Salish Current

Nonprofit local news organization Salish Current is celebrating its one-year anniversary of incorporation on June 5, and continuing on its mission to fill gaps in covering vital news and provide a forum for civil discourse in Whatcom, San Juan and Skagit counties.

Local dailies in Northwest Washington are turning into ghosts — ghost newspapers, existing in name but no longer having the staff or the commitment to cover local and regional news. The trend is part of a national crisis that’s been accelerating at warp speed since 1990.

Salish Current, a startup local news nonprofit organized to provide more local journalism in Whatcom, San Juan and Skagit counties is participating in a national giving campaign that runs through December. The site’s mission is to provide information needed in order to make informed choices about civic life and to strengthen democracy.

Back in the ’70s, the Lopez Island water witch and other old-timers would rattle a newcomer’s cage by telling him the water feeding wells in the San Juan Islands came from a large undersea aquifer reaching to Mount Baker. The water witch and the old timers are gone, and the specter of climate crisis is here. No one jokes about fresh water in the islands coming from Mount Baker. Instead, talk is in earnest and concerns the question of sustaining the islands’ supply of fresh water.