Letters to the editor

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Forest setbacks ignore will of the people

Remember the Constitution, the supreme law of the land? It was common doctrine in America’s founding that the legislative power, the most important of powers of government, cannot be delegated.

A quote from Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College: “When humans will become sovereign, unencumbered by nature and divorced from God, we are left with movements — people organized to impose their will on their adversaries.”

Government must be representative in form. We the governed must consent to it. This is entirely natural and right. The Constitution lays out a government in which local things are managed locally by the people nearest and most affected.

Now we have the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and Washington Forest Protective Board implementing rules/laws for which they have no authority. Bureaucrats can suggest rules/laws, but only the elected legislature can implement them.

The new policy put forth by the Forest Protective Board will move the logging boundary from 50 feet to 75 feet from streams that run all year long, even though they contain no fish. The Department of Ecology concluded its “necessary and in the overriding public interest.”

Also by Ecology’s determination that the rule will be good for salmon. So, where’s the proof? As five of the 12 members of the Forest Protective Board evidently were not inspired by extending the boundary as being advantageous for salmon habitat.

Protecting fish habitat is a noble and just cause, however one would reason families that depend on our forests would come first.

We as the governed must guard being complacent with unelected bureaucrats and activist judges who are intent on instilling their will on people. And where is our illustrious Washington State Attorney General?

Dennis Hollinger

Ocean Shores

No mega-dam — let’s do what works instead

The waters were rising around my Rochester home back in the flood of 2007.

When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s forecasting graph suddenly updated the level that the Chehalis River would crest at two additional feet, I rushed out to move even more of my belongings and then help my neighboring farmer friends.

Cars, tractors and trucks had already been removed to higher ground. For the longer term, I decided to raise my house another 32 inches higher, having raised it after the 1990 flood.

Now, it’s back to the future, as floods washed across my community again. Some folks leave early to avoid being trapped by water on the roads. Some stay to move things to higher ground as needed. We’ve all raised our homes, and many have created high shelves, too high for normal use, in our garages or barns to store equipment.

With the new year, the media spotlight has moved on. But we are still here, protecting the river, working to clean up the damage and rebuilding in ways that I hope will keep and move more people out of harm’s way while letting the river do what it does best — muscle its way to the sea.

All this while out of touch politicians and wealthy developers push a dam on the upper Chehalis River. They say it will protect communities, but what they really mean is it will protect their ability to build more big box stores in the floodplain.

That’s not a solution for our community, for our salmon runs or for our future. It’s short-sighted, incredibly expensive, and won’t help with floods like the New Year flood of 2022, which was driven in large part by water running off the Cascade foothills.

It won’t stop landslides that send logs into the river during floods, landslides that could be prevented by reforms to industrial logging practices. And it won’t do much to reduce flood damage downriver from Lewis County.

And what a cost this proposed dam would inflict: devastating a critical spawning area for salmon, particularly spring-run Chinook which we are in danger of losing. The upper river, while far from pristine after decades of intensive logging, remains mostly undeveloped and has enormous potential for fish habitat restoration.

Conservative estimates put the proposed dam’s cost upwards of $2 billion with no good plan to pay for it. Building this concrete boondoggle would siphon taxpayer money away from solutions that work, that protect more people and land, bring our salmon back and honor our treaties with the tribes.

Here’s what I’m for: protecting clean water, fish runs and communities with solutions that work with the river. Last month’s historic flooding across Western Washington clearly demonstrated the folly of thinking we can control Mother Nature.

The hard truth is that if we had spent the years since 2007 getting people out of harm’s way, instead of pouring resources into a mega-dam boondoggle, we’d be in a very different place today. But it’s not too late. Let’s pivot to what works.

Betsie Woode

Rochester