On March 20, West Point wastewater treatment plant staff rescued a man who had climbed over the fence, fallen into the channel, and was carried downstream about 500 feet where the current pinned  him to equipment in the partially-treated wastewater where he was difficult to see. In an amazing twist of luck, Operator Darek Kenaston happened to see the man through a grate during his routine area check. Thankfully, the operations team pulled the man to safety and he was taken to the hospital and did not appear to be injured. The quick and professional response to this incident by WTD employees likely saved a life and prevented serious injury. 

“Incidents like this one highlight the importance of our safety and emergency response training,” says Pam Elardo, Wastewater Treatment Division Director. “This gentleman is very lucky to be alive, and we are grateful to have extraordinary staff that were able to respond to this extreme situation. I am amazed and impressed with our staff’s ability to pull together and act so effectively in a crisis. They performed exceptionally.”

Aaron Porter, a fifth-grade student at John Muir Elementary school, has been a participant in the Public Health SNAP-Ed Eat Better, Feel Better (EBFB) nutrition education classes for the past six years, since kindergarten.

And for the past several years, Aaron’s mother Akberet Gedlu has volunteered in his classroom.

She sat in during several lessons when Public Health’s EBFB nutrition educator, Nancy Tudorof, taught students about healthy eating. She appreciated that the students chopped lettuce, sampled kale, and made healthy recipes that actually tasted good! Over the years, Akberet reports that Aaron began realizing that healthy food can taste really good. He brought recipes home – from bean dip and green smoothies to frozen mangos – and begged her to make them.

Akberet couldn’t believe what was happening to her family. Real change! They began to eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

According to Aaron, it’s better to “Eat wheat instead of white”. Hmm… sounds like an EBFB message.

Akberet used to think that healthy foods were bland and that kids wouldn’t eat vegetables. She thought that cooking dinner required spending hours in the kitchen making fried chicken and potatoes for her two. Akberet admitted to forgetting the basics of how to cook even the simplest things. Akberet is East African and was taught that boys were not meant to be in the kitchen. Yet, it was Aaron who got her back into the kitchen. Welcoming Aaron into the kitchen wasn’t easy at first, but now being in the kitchen together has made their mother-son bond even stronger. It made her feel more at ease that Aaron had a lot of practice using a knife to chop vegetables during EBFB classes.

Akberet hears from other mothers at John Muir Elementary School about their children sampling and eating more fruits and vegetables at home. I asked her how she knew that she was eating more fruits and vegetables and she laughed. “My grocery receipts are proof! I’m buying more” she said. She shops at her local Columbia City Farmers Market. She has even lost weight.

Her children are healthier. Aaron used to have allergies and eczema and was teased because he had dark circles around his eyes. Aaron does not have eczema, dark circles or allergies anymore. Aaron says it is because he is eating more vegetables. Akberet says it is also because he is drinking more water and less soda. But that doesn’t mean that Aaron feels deprived – actually the opposite.

Eat Better, Feel Better is funded by the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – Education (SNAP-Ed), for schools with more than fifty percent of students who qualify for free or reduced lunch. Six Seattle schools are participating —Van Asselt, John Muir, Maple, Dearborn Park, Bailey Gatzert and South Shore K-8.

(By Elizabeth Kimball, SNAC Program Supervisor. Excerpted from Public Health’s HealthBeat newsletter).

King County’s redeveloped Bow Lake Recycling and Transfer Station was designed and built with sustainability in mind, and the U.S. Green Building Council has now certified Bow Lake with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification.

“Having a recycling and transfer station that is certified LEED platinum is an example of how our physical plants complement the work we do,” said Executive Dow Constantine. “We are more effective at protecting our environment when the facilities we operate are as sustainable as the services we provide.”

The new recycling and transfer station reopened to solid-waste collection in July 2012 after a multi-year rebuilding project on the site of an old landfill. Some of the sustainable design features that improve energy efficiency and help keep costs down include:

• Translucent skylights and window panels that allow natural daylight into the building
• Harvesting rainwater instead of purchasing water for use in washing down the transfer station floors; and
• More than 90 percent of the wood used was sustainably harvested through the Forest Stewardship Council.

The recycling and transfer station also includes recycled content building materials such as steel, asphalt and concrete, while landscaping with drought-tolerant plants cuts irrigation costs.

Bow Lake’s environmental benefits don’t end at the recycling and transfer station’s property line.

