Key overall themes for this unit include:

1. Northwest regional and Bellingham local environmental history.
2. Your future professional roles and the place of environmental ethics and advocacy in relation to them.
3. Urban growth area watershed management options.
4. Values - what they are, how they change, how they conflict, which ones are important for all to hold, and what would you do when faced with a conflict in your own value system.

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

What is the physical geography of the region Lake Whatcom set in, and how did it come to be as it is?

What roles did people play in shaping the natural features of the region?

What are the water quality problems and challenges in Lake Whatcom today?

What events and choices have led up to these problems, and what solutions have been attempted?

Geography students: Is Geography an entirely amoral discipline?

Can we understand the history of Bellingham without including the environmental history of the region and Lake Whatcom?  Why or why not?

What makes a historical account an 'environmental history?'

How did humans in this area define their relation to "Lake Whatcom," and what were the consequences?  How did this definition change over time?

What factors account for why it changed?

Did people act wrongly in the past in their treatment of the Lake Whatcom watershed?  Should we make such judgments about actions today? Why or why not?

1. Kruckeberg, Arthur.  "A Natural History of the Puget Sound Basin." In Dale D. Goble and Paul W. Hirt (Eds.), Northwest Lands, Northwest Peoples: Readings in Environmental History.  Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999, pp. 51-78.
2. Deur, Douglas. "Salmon, Sedentism, and Cultivation: Toward an Environmental Prehistory of the Northwest Coast." In Dale D. Goble and Paul W. Hirt (Eds.), Northwest Lands, Northwest Peoples: Readings in Environmental History.  Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999,  pp. 129-155.
3. A Short History of Bellingham
4. Lake Whatcom Timelines
5. Get an overview of the issues facing the watershed by looking at the Lake Whatcom Management Program pages.

• Lake Whatcom Facts
• You might also want to peruse the (small fraction) of the Whatcom Museum's photographic archives available on the web
• Another site with some fun photos
• Or, go and see more first-hand, including the exhibit of Kinsey photos on the logging industry, or the permanent exhibits, for example a 1890-1910 era cabin interior, etc.
• Maps of Lake Whatcom:  from the Bellingham Planning Department  (some may require high-speed connection);   Scanned image of hydrographic features of Lake Whatcom watershed
• You might be interested in participating in this internet water issues forum.

2) Responses: Increase scientific understanding. Guest - Mike Hilles, Watershed Studies Institute, Huxley College (Link to IWS page on Lake Whatcom)

QUESTIONS FOR GUEST:

• First, please give a brief overview of Lake Whatcom water quality trends, and your best guesses about their future.
• Can you briefly explain the situation with Entranco serving the City and County as a consultant?
• What scientific issues emerged with its preliminary report? How did you respond to this report, and why? Do you think the Management program has handled this situation well?
• Or, if you'd rather have a more open-ended question than the above 2, could you talk about a situation that really challenged you to reflect on your values and make a hard decision?

• What are the recent findings on water quality in Lake Whatcom?
• What are some of the different positions scientists have taken on their role in the political process?
• Env. Science students: Should scientists' environmental values affect their work? If so, how? Why, or why not?

• How would you respond to the conflicting scientific opinions about water quality in Lake Whatcom?

1. Read the summary of the Institute for Watershed Studies' 1998/1999 Lake Whatcom Water Quality Monitoring  Report. (More information is available on the IWS website, above, including graphic data representations.
2. See the Lake Whatcom Cooperative Management team's note on the  Entranco Report.  (further background contained here)
3. The following present different aspects of the roles of scientists in regards to environmental moral obligation; choose some to read carefully:
• Climate warming "skeptics" -- consider the role being played by Robert Balling or S. Fred Singer (for example in  House of Rep. Small Business Comm. hearings. Click for a note on some of the other  participants.)
• See Greenpeace's debunking of Singer's and others' arguments
• In a similar vein, consider the discussion of Dixy Lee Ray's books in "Scientific study and political reaction" by Michael B. McElroy.
• Union of Concerned Scientists'  "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity" (Signed by over 1700 scientist since 1992, including 104 Nobel laureates)
• Consider the outspoken advocacy of Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich; you can get some idea from the resources on the publisher's page for his book Betrayal of Science and Reason.
• Also consider the flood of attempts to dismiss Ehrlich, such as that by Michael Fumento,  "Doomsayer Paul Ehrlich Strikes Out Again."
• Garner, Patrick C. "A Matter of Conscience: Silence Within the Wetland Field." Wetland Journal (1997).
• See the pages for the NSF-funded Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science, including  Rachel Carson profiled as a moral leader.

