To the editor:

I must take exception to the letter from Dick McGrath printed in the Whidbey Record dated Feb. 24. As a 30-year resident of Sunlight Beach, Mr. McGrath’s reference to me and my CSUBC neighbors as a “spiteful, small, radical group of Sunlight Beach residents” offended me.

Some months ago, there was a public meeting of Sunlight Beach-area citizens at the South Whidbey Senior Center. They met to discuss the serious breakdown in communications between residents of our area and Diking District 1 commissioners. The primary issues were the acquisition of a half-million-dollar pump by the diking district with no notification to the citizens who must pay for the project, and the subsequent excessive draining of wetlands in the surrounding area.

Well over 100 area homeowners attended that meeting. More than 100 of those area residents signed a document questioning the validity of the pump and the draining of the wetlands. That’s hardly a “small group of spiteful radicals.” That’s a vast majority of Sunlight Beach-area residents.

On several occasions prior to this meeting, many of these residents had asked specific pump-related questions of the diking commissioners and received few or non-specific answers. From my point of view, these residents were frustrated by a lack of response from the commissioners, but I can honestly say the citizens at the gathering were neither “spiteful, radical nor small.”

They were, however, very concerned for the health of our water, our beaches and our wetlands. Subsequent to that meeting, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Ecology withdrew their permits to continue with the pumping project.

As to Mr. McGrath’s reference to frivolous lawsuits being pursued by CSUBC, those lawsuits are based on hard research that points to considerable wrongdoing.

Thankfully, a court of law will determine their substance based on fact, not Mr. McGrath’s opinion.

Charlie Watts

Clinton