New and highly efficient garbage compactors are used to ensure transfer trailer loads are optimized. The result is a 30 percent reduction in transfer trailer trips to the County’s Cedar Hills Regional Landfill, which means lower fuel costs, and an estimated annual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of more than 172 metric tons.

The LEED Rating System is a voluntary, consensus-based national rating system for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. LEED addresses all building types and emphasizes state-of-the-art strategies in six areas: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials and resources selection, indoor environmental quality, and innovation and design.

Garbage disposal services were not disrupted during facility redevelopment. Bow Lake takes in roughly one-third of all the tonnage received by the County’s solid waste transfer system.

The station reflects modern trends in transfer stations featuring a wide array of recycling opportunities, including appliances, bicycles, textiles and shoes, along with standard recyclables such as cardboard, mixed paper, glass bottles and jars, and plastic bottles, tubs and jugs. Customers can even drop off home-generated medical sharps for safe disposal at the facility, which is located at 18800 Orillia Rd. S.

Recycling hours are Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 8p.m., and 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

King County’s Shoreline Recycling and Transfer Station, which was reopened to the public in 2008, was the nation’s first LEED Platinum transfer station.

On a blustery Saturday night last month, seven volunteers served a home-cooked meal to 150 homeless men and women at Operation Nightwatch, a ministry located in Seattle. The volunteers included stalwarts in the Department of Public Defense as well as their relatives – DPD Division Director Donald Madsen and his wife, Chief Justice Barbara Madsen, DPD Senior Staff Attorney Jonathan Newcomb and his daughter Natalie, DPD Seattle Municipal Court Supervisor Karen Murray and DPD financial controller Anne Dolan and her husband Cary.

As that night’s coordinator, Karen had checked the kitchen pantry a few days before to decide what donated food items would be used to prepare the night’s meal. The menu was simple: grilled cheese sandwiches, along with garden vegetable and chicken noodle soup. All told, more than 250 sandwiches were distributed that night.

This wasn’t the first time employees from the Associated Counsel for the Accused, now a division within the county’s Department of Public Defense, stepped up to serve meals to homeless residents. ACA began volunteering with Operation Nightwatch four years ago, part of a conscious effort to channel the firm’s volunteer efforts toward those activities that directly touched the lives of many of their clients.

Pam Pasion, ACA’s Assistant Drug Court Supervisor, brought Operation Nightwatch to ACA’s attention after she met with Nightwatch staff to discuss some of the unmet needs ACA volunteers could fulfill. She quickly saw that the populations Operation Nightwatch served were some of the same people who entered the criminal justice system due to ongoing issues of substance abuse, mental illness or physical and emotional abuse – a population that mostly goes unnoticed because they’re homeless. Operation Nightwatch is a nighttime ministry whose mission is to provide the homeless with shelter and food. Those in need are treated with respect and dignity by Nightwatch staff and volunteers, and, for a window of time, they become visible.

Karen Murray, left, checks the soup, while others make sandwiches. In the foreground at far right is Don Madsen.Photo Credit: Jonathan Newcomb.

Since Pam introduced ACA to Operation Nightwatch, ACA staff have volunteered 21 times, and they now know a thing or two about the needs of the organization’s clients. As a result, ACA volunteers handed out not only home-cooked meals on that rainy February night but also dry socks and toiletry kits – items donated by dozens of ACA employees.

These efforts are in keeping with the mission of ACA and now the Department of Public Defense, which seeks to provide high-quality legal representation to clients and to do so with a profound respect for their dignity and independence and an understanding of what’s driving their criminal behavior. Although the clients’ names change, the stories are often familiar, revealing histories of chemical abuse, physical abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, mental illness and sometimes homelessness. And ACA is not the only division that undertakes such efforts. DPD’s three other divisions – The Defender Association Division, Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons Division and the Northwest Defenders Division – have also embraced a range of volunteer activities, efforts that bring them closer to the needs of their clients.

The Department of Public Defense is increasingly focused on holistic defense – a kind of practice that recognizes clients have not only legal needs but also a wide range of social service needs. The goal is to provide excellent legal representation as well as seamless access to social supports, so that the client doesn’t quickly re-enter the legal system. And to do that well, a public defender needs to see the whole person and garner his or her trust. Experiences like those with Operation Nightwatch do both. They underscore what many in public defense know full well – that by meeting clients on their turf and in their communities, they’ll begin to establish relationships far stronger than those forged only in the courtroom.

(Article originally appeared in the Department of Public Defense’s For the Defense newsletter).