Letter: Freeland sewer decision was financial

Published 1:30 am Saturday, March 7, 2026

Editor,

Today I read a letter submitted by Lew Randall, about an editorial by Dean Enell.

It concerned the issue of potential sewers for Freeland and past studies on this subject. I may have some inside information Mr. Randall isn’t aware of. I’ve lived in the Freeland area 48 years and watched the process the county put forward to study the subject of sewers for Freeland. I also am familiar with most of the people involved in doing and evaluating the study.

Mr. Randall refers to the 2019 Freeland Water and Sewer District resolution on the study, but he may not understand the dynamics of how the FWSD was formed. You had to be a property owner in the Freeland area to get appointed to the board. Many of the eventual board members owned investment property but were in their retirement years. They knew that if a sewer system was developed, it would mean that each piece of property that they owned was be assessed for its maximum developed potential and charged a fee for each of those possible sewer hookups. Since they didn’t plan to develop their property anytime soon, they didn’t want to be stuck with those fees, so I believe they didn’t support a sewer for financial reasons.

I talked with several of those property owners on this subject, and came away with this assessment of their financial decision. They would rather have the next owner of that property have to pay that cost. Does that now make sense to how sewers for Freeland where looked into? Hadlock in Jefferson County had a similar situation as Freeland, but came together using modern sewer technology and put in a sewer system. Hadlock now has expanding housing for low income people, and has even gotten a grant to help make that happen.

Jerry Hill

Freeland