So... I'm just browsing around and what do I come accross.. some letters that were written to a newspaper. And yet, the headlines seem eerily familiar to me. Why do I feel like I've seen these headlines before?
Any takers?
EDIT: Link taken down & actual letters posted below...
Letters to the editor
Wall of Sound
Home is where hurt is, but we can mend fences and save our Sound
Editor, The Times:
"Failing our Sound" [Times special report, May 11-14], although enlightening for an East Coast transplant, was also uncomfortably familiar. Having witnessed similar situations in my previous communities over the years and the consequences for those that were not aggressive enough in protecting their natural treasures, I have only one message: If you fail in protecting your environment from threats like this now, you will not have the option to fix it later.
Now that I am also a Washingtonian, I am personally doing what I can to impact this situation by making my voice heard. I have joined such advocacy groups as Environment Washington and People for Puget Sound, and supported them as best I can manage. I suggest you do the same if you want Washington to stay the way you remember it, or have dreams of sharing the environment of your childhood with your children one day.
— Adrien Renaud, Seattle
Let's call development what it really is: a lethal weapon
Development around Puget Sound has nearly doubled in the past 20 years, posing a serious threat to marine life and ourselves. This development, both industrial and residential, as featured in the May 11 story "How we're failing our Sound," disrupts the natural flow of water, preventing absorption and creating toxic runoff in the form of stormwater.
The resulting declination in marine life is dire; our treasured salmon population is at 10 percent of its historical abundance and the orca population has dropped by 20 percent just in the past 13 years.
Fortunately, with united action, we can reverse these trends. The Puget Sound Partnership is currently creating a plan to clean up the Sound. It is urgent that we support it and make recommendations to ensure a strong and viable plan to clean up Puget Sound — permanently.
— Keegan Conway, Mercer Island
Ordinary people do have a voice
No one in Louisiana would dispute that toxic water has a huge impact on the health of marine life and people. It's a wonder that those who live near Puget Sound are content to dump toxins in it, ignoring the immense danger the effects have on the homes of previously teeming life there.
As a resident of San Juan Island and West Seattle, I consistently see the effects that development and industrial pollution have on the quality of life in the Sound and for us. Developers claim to have a significant hold on our escape from economic recession, threatening its further decline as home prices on the shoreline rise.
We do not get to vote on these issues, and decisions are being made about the cultural priorities of Washington residents. The Puget Sound Partnership is one of the last great efforts to enact strong legislation that protects marine life like our orcas, a defining icon of the Pacific Northwest. Washingtonians need to get involved by lending an equally powerful voice to the Partnership for Puget Sound as individuals, through grass-roots efforts, and through legislators, as we compete for our priorities for a Puget Sound we can't afford to lose.
— Michelle Lunicke, Seattle
Shadow of a doubt cast on heart of the matter
On May 11, The Times began a four-part series on how growth is undermining the health of Puget Sound. Growth, the heart of the problem, was accepted as a given, presumably indefinitely.
We were told, "If we want to succeed, we have to change how we grow." We were also told, "Even the newest engineering standards ... aren't enough to stop the [environmental] damage." No incompatibility was recognized between the two statements, despite the fact that the mathematics of population growth and its adverse environmental consequences are inexorable and irrefutable.
Environmental damage caused by poorly regulated growth will be duplicated even when growth is strictly regulated — it will just take longer.
Until we recognize that growth must defer to population stability as a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for a satisfactorily sustainable future, we exhibit what Garrett Hardin dubs "The ostrich factor." It's time to pull our heads out of the sand.
— George Macinko, Ellensburg
