LETTER TO THE EDITOR | Are bluff issues the responsibility of taxpayers, public?

Editor, I was just reviewing old copies of The Record and found the following: July 3, 1996, page A2. “Digging For Answers. County Seeks Solutions to Ledgewood Beach Landslide Woes.” I won’t retype the whole article, but the point was that the county had paid a geotechnical firm $30,000 to examine the road and suggest solutions to the constant sliding. But I will quote this part: “A frequently recurring slide on the county road has stranded nearby residents, who have only walking access to their homes.” Also “Before this year’s landslide there was one in 1990 and a couple in the early 1980s.”

December 30, 2015 4:29 pm

Editor,

I was just reviewing old copies of The Record and found the following: July 3, 1996, page A2. “Digging For Answers. County Seeks Solutions to Ledgewood Beach Landslide Woes.” I won’t retype the whole article, but the point was that the county had paid a geotechnical firm $30,000 to examine the road and suggest solutions to the constant sliding. But I will quote this part: “A frequently recurring slide on the county road has stranded nearby residents, who have only walking access to their homes.” Also “Before this year’s landslide there was one in 1990 and a couple in the early 1980s.”

This is by no means a new phenomenon.

Bill Oakes, Island County Public Works director, makes an excellent point with his question of how much tax money do we sink into this impossible hole? What responsibility do we, the taxpaying public, have to try to defy gravity on behalf of a very few bluff residents? Perhaps we would do better to offer these people a more stable alternative residence, and close off the impossible to maintain road.

MARIANNE EDAIN

Langley