Island Rec shares news about the newest addi­tion to their staff.

Island Rec’s Board of Com­mis­sion­ers is pleased to announce that Ker­ry Jack has been select­ed as the new Direc­tor for Island Rec. Ker­ry, who is a Cer­ti­fied Park & Recre­ation Pro­fes­sion­al, brings a wide range of expe­ri­ences in com­mer­cial and munic­i­pal recre­ation, includ­ing super­vi­sion of facil­i­ty rentals, spe­cial events, out­door recre­ation, and the cre­ation of class­es, pro­grams, and trips for all ages. She has worked in Cal­i­for­nia, Ore­gon, and Wash­ing­ton, most recent­ly for Pierce Coun­ty Parks.

Island Rec has been under the lead­er­ship of Mad­die Ovenell since 2015. Her last day with the dis­trict is Fri­day, Dec. 30, and she will be stay­ing here on San Juan Island with her family.

Reg­is­tra­tion for win­ter and spring pro­grams opens next Tues­day, Jan. 3.

From Nov. 1 — A qui­et autumn morn­ing at Dream Lake.

San Juan Island Library invites fam­i­lies with tod­dlers, preschool­ers, and oth­er young kids who might not make it to mid­night to take part in Noon Year’s Eve. This day­time event starts at the Mullis Cen­ter — 589 Nash St. — at 11 a.m. on Sat­ur­day, Dec. 31 with themed crafts, activ­i­ties, and games. Atten­dees will ring in the new year at noon with a bal­loon drop and dance party.

The event is free and no advance reg­is­tra­tion is required.

Cynthia Parkin, Jet, Ruffles, Raquel Lackey — Contributed photo

The Coun­ty sends along news about this year’s dog licens­ing program.

The San Juan Coun­ty Auditor’s office is ready for the 2023 dog licens­ing sea­son. Each year, the depart­ment has the plea­sure of rec­og­niz­ing a celebri­ty dog and issu­ing them the first dog tag. Com­pe­ti­tion in 2023 was steep and just one Celebri­ty Dog could not be crowned, so the hon­or goes to Jet and Ruf­fles, the Cri­sis Response Canines for San Juan Coun­ty. Jet and Ruf­fles encour­age all pet own­ers to license their dogs as soon as pos­si­ble in the new year.

Ruf­fles and her own­er Raquel Lack­ey sup­port first respon­ders and spend time with chil­dren learn­ing to read in an effort to pro­mote lit­er­a­cy. Jet and his own­er Cyn­thia Parkin joined the Fire Depart­ment in 2021 after cer­ti­fy­ing through Nation­al Cri­sis Response Canines. They remain grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sup­port first respon­ders and any com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers affect­ed by cri­sis or trauma.

All dogs in San Juan Coun­ty are required to be licensed annu­al­ly. Dog licens­es are avail­able start­ing Tues­day, Jan. 3, and cur­rent fees are $15 for dogs that are spayed or neutered and $40 for oth­er canines. A late fee of $10 applies to licens­es pur­chased after March 31. Add a pho­to of your dog for an addi­tion­al $5 per year, which will dis­play when the dog’s license num­ber is looked up. This addi­tion­al mea­sure of secu­ri­ty adds price­less peace of mind if a dog is lost.

San Juan Coun­ty dog license fees fund the licens­ing pro­gram and an account that com­pen­sates res­i­dents for live­stock killed or injured by stray, dan­ger­ous dogs. The bal­ance of col­lect­ed fees is dis­trib­uted to the local Ani­mal Pro­tec­tion Soci­eties for impound services.

Dog licens­es are avail­able at a vari­ety of San Juan Coun­ty loca­tions. If you live on San Juan Island, get your tag at the San Juan Coun­ty Auditor’s office or the Ani­mal Pro­tec­tion Soci­ety. For added con­ve­nience, licens­es can also be pur­chased through the mail:

San Juan Coun­ty Auditor
Attn: Dog Licensing
PO Box 638
Fri­day Har­bor, WA 98250

From April 22 — Up and over the closed gate on the way to Fourth of July Beach.

OPALCO crew making repairs in the snow on Dec. 23 — Contributed photo

OPALCO shares details about the main­land pow­er deliv­ery issues that caused the all-coun­ty pow­er out­age on Christ­mas Eve.

At 8:30 a.m. on Sat­ur­day, Dec. 24, all of San Juan Coun­ty lost pow­er again – only a day after after expe­ri­enc­ing anoth­er coun­ty-wide out­age. An OPALCO engi­neer hap­pened to be dri­ving through Ana­cortes and saw a flash as equip­ment failed on the trans­mis­sion feed that serves San Juan Coun­ty. He stopped to doc­u­ment and report the dam­age to the equip­ment and was able to get a video of the equip­ment fail­ing from a neigh­bor. This was the same pow­er pole where equip­ment fail­ure caused the pre­vi­ous pow­er out­age on Dec. 22–23.

