Something beautiful was killed on our street a few days ago. On Wednesday, men with saws and cranes and chipper machines arrived in the morning and worked cutting and chopping, lopping and sawing until by the end of the day a tall, perfectly formed 90-year-old Lombardy poplar was reduced to a giant ugly stump and a pathetic pile of logs for firewood.
This poplar made an eye-catching exclamation point at the uphill end of our small cul-de-sac and was pleasing to look at in all seasons. The tree was without disease and grew at the outer edge of the house-in-question’s yard; it did not shut out light from the house or block views from its windows. I suspect the home’s owner didn’t want to rake leaves in autumn any more. Now all of us who live in the townhouse rows down from the end house can see straight through to Highway 99 and the billboards there. The noise from the highway is also worse now, for everyone.
Just another example of wanton and unthinking environmental degradation like all the other careless acts of destruction perpetrated every day on the world around us that we are supposed to accept without protest.
If Paine Field goes commercial this will have yet another effect — and much larger one — of impacting and degrading the part of the world we live in.
Can a society that permits such acts of destruction to the landscape and air above, thereby despoiling its beauty and quiet for many of its inhabitants, truly be called civilized? I don’t think so.
Diana Bock
Lynnwood
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