Dear HCN,
I am writing to clarify
some statements in the article from your 9/15/94 edition re “Rural
residents defy Washington law.” I am a Whatcom County resident, a
former candidate for public office (County Council, 1993), and the
current co-president of the Washington Environmental
Council.
As a co-founder of Whatcom Watch, a
citizens’ networking newspaper, I can state that it tracks both the
regulators and the local manifestations of the wise-use movement.
We may be a “rebel” publication in that we allow citizen activists
to write about their issues in their own words, but the activists
are generally environmentally-concerned and pro-growth management.
The fact that property rights organizer Skip Richards reads our
newsletter is no surprise, since he or the situations he helps
orchestrate are not infrequently the subject of our contributors’
essays.
Another correction: Our Critical Areas
Ordinance was not to protect wetlands and watersheds from
development per se, but to ensure that development on property
containing such features was sensitive to the special needs of
those critical areas (e.g. aquifer recharge zones, geologically
hazardous areas, riparian areas, etc.). Sensitive area setbacks
might mean relocation or conditioning of some building plans, but
outright denial of rights to use one’s property (i.e. legitimate
takings) have not occurred.
Implementation of
state law has divided Whatcom County into two camps, indeed, but it
is too simplistic to refer to them as urban and rural. A
designation of stewardship ethic vs. greed and exploitation is more
accurate, at least at the level of the leadership of both
movements. Urban and rural residents mingle in both
categories.
It is unfortunate that many rural
residents have been used as pawns, subjected to misinformation and
polarizing rhetoric by a certain extremist segment of the
development community (yesterday’s “good old boys’ reborn as
so-called champions of the underdog). It is less than coincidental
that that has occurred in the wake of visits by wise-use organizer
Chuck Cushman to Whatcom County.
A 20/20 T.V.
report that featured an interview with Chuck Cushman showed Skip
Richards in the background. Skip’s group CLUE (the Coalition for
Land Use Education) often provides Cushman’s materials at
meetings.
Thanks to a climate of hatred created
in Whatcom County, elements of our society who indulge in
cross-burning have just revived that little pastime. In addition,
my campaign for public office last year included receiving
telephoned death threats, clandestine perusal (theft?) of my mail,
my car’s headlights kicked in at a candidates’ forum, and a
campaign worker narrowly missing being hit by a car that had to
leave the roadway to aim for her.
I have to
wonder at the value system of people who would set about
unravelling community cohesiveness, sacrificing decency and
civility in the process, and all as the price for claiming
irresponsible land use as their divine right.
I
agree with any number of cutting-edge analysts and economists who
say that the time has arrived for “full cost accounting.” Only by
attempting to tally the dollar-and-cents reality of what we are
repeatedly destroying, it seems, will we ever convince a certain
segment of our society that these irreplaceable natural systems
have genuine value.
Thank you for the excellent
work you do covering the West! I plan to be a subscriber for many
years to come.
Sherilyn
Wells
Bellingham,
Washington
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Extremism is on the rise in Whatcom County, Washington.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
