New studio/gallery space

A new creative studio and gallery space called ZEE TAI Collective has opened at 918 Water St. in downtown Port Townsend. The space is both a working artists studio and a gallery for the sale of their works. It is designed for member artists to staff the space while working on their craft. The name comes from the building’s previous occupants, ZEE TAI Company, which was started in 1879. Operated by Mike Biskup and Brighid Grahan, the space is planned as a laid back environment for seven working artists that will draw visitors and locals alike.

Halloween tours waitlist only

The Halloween edition of the Jefferson County Historical Society’s Legends and Lore of Port Townsend Walking Tours have officially sold out.

The tours on Nov. 1-2 run 75 minutes each, walking 0.7 miles through downtown Port Townsend, on a route that’s mostly flat and ADA-accessible, with public seating available at some stops, and a maximum capacity of 12 participants per tour.

The popular tours draw from some of the more infamous and mysterious stories in Port Townsend’s history, as tour guides also delve into how historical investigations have revealed what we know.

The Halloween edition features the eerier stories of the Legends and Lore tour, with fresh content to enhance the spooky side of this engaging and analytical program.

IV fluid conservation at Jefferson Healthcare

Hurricane damage to the nation’s leading IV supplier has impacted availability nationwide. As a result, Jefferson Healthcare said it is adopting mitigation strategies to help conserve IV fluid supplies.

By emphasizing conservation, patients who need IVs will get them, and clinical teams can work to minimize any impacts to care. The solutions are vital for delivering drugs and hydration directly into the bloodstream, which is crucial for patients in surgery, the Intensive Care Unit, and critical emergency conditions.

The shortages have been caused by the country’s largest manufacturing plant and supplier of IV fluids, the North Carolina-based Baxter International, being closed due to hurricane damage.

Home Depot gets reduced $1.6 million fine for HFC sales

The Washington Department of Ecology issued a $1.6 million penalty to Home Depot for selling prohibited hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) products, after roughly two years of notices failed to bring the company into compliance.

HFCs are powerful greenhouse gases used mainly for refrigeration and air conditioning, and they can leak into the atmosphere if equipment is faulty or damaged, yielding hundreds to thousands of times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide.  

The Washington Legislature passed laws in 2019 and 2021 gradually phasing out the use of HFCs.

“Restricting HFC products and equipment is key to achieving the state’s statutory greenhouse gas emission limits and ultimately getting to net zero by 2050,” said Joel Creswell, who manages Ecology’s Climate Pollution Reduction Program. “HFCs safely sealed inside air-conditioning systems can be recovered, recycled and re-used, but when they leak out, they become a major contributor to climate change.” 

After Washington’s HFC regulations took effect in 2021, Ecology began notifying and educating businesses about how to comply, and most businesses voluntarily updated their websites and sales practices. Home Depot continued to offer and sell canisters to Washington customers on its website.

Ecology hosted technical assistance meetings with Home Depot’s website software and compliance teams in 2022, and was assured that the identified products would not be available for purchase in Washington, and that no new prohibited products would be added to the website. Ecology again discovered those products being offered for sale on Home Depot’s website in 2023.

Under Washington law, the company could have faced penalties of up to $10,000 per violation, but Ecology reduced the amount to $1,500 per violation, or $1.6 million in total. The company has 30 days to appeal the penalty to Washington’s Pollution Control Hearings Board.