Last fall I took a drive down between the river and the railroad yard.

I counted about 50 camps.

It amazed me on many levels that this would be allowed.

I know that the WUTC has been trying to stop the unsafe trespassing across the yard tracks that endangers the trespassers and employees. They have met with issues with the various “stakeholders.” The Federal Railroad Administration will be involved next.

I cannot imagine the amount of human waste that permeates the ground and pollutes the water. The people who live there are in conditions that replicate Third World slums. Yet Larsonville continues to exist in all its squalor.

Why is this so?

I blame two things. The first is the abject failure of the City of Aberdeen to uphold its most fundamental task to look after the safety and health of its citizens. All we hear from our feckless government is what they can’t do, rather than what they can. I have come to believe that this camp survives in order to allow all the filth to be in one place.

The second root cause of this are the numerous groups that enable this behavior. Without a constant source of food, blankets, and supplies of all types the inmates of Larsonville would move on to Freeattle where there are unlimited funds being spent on care and housing.

This town has shown it can do no more than enable this unsafe and unhealthy behavior. To the well meaning folks who allow this to continue I say this: Rather than focus on the warm, fuzzy feeling you get for your good deeds, think instead about what kind of life you are sentencing these people to.

J.E. Meyer

Aberdeen