To the editor:
Most of us who live in Freeland do so for similar reasons — it’s beautiful, we enjoy the rural life style, the open spaces, to live near or be on the water — we do not choose to live here to be packed in like sardines 3-9 units per acre.
Remember the outcry from local citizens when, in January, county planners suggested making Myrtle Avenue the center of town, a village of dense housing and shops? No one wanted it!
We in Freeland are being asked to fund a $40 million sewer project, a hugely overpriced system that will still require a tank in your yard that still needs to be pumped.
This plan would price out me and most of my neighbors. The $40 million plan has been “sold” to the public by the Freeland Water and Sewer District on the myth that it will clean up the harbor. To date the Island County Health Department has not found significant failed septics that justify a $40 million solution. Requiring just the south tip of Holmes Harbor to have sewers would not clean up a harbor that is more than six miles long. Especially when you consider sewers would allow increased density with increased stormwater runoff. Runoff is the leading contributor to water pollution, according to Puget Sound Partnership, an organization of citizens, governments, scientists and businesses working together to restore and protect Puget Sound.
A $250,000 study was conducted that showed the benefit to Freeland for such a sewer would only be $20 million. A poor return for a $40 million infrastructure investment. Yet this thing will not go away.
Some residents and some businesses do desire sewers. Now is the time to rethink the old plan and find another solution to satisfy the needs of Freeland residents and businesses.
Now is the time to elect new commissioners to the Freeland Water and Sewer District. That is why I am voting for Lou Malzone and Marilynn Abrahamson for Positions 1 and 3.
We need new voices that are open to alternatives other than the $40 million one, I urge you to go to their website www.newvoicesforfwsd.com. Then vote and let’s find another way.
KIM KELZER
Freeland
