Preserve our beautiful Westport Light State Park wetlands
Like most working class families, I have often worked two or three jobs to pay the bills and to contribute to my community.
In addition to running the Westport Aquarium for the last 17 years I have also worked in science education and I have often worked in the field all over Southwest Washington and Northwest Oregon doing survey assistant work for our families land surveying business for the last 25-plus years.
We have surveyed developments where the mud has been so thick that we were getting stuck every step well past our knees. Our boots were pulled off of our feet in the sticky mud on each step. It wasn’t quite quicksand but it felt like it. Every inch of these developments with no plants left and the soils decimated by heavy equipment, like backhoes, caused what was once a healthy wetlands ecosystem to turn soil into a liquefied giant mud swimming pool.
I am very concerned that the public is not aware of the drastic devastation that this golf course development will cause. The proposed Scottish links golf course would likely be built on class one and two wetlands and coastal forest in our local Westport public state parks lands.
This proposed project covers 600-plus acres of some of the best surfing beaches in Washington state in what has been known as Westhaven State Park and Westport Light State Park. It is an area that provides drinking water for our town. It also covers some of the rarest class one and two wetlands in Washington state.
These wetlands are home to many wonderful wildlife species from rare lichens to snakes, birds and the sweet deer we see grazing in the evening on our rides home from work. They are also home to bears that when scared out of their natural habitat come looking for food in our Westport home and business garbage cans as an alternative.
The legal state required process to destroy a wetland for a golf course or other development is very complex, it often involves wetlands mitigation which simply put means the developers are required to substitute a designated protected wetlands location area for the one they are destroying. They are required to find rare plant species on the property and in some cases some of the land may not be built on so they have to build around sensitive areas.
Much of the town around Westhaven and Westport Light State Park has flooded regularly in the winter. I have lived and worked in Westport for 17 years and I have seen catastrophic flooding and it can happen very suddenly.
I remember one especially bad time where I left to go to the grocery store for paper towels for the aquarium and when I left our floor was dry. When I returned it was under a foot of water. And it was so surreal. My staff and a few visitors were still wandering through the water, I think they were in shock. As politely as I could I urged them to leave the area immediately for their safety. The entire giant parking lot was filled with water and my neighbors yard had almost three feet of water in some places.
Since those days of extreme flooding the city of Westport has taken some expensive measures to curtail flooding including rebuilding an entire street with more drainage. They have dug a labyrinth of ditches around the marina district and every year it still floods in many places.
It has gotten a little bit better, but now imagine disturbing, destroying and compacting the beautiful absorbent sponge like soils of 600 acres of wild state park wetlands for a golf course and we have a recipe for record floods and disaster.
Kathryn Myrsell
Westport
President shouldn’t be taking ‘gifts’
Kudos to Sheneman for the cartoon on the Opinion page (“Bing! The Captain has turned off the emoluments clause, you are now free to accept $400 million airplanes from foreign governments.”)
Our Constitution prohibits federal officials accepting favors, and I believe even the appearance of favors, in exchange for money or influence. This means no favors — in regards to citizens, foreigners, convicted criminals, traitors, Supreme Court judges and surely not dictators from countries responsible for 9-11. Congress must consent to the President’s acceptance of a gift or payment, and I hope they will uphold the honor of our country by just saying no.
By the way, where is the outrage from Republicans who continue to investigate Hunter Biden after all these years? Maybe they will turn their attention to all those in the present administration who accept such “gifts” which appear to be bribes.
Becky Durr
Aberdeen