• You can get an Adobe Reader copy of the Entranco study report from this Management Program page. I strongly suggest you read at least the executive summary.
• Here are some further thoughts from me on the intersection of science and environmental ethics.

QUESTIONS FOR GUEST:

• Briefly, what behaviors negatively impact Lake Whatcom water quality, and what is their magnitude (frequency, quantity)?
• Please give an overview of educational efforts to maintain Lake Whatcom water quality.
• What place should education have in maintaining Lake Whatcom water quality?  Can it do this job? Why or why not?
• Please describe the strengths and weaknesses of the Watershed Pledge program.
• Can you share a time when you felt friction between your public acts as an environmental educator, and your private values or feelings about an action you took?  How did you resolve the matter? What helped you come to a resolution?

• What concerns have Lake Whatcom watershed residents (stakeholders) expressed about water quality and efforts to improve it?
• What strategies have been used to educate residents?  How effective do you think they would be?
• Have a rough idea of what the Watershed Pledge Program is.
• Environmental Education students: Do environmental educators have an obligation to advocate for environmental values? Why or why not?

• Should environmental educators be advocates, or should they give people the information so that they can make up their own minds? Why?
• Does the Watershed Pledge program attempt to change peoples' values? If so, is this a good thing? If not, is this a good thing? Why?
• The Bellingham School District runs the Gordon Carter Environmental Education Center at the south end of the Lake.  All the 6th graders spend 2 days there each year.  Should their teachers try to impact their values?  Why or why not?

1. Summary of  stakeholder comments  about Lake Whatcom water quality, management and education.
2. Click and scroll down, then click some more for a look at some efforts to educate residents about everyday actions affecting water quality
3. Read the description of the  Whatcom Watershed Pledge Program and click on some of the letters at the top to see all the businesses that have signed up.
4. LaCoss, Ron.  (1999).  Leave environmentalism out of environmental education?! A bad suggestion: Response to Zeph. Environmental Communicator 29  (2): 10-11.
5. Peruse some of the controversy over advocacy in environmental education:

• See the Political Economy Research Center's pages on env. ed
• See Jim Norton's links for responses to  "Anti-environmental Myths" or  a report from the Environmental Working Group
• See also Corporate Watch's Endangered Education: How Corporate Polluters are Attacking Environmental Education

• Jull, Pamela & Carl Simpson. Report from the Lake Whatcom Watershed Survey. A.R.N Technical and Research Reports 1999 No. 5 (Sept. 1999). Bellingham, WA: Applied Research Northwest.
• Here are some further thoughts from me on the intersection of education and environmental ethics.

QUESTIONS FOR GUEST:

• What do you see as the biggest challenges in managing the Lake Whatcom watershed?
• How well satisfied are you with the efforts of the City and the County (and other institutional actors) to face these challenges?
• What constraints does someone in your position face when encountering the issue of Lake Whatcom watershed management?
• Could you talk about a situation that really challenged you to reflect on your values and make a hard decision?
• Is your role one that would be good for a person with strong environmental values?  Why and/or why not?

• What are the meanings of 'compromise'? How would you order them in terms of desirability? What are the various difficulties the different varieties of compromise present?
• For Policy students: Should policies reflect strong environmentally ethics, or should they only be acceptable to constituencies (voters, etc.)?

• Has politics, or the "art of compromise," produced environmentally good or poor solutions to Lake Whatcom watershed management? On what bases should they be judged?
• Can there be 'value neutral' policy? What are the most important values in policy? Are any of them environmental?
• The slogan of the organization Earth First! is "No compromise in defense of Mother Earth!" What interpretation of this (if any) could you agree with that would apply to Lake Whatcom?

