nice. But...what happens to the pollution in the tunnel? Where does it go? The risk map is red even in the lidded areas.
   
3. Kids and the chronically ill, as usual, have it worse than the rest of us.
4. Cancer is bad, for sure, but anemia, birth defects, and lung disease are also significant effects of the pollutants found in the ATSDR study, and are likely to ruin your good time before cancer creeps in.
   
5. Smoking is still stupid. This study reminds me that smoking tobacco is similar to wrapping your mouth around the exhaust pipe of a running diesel engine.
6. The "fixes" to the problem are mostly to be found in rational public policy. Pollution standards for automobiles and factories should be designed to prevent disease and should be vigorously enforced. In our neighborhood, we can advocate for safe practices from our industrial neighbors (most of the Triangle is zoned for commercial and residential, creating a potential mini-Georgetown effect).

Those are my reflections. I look forward to comments and face-to-face discussions around the neighborhood.

Crossposted