By 2:40 p.m., Puget Sound Ener­gy had com­plet­ed the repairs on the trans­mis­sion line. They replaced two jumpers and an insu­la­tor, in addi­tion to the jumper they replaced on Dec. 23. By 5:30 pm, every­one in San Juan Coun­ty had their pow­er ful­ly restored.

OPALCO has noticed mis­in­for­ma­tion being spread about the cause of the recent out­ages. Please get your infor­ma­tion direct­ly from OPALCO as oth­er sources can pro­vide mis­lead­ing or inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion. OPALCO pro­vides reg­u­lar updates on its web­site, on the phone sys­tem at 360–376-3500, and on Face­book and Twit­ter. Mem­bers can even sign up for noti­fi­ca­tions on their loca­tion through SmartHub.

The cause of an out­age is dif­fi­cult to com­mu­ni­cate while the crews are in the field mak­ing repairs under extreme­ly chal­leng­ing con­di­tions. OPALCO is still inves­ti­gat­ing all the issues relat­ed to the out­ages that occurred last week. Because the equip­ment was on trans­mis­sion lines oper­at­ed by PSE, OPALCO will need to get the infor­ma­tion from them first. OPALCO main­tains strict pro­to­cols fol­low­ing an out­age to doc­u­ment and fol­low-up on any fur­ther main­te­nance need­ed on the system.

As the recent coun­ty-wide out­ages demon­strat­ed, OPAL­CO’s trans­mis­sion sys­tem is depen­dent on main­land facil­i­ties owned and oper­at­ed by PSE and Bon­neville Pow­er Admin­is­tra­tion. Work­ing with this sys­tem, OPALCO main­tained a reli­a­bil­i­ty rat­ing of 99.87% in 2021. When out­ages occur, OPALCO works close­ly with PSE and BPA to get the sys­tem back up and run­ning. How­ev­er, dur­ing a major storm event like we expe­ri­enced last week, PSE had hun­dreds of thou­sands of con­sumers out of pow­er and it took longer than expect­ed to get our lines repaired.

OPALCO would like to have a redun­dant trans­mis­sion line for emer­gency dis­rup­tions and have inves­ti­gat­ed a new over­head trans­mis­sion line through Ana­cortes, as well as a new sub­ma­rine cable to the main­land. Both projects would cost in the hun­dreds of mil­lions and require acqui­si­tion of ease­ments and land in devel­oped res­i­den­tial areas. As a small non-prof­it co-op, OPALCO is seek­ing grants for major projects such as these to pro­tect rate pay­er affordability.

OPALCO appre­ci­ates mem­bers’ patience dur­ing these dif­fi­cult times. OPALCO is incred­i­bly grate­ful to our tal­ent­ed line crew and their com­mit­ment to keep­ing our lights on. The team also appre­ci­at­ed all the emails and notes of grat­i­tude that came pour­ing in – even as peo­ple were still wait­ing for their pow­er to return.

Contributed photo

The Fri­day Har­bor Food Bank is back to its reg­u­lar hours this week — 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednes­day, noon to 2 p.m. on Thurs­day for online order pick-up, and New Year’s Eve Sat­ur­day from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

From Oct. 13 — Foot­steps at high tide at Eagle Cove.

OPALCO sends along news about the cause of the first of two coun­ty-wide out­ages from last week.

Just before 5 p.m. on Thurs­day, Dec. 22, as tem­per­a­tures dipped into the low 20s, a main­land elec­tri­cal feed­er serv­ing San Juan Coun­ty lost pow­er. Short­ly after the pow­er went out, the Bon­neville Pow­er Admin­is­tra­tion team helped iden­ti­fy the cause of the out­age, which was faulty equip­ment on Puget Sound Energy’s trans­mis­sion sys­tem. OPALCO crews were called out and remained on stand­by for when the the main­land repairs were complete.

The OPALCO team wait­ed 8 hours for PSE crews to respond and com­plete the work on the main­land feed. Through­out the evening and into the wee hours of the morn­ing OPALCO was in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with BPA and PSE to coor­di­nate the out­age work.

At 2:10 a.m., the main­land pow­er to the islands was re-ener­gized and OPALCO began to bring the pow­er to the island back up. They did this in phas­es to help pro­tect the sys­tem. When the pow­er goes out dur­ing such extreme tem­per­a­tures, the grid must be man­aged care­ful­ly because pick­ing up such a heavy load too quick­ly will over­load the system.

