Part Nineteen

Peggy was happy to see hints of orange and pink in the sky as she walked down the hill to the 5:20 a.m. ferry. She found her seat on the left side and sat next to Raoul, who was already engrossed in his morning paper. Across the aisle from her, the bicycle riders were chatty and upbeat.

"Good morning," said Peggy to Raoul.

"Morning," said Raoul without looking up.

"Tea?" she asked, pulling her Thermos from her backpack.

"No thanks."

So, Peggy thought, this is how it's going to be. We're just going to be quiet and sulky aren't we. The ferry nosed out of Eagle Harbor and Peggy was greeted by a clear view eastward all the way to the Cascades. The mountains were outlined vividly in pink and yellow. Mt. Rainier rose majestically on her right, and was topped by a small cloud that was shaped like a straw hat.

"Rainier is wearing a hat," Peggy said.

"Interesting," he said with barely a turn of his head in the direction of the mountain.

It had been this way for most of the week. On Monday, Peggy and Raoul were still experiencing a certain glow after a weekend of closeness. But once Peggy got to work on Monday morning her boss, Milton Pacer, called her into his office to discuss a project.

"Did you hear about the coastal flooding?" Milton had asked.

"Did I hear about it? I was in it!" Then she told him her story of the weekend at Fran's house in Westport.

"Wow," he said. "That's perfect. In fact, your personal account will help add some color to our story. The board held an emergency meeting over the telephone last night to discuss our response to the flooding. The decision is unanimous: we're going to sue the State of Washington."

Peggy was not surprised. Her organization, the Northwest Environmental Fund, frequently took on government agencies and corporations in high-profile environmental cases. She realized this case was tailor-made for N.E.F. "Let me guess, they shouldn't have allowed development on that land in the first place."

"Bingo," said Milton. "They caved in to developers and did a disservice to the taxpayers of Washington."

Peggy was intrigued. "So what's my role?"

"It's what you do best: get our project database organized. You have much of it already in your Education Database. Our field scientists are going to give you lots more data. We have records on water levels, precipitation, beach erosion and accretion, human activities over the last hundred years. Plus we have policy experts going over all of the legislation and government studies that have been worked on."

"Sounds exciting," Peggy said. She spent the rest of Monday working on her new project. By Monday evening there were already news reports from Olympia, the state capitol, indicating that opposing sides were lining up over the flooding. Finger pointing was rampant.

On Tuesday morning, Raoul said, "You won't believe what happened."

"What?"

"The legal aftermath of that weekend flood is almost as bad as the flood itself. Everybody's filing lawsuits: property owners, insurance companies, you name it."

"Don't forget environmental groups."

He looked at her, "Are you saying that your group is jumping on this bandwagon?"

"I wish you wouldn't call it a bandwagon. There are some serious issues at stake."

"I'll say," said Raoul. "That's why the state has hired us to represent them."

Peggy looked at him with surprise. "In that case we shouldn't discuss the matter. Because N.E.F. is suing the state."

"For what? They're the good guys in all of this."

"There are certain state agencies that are too cozy with property owners. They consistently take the property rights view at the expense of the environment."

"That's what we pay them good tax dollars for: to make sure our hard-earned property rights are protected."

"At what cost? Does that mean any old Tom, Dick or Harry can put up a building on a fragile piece of land just because he happens to own it?"

Raoul sighed and rolled his eyes. "Peggy, these issues are very complex."

"Too complex for our little minds to understand? Is that what you mean? You know, you property rights people are always hiding behind this argument that everything's so complex and abstract. But it's really simple: when property owners discover that they can make money off their land they don't want anybody standing in their way. And the state just lets them do what they want because there are tax revenues involved."

"That's absurd. You can't make a charge like that stick."

"We'll see, won't we."

Wednesday was no better. Raoul came armed with newspaper clippings explaining how the state followed the law in permitting coastal development over several decades.

"Of course," said Peggy. "It's easy when you conveniently write laws in such a way that the hard issues are pushed to the sidelines. Any scientist who has studied that coastal region can tell you that it should not be developed."

Raoul tapped his fingers on his leg impatiently. "There you go again, treating these tough issues like they're black and white. This is no business for amateurs."

She looked at him sternly, "I'm not comfortable with that remark. The N.E.F hires very good people. Let me explain something about that coastline. You know the sand dune that was in front of your sister's house? The one we walked over?"

"Sure. It's been there for decades."

"It's not supposed to be there," said Peggy. "It's only there because a hundred years ago the cranberry farmers along the coast planted several varieties of non-native beach grasses in order to stop sand from blowing into their cranberry bogs. Those grasses spread like crazy. They're beautiful to look at today, but the result has been an artificial sand dune that any scientist knew could be covered over with ocean water at any time. Your sister and her husband got lucky all these years. But Nature caught up with them."

"Try telling her that," snapped Raoul.

"I'm sorry about Fran's property. But my belief is that the state should never have permitted construction there in the first place."

"The property was owned fair and square and the development was perfectly legal," said Raoul.

"Therein lies the rub. It always seems to come back to property owners and letting them do what they please in the name of tax revenue."

"That's a serious charge."

"Like I said, we have very good people."

Peggy then ended the conversation by taking out her knitting. She had just received a call the night before from her daughter, Marjorie, who lives in Virginia with her husband. Marjorie phoned to say that she was expecting their first child. Peggy was finally going to become a grandmother for the first time.