After-the-fact fines must be harsher

Here we go again. Snohomish County is being sued by Pacific Topsoils because they have been ordered to remove dirt that they have knowingly, illegally dumped on Smith Island. (Monday article, “County sued over cleanup order.”)

This sort of practice is more the norm lately than the exception. The prevailing attitude seems to be, just do whatever you please, and if you happen to get caught, sue the county, forcing it to spend untold amounts of our tax dollars in litigation costs.

I recall another article recently involving a person who decided he was going to “improve” his lakefront property and I’ll be damned if that isn’t going to be taxing the justice system also. How many other cases similar to these are also pending? A lot, I would guess.

The probable result of all of this will be some fines, some minimal clean-up activities (just so we can say we made them do something) and an issuance of retroactive permits to make it all better.

When is it all going to stop? It is time to crack down and say enough and slap some hefty fines on these people and companies, and force complete clean-up and return grounds to their original state. Then maybe we can talk about issuing permits.

Either that, or rescind all of the current regulations and stop making new ones that aren’t going have any effect anyway.

Jerry Northey

Snohomish