Owners shouldn’t build on flood plain

The key word in the report on the Arlington landowners’ development intentions is “floodplain” (“Loophole may give leverage to landowners,” Dec. 15). The governor of Santa Clara Pueblo, near where I grew up in New Mexico, once got in a dispute with the Army Corps of Engineers about the corps’ pending flood control projects on pueblo land. The leading liaison for the corps asked the governor how they handled flooding before the arrival of the white man. The governor replied, “Simple. We didn’t build in the watercourses, arroyos or flood plains. We built on the high ground.”

With public money already going to buy out homeowners in land subject to flooding why should we, the taxpayers, allow others to build on an bona fide floodplain? Tell these landowners no and, again, no!

Marysville