There is buzz in the Hoquiam community that our City Council is obligated by law to approve the Westway “Expansion” Project given the existing 18-year-old legal provisions governing the local permit process.

A modest reminder that all law is created in a unique socio-political context: economic, environmental, scientific, ethical tradition, habit, custom and precedence.

Every law reflects the logic and emotion of its era. Our world has been changing at a viciously rapid pace by any measure over the past 20 years: the digital revolution, the revolution in personal communication, residue from economic crash of 2007, expanding environmental awareness of global warming, forest destruction and the ill-effects of fossil fuel.

The whole idea of fracking to extract toxic tar sand for refinement is relatively new. A local law created 15 or 20 years ago regarding energy use will bear little relation to today’s reality.

As our founding fathers said, “The law is whatever is forcefully asserted and plausibly maintained.” Any law that asserts or assumes or fails to predict that tar sands oil extraction and transportation is anything but destructive folly is implausible, unworkable, archaic and unsupportable. Such a law must be ignored or changed.

There are thousands of archaic laws on the books all across the USA that are routinely ignored due to their being outdated, foolish, no longer pertinent. The law is a living organism in which cells ( laws) die and are reborn all the time.

Jim Blake

Hoquiam