In 1776, the world changed forever. Our ancestors were tired of being taxed without representation by an oppressive regime in a foreign country. It’s time for us to rise up against the oppressive regime of Sims who is playing with our lives and futures with Sims' folly known as “Brightwater” (aka Blightwater).

America in 1776 was much like Woodinville today, in that one-third of the population supported the effort to overthrow King George’s regime, one-third really didn’t care one way or the other, and one-third were adamant supporters of the English monarchy. Although much has changed in these 224 years, a lot hasn’t.

Maybe you think this won’t affect you. Maybe you won’t smell the rotten stench from King County’s sewage on the hot, still days and nights of summer, as some of us living in the path of the inversion route will. But, if there is that earthquake that is predicted by the leading experts in the world, then you will come face to face with catastrophe, as did our fellow Americans living in Louisiana and Mississippi when Hurricane Katrina hit. How will you deal without drinking water for your family, having to wear haz-met suits due to toxic fumes, gases and liquids that flow from the broken pipes of the sewage treatment plant, and living in a contaminated environment you now call home for years if not decades? Sims claims he is an environmentalist, yet he sits back in his throne chair and smiles as an edifice to his legacy is built on top of an active earthquake fault line.

Then there’s the third that support Sims’ efforts to tax us without representation. He selected this area because we couldn’t vote to change it. That’s called taxation without representation. It’s called “a land grab.” Americans rile at that kind of attitude. It’s time for us to stand together and tell Sims you will not build your toy here so that you can keep the union construction workers employed and have more power for yourself when they vote for you at the next election. That is what this is about. You do realize that, don’t you? Votes. That’s all it’s ever been about.

And then you have the Christine True. In her last letter to the editor, she said that the chance of an earthquake is “remote.” Fact: She is not a geological surveyor.

I remember being at the council hearing when she was unveiling this grand project, and I asked if they would be willing to set up a mitigation fund for those families whose houses do not increase in value, as other homes not near Blightwater or worse, decline due to the stench, traffic or threat level. She said, “Trust me. It won’t happen.”

After other similar comments from other concerned neighbors, she said, “Well, we might talk about mitigation.” And they did, but not for us poor serfs! The mitigation is only for the city council to spend on parks, monuments and the like, not to replace the value we lose in most families’ largest asset, their homes. We can’t live in a monument!

SKEA-SnoKing Environmental Alliance

Government has made the headlines over the past year by stealing peoples’ land and their homes, through programs such as the land grab here in King County known as the CAO. It’s time to stand up with SKEA, our only choice to fight this encroaching cancer. Write a check for $10, $25, $50, $100, $500, $1,000, whatever you can write, and send it to SKEA, knowing that your house and the hundreds of thousands of dollars that you have in it could go away because Sims decrees it.

Make the investment.

• Stand up with the great citizen army of our very bright, knowledgeable neighbors who have worked tirelessly to keep SKEA moving to victory.
• Stand up with the experts that SKEA has hired from all our neighbors contributions, who have proven the disastrous ecological and environmental impact this boon-doggle will have on Woodinville and surrounding areas.
• Stand up for your children who want to play in a beautiful community, smell fresh air, drink clean water, and not live with the specter of a guillotine hanging over their heads of some day when that earthquake hits that we just might lose it all. Our houses are built to withstand earthquakes of a certain magnitude. Sims’ folly should be held to a higher standard since that building will impact thousands of people when the earthquake comes.

And as you close your eyes to blissful sleep tonight, be comforted with Christine True’s words that “The chances of an earthquake occurring on the treatment plant site are extremely remote.”

Stand up and join in our fight for independence, the environment, and our right to live in a beautiful community and to enjoy it. Let’s work together to win this battle and this war, so that we can live in peace amidst the beauty and the security that enticed us into Woodinville and the surrounding countryside.