By Tommi R. Gatlin -The Aberdeen Daily World , 11/11/2002
Two Grays Harbor residents who have spent years of time and energy working to protect the Harbor's natural "wet, wild and natural environment," have been named Washington Environment Council Heroes for 2002.
R.D. Grunbaum and Linda Orgel, founding members of the Friends of Grays Harbor, will be honored for their long - term dedication to protecting the Harbor's environment at a dinner tonight at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle.
The Harborites joined two others to be presented with the Hero Award, an annual "opportunity to recognize individuals who have committed years of their lives to protect a part of our state's unique natural heritage," according to a Washington Environmental Council news release.
Friends of Grays Harbor is a non - profit, volunteer group of citizens who strive to protect the Harbor's natural surroundings.
Though both Grunbaum and Orgel commute to jobs in Seattle, they consider their home on the southern shore of Grays Harbor, midway between Aberdeen and Westport, to be their home.
"It's where we pay our taxes - happily, I might add," Grunbaum, 60, said this morning.
Grunbaum, who works in data management and analysis for a Seattle company, said the roots of his environmental fervor stem from his childhood.
"I'm a native Washingtonian," he said, "and as I grew up I used to go into the woods, to the streams. My fishing partner and I, we tromped over, I think, every stream, every creek, every lakeside, every estuary, every ocean beach.
"We hit 'em all on the east side and the west side of the Cascades. We explored all these places."
Grunbaum said he used to imagine as a boy "what it must have been like years ago. So then, when Linda and I moved to Grays Harbor almost 12 years ago, I kind of rediscovered a part of my past.
"I realized that I needed to help make it a place of future memories. Our now will be some future person's 'wonder how it was.' "
Orgel is a clinic coordinator for Puget Sound Neighborhood Health Centers in the Seattle area. She was unavailable this morning.
In addition to being on the board of FOGH, both Orgel and Grunbaum are charter members of the Grays Harbor Audubon Society, which formed about 10 years ago.
Their activities have involved watch - dogging development on the Harbor, particularly Stafford Creek Prison and a proposed golf course, hotel and condominium project on the Westport dunes.
Grunbaum and Orgel, along with fellow members of FOGH and other groups, objected to the prison based on the effect the sewage from an additional 2,500 people or more at Stafford Creek would have on the estuary.
The project was also to include drilling "under seven salmon - bearing creeks," Grunbaum said. "The original wetland impact would have involved 17.4 acres," he said. "Through our negotiation and through our settlement agreement, we were able to achieve that the total wetland - fill impact was under two acres."
The proposed golf course project is still in the permitting process, he said.
Tonight's event will also be a fund - raising auction to benefit the WEC, of which Grunbaum is a member.
Grunbaum and Orgel were nominated for this year's Hero Award by Brady Engvall, president of FOGH and an oyster grower in the Elk River area.
Engvall was not available for comment; he headed up to Seattle earlier this morning for the awards event.
Grunbaum said he was "pretty much overwhelmed" at being named a WEC Hero.
"As you are working towards these goals that you set, that's not what you have in the back of your mind," he said. "You're more focused on the things that are important.
Nevertheless, "to have somebody recognize you for that is a validation that you are doing something that is positive."
The Hero Award usually includes a compass, Grunbaum said, "so you can always find the correct and proper way."
This page created and maintained by Chehalis River Council
Send comments or questions to the: Chehalis River Council