1. Benjamin, Martin. Splitting the Difference: Compromise and Integrity in Ethics and Politics.Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas, 1990, pp. 1-23, and 139-151. (Link to notes on some key points.)
2. See the  Lake Whatcom Management Program homepage; we've already used some links from it.

• Here are some further thoughts from me on the intersection of policy and environmental ethics.
• Is the recent pipeline legislation passed by the Senate an example of acceptable or unacceptable compromise? Why?  See op-ed piece by parents of Olympic pipeline explosion victims.

QUESTIONS FOR GUEST:

• Can you please describe the story of Proposition One, including the City's opposition?
• What, in your view, is a citizen?
• Could you talk about a situation that really challenged you to reflect on your values and make a hard decision?

• What did Proposition One, on the City ballot in 1999, propose?  What was the vote on it?
• What does are some of the key ideas in 'new citizenship'?
• How does 'new citizenship' expand the definition of one's public duties, commitment to the common good, and vision of effective change?
• For everyone: What are our duties as citizens? Do our responsibilities as citizens take precedence over our professional roles, or vice versa? Does citizenship imply "environmental citizenship"? How would you define that?

• What should the Initiative proposers have done when challenged by the City?
• How have well (or poorly) do the attempts to solve the Lake Whatcom water quality problems also further strong civil society?
• What kind of involvement in the watershed issue is implied by 'new citizenship--that is, citizenship beyond government and/or the pursuit of private good?

1. The New Citizenship Movement: An Overview
2.  New Environmental Citizenship -- check out one or more examples
3. Read up on last year's  Proposition One, put on the ballot by The Initiative Group--skim through the links on "The 1999 campaign" and "History and Future," and "Bureaucracy" (these links are a little ways down on the left-hand panel of the page)
4. See also text of the measure passed this fall by the city council.

• Here are some further thoughts from me on the intersection of citizenship and environmental ethics.

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

• What are property rights? What is a "taking" of property?
• What are the relationships between property rights and environmental regulation?
• What is a development right?  What is the current plan regarding development rights in the watershed?
• What happened when Sherilyn Wells (a fierce advocate for the watershed) decided to sell her land?
• Planning students: Do planners have responsibilities to the land, or only to the people involved in the planning process? Why or why not?

• Do special responsibilities and/or limitations go with living in the Lake Whatcom watershed? If so, whose job is it to enforce these?
• How should environmentalists respond to resistance to stronger regulation in the watershed?
• What should be done with the undeveloped private land in the watershed? At whose expense?
• If buying up land or development rights is the answer, who or what should determine the price at which lots or rights should be bought?

1. Echeverria, John D. "The Takings Issue."  In John D. Echeverria and Raymond Booth Eby (Eds.), Let the People Judge: Wise Use and the Private Property Rights Movement  Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1995, pp. 143-150.
2. Brick, Philip. "Taking Back the Rural West." In John D. Echeverria and Raymond Booth Eby (Eds.), Let the People Judge: Wise Use and the Private Property Rights Movement. Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1995,  pp. 61-65.
3. Batchelor, C. (2000) Protecting the Lake Whatcom Watershed: Transferable Development Rights Whatcom Watch, May issue.
4. Wells, Sherilyn (1998).  How to Lose a Reservoir. Whatcom Watch (Jan., pp. 8-9)   (link to last paragraph of Wells)
5.  Letter of Philip S. Sharpe
6.  Declaration of Sherilyn Wells

•  American Planning Association's Ethical Principles in Planning
•  Prof. Zaferatos' Growth Management links
• Johnson, William C. Urban Planning and Politics. Ch. 2, Planning Values and Memories (pp. 17-34). Chicago: American Planning Assn, 1997.  On Reserve.

Solnit, Albert. The Job of the Practicing Planner. Ch. 10 Ethics and the Planner. Chicago: American Planning Assn, 1998.  On Reserve.