Because the main­land out­age last­ed so long and the out­side tem­per­a­tures remained so low, parts of the OPALCO sys­tem were over­loaded, result­ing in small­er neigh­bor­hood out­ages. About 1,200 meters remained with­out pow­er through the night as OPALCO crews worked to repair and restore the local­ized sys­tem out­ages. By Fri­day after­noon, most OPALCO mem­bers had their pow­er restored.

The Town of Fri­day Har­bor sends along a request for help with its con­tin­u­ing fight against water leaks.

The Town is con­tin­u­ing to lose ground with our water sup­ply. We are ask­ing those on Town water to please check for water leaks. At this point leaks most like­ly will be some­where in your home or busi­ness rather than under­ground. Sig­nif­i­cant dam­age has already occurred to at least one home. Please check on your neigh­bors, par­tic­u­lar­ly if their home or busi­ness is unoc­cu­pied at this time.

If you find a leak:

1. Imme­di­ate­ly shut off water to the struc­ture at the main valve.
2. If you can­not find the main valve, call the Sheriff’s non-emer­gency line at 360–378-4151 and the Town’s water depart­ment staff will be dis­patched to turn off the water at your meter. Do not tam­per with the water meter your­self. Meters may only be turned off by Town staff.
3. Call a plumber to assess your situation.

In an effort to con­serve our water sup­ply, we will cease bulk sales to con­trac­tors start­ing tomor­row, Dec. 27, until fur­ther notice. Thank you for your assis­tance. We’re all in this together.

The Coun­ty shares news about the newest addi­tion to its emer­gency response capabilities.

San Juan Coun­ty is pleased to announce that cell phone users in the coun­ty can now send text mes­sages to 911 in an emer­gency. This new fea­ture increas­es acces­si­bil­i­ty to emer­gency ser­vices and helps San Juan County’s emer­gency response teams quick­ly and effec­tive­ly assist res­i­dents and vis­i­tors alike. San Juan Coun­ty is the 32nd coun­ty in Wash­ing­ton to imple­ment the new feature.

“With the chal­leng­ing geog­ra­phy of our coun­ty, text-to-911 will give more acces­si­bil­i­ty to those who have min­i­mal cell phone cov­er­age,” says Sher­iff Ron Krebs. “Nation­wide text-to-911 is being used by the hear­ing impaired, as well as those whose safe­ty is in dan­ger of mak­ing a 911 phone call. This is anoth­er piece that allows us to con­tin­ue to serve our com­mu­ni­ties better.”

Learn more about the details for the text-to-911 pro­gram.

From Aug. 19 — High above the San Juan Coun­ty Fair.

The Ani­mal Pro­tec­tion Soci­ety of Fri­day Har­bor shares a look at the adopt­able ani­mals of the week — Eure­ka and Stan­ford, two year-and-a-half-old domes­tic shorthairs.

Hiya guys, the names are Eure­ka and Stan­ford. We’re broth­ers — lit­ter-mates actu­al­ly. We’ve been togeth­er since birth, came to the shel­ter togeth­er, and togeth­er is how we plan on leav­ing here.

The humans around us haven’t always been con­sis­tent, but we have been the con­stant for one anoth­er. We made a bond ear­ly on as broth­ers — one to stick togeth­er always, and we don’t plan on break­ing it. We are both smart, capa­ble, guys who can take care of our­selves, but we’d rather take care of each oth­er than be alone. We each feel more com­fort­able with the oth­er around. We feel more con­fi­dent in our­selves with our broth­er by our side. We feel more capa­ble, hap­py, and con­tent know­ing we have each oth­er. So, it is togeth­er we hope to stay! Luck­i­ly, it seems like the peo­ple here at the shel­ter who are help­ing us get adopt­ed under­stand that. They see our broth­er­ly love and they respect it. Although we don’t exact­ly speak their lan­guage, we can tell by the way they say that we are “a bond­ed pair,” that they get our vibe and know what we’re look­ing for.

Now with their help, we’ll hope­ful­ly find a per­son look­ing for a two-some like us to become part of their fam­i­ly. In addi­tion to us look­ing out for one anoth­er, we are look­ing for­ward to the chance to warm up to our peo­ple — to be able to receive pets from them and show them our affec­tion­ate sides. We’d love to join a fam­i­ly that lets us keep our indoor/outdoor bal­ance, to be able to explore out­side — maybe even has some prop­er­ty where we can safe­ly play and hunt, with a warm home to crawl back into for the evenings cud­dling up with our favorite broth­er and our for­ev­er family.

Con­tact APS to learn more about Eure­ka and Stan­ford.