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In January of 2022, a record-high king tide, coupled with strong winds and unusually low barometric pressure, pushed the waters of Edison Slough to breach the west-side town dikes, causing substantial damage to some homes and a number of businesses in “downtown” Edison.

At its regular monthly meeting that January, the Edison Women’s Club, an active community group formed over 100 years ago to maintain safety and improve life for the citizens of Edison, collectively made a decision to address the dikes. A subcommittee was created. It organized meetings then met with dike commissioners from other districts, our county commissioner – who also serves as drainage commissioner for a neighboring dike district – and the executive director of Skagit County’s drainage and irrigation districts consortium.

All proved forthcoming, informative and helpful. But we needed greater community input, so chose to hold an open town meeting. “In most of New England, town citizens become legislators for one day a year. They get together in school gyms and town halls and vote in person, and in public. This centuries long practice of towns doing the slow and hard work of disagreeing and arguing and compromising on how to govern themselves—this has a profound impact on a place, and what it means to be from a place.” (Rumble Strip, podcast)

The Edison town meeting followed suit. It drew a large crowd of citizens, county and dike district commissioners, and various Skagit County planners. Hard questions were asked and opinions flew but the result was the formation of a citizen’s committee that met with our dike commissioners, once, twice, reaching agreement that the dike must be surveyed then raised. Funds were forthcoming from dike and county coffers and last October the dikes were raised. With this January’s king tide, Edison was saved with only inches to spare.

Democracy works!

Thank you,

Christine Wardenburg-Skinner

Edison