Local control absent in siting decision

It’s apparent from your August 14 editorial, “Brightwater saga takes the right turn” that you have chosen expediency over principle in divining your position about a new sewage treatment plant for Snohomish county. You say the residents around Highway 9 should take the money and live with the plant.

King County bureaucrats would be proud of you. I think you don’t get it, however. I’ll put it clearly: no government officials in King county should be able to dictate what happens in another county.

Ron Sims should know better as well. Yet, behind his smiling, boyish exterior bodes a cunning imperialist. Boundaries mean nothing to him.

But they do mean much to Mayor Haakenson, Rep. Brian Sullivan, and Sen. Paull Shin. Boundaries mean everything to citizens like John Quast, Laurie Dressler and their Edmonds friends. Now is not the time to drop the conservative principle of local control merely because Sims has chosen a new site for Brightwater. If Snohomish County residents need a new wastewater treatment plant, let them plan and build it themselves – without King County’s interference.

Craig Spicer

Lynnwood

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