Bob Horn’s and Richard Duncalf’s June 19th editorials concerning Toby Nixon, Christie True and “Woodinville’s attempt to cause disruption” need comment. The truth is Toby’s comments are backed by fact / experts; Christie’s aren’t and Woodinville has no protection.  The “anxiety” felt by experts, including the USGS, comes right from King County’s own documents. Read them and you will find King County failed to prove a need for Brightwater, failed to provide adequate analysis of the plant site to avoid inadvertently placing a $1.6 billion multi-million-gallon-per-day sewage plant over active earthquake faults, and above all, failed to prove they could mitigate the catastrophic damage potential an earthquake under this facility would cause.

King County then states they’ve no plans to rescue Brightwater when it is destroyed. What that means I don’t know, but you need only look to Katrina.  Toby didn’t draw comparisons to Kobe; King County did.  King County’s July 2005 FSEIS, pages 39-40 “… The one case of damage to wastewater facilities … during the 1995 Kobe quake … liquefaction and lateral spreading heavily damaged the plant. Up to 3 feet of vertical settlement and 6 feet of lateral movement … most serious damage involved uncontrolled release of wastewater when the gravity influent line coming into the plant was broken where it crossed the channel, causing the entire plant influent volume to be discharged into Osaka Bay … Because the amount of ground movement that damaged the Higashinada Treatment Plant is comparable to the magnitude of potential fault movement at the Route 9 site, the damage is considered an indicator of a worst-case scenario at the Route 9 site.”  

That $20 million King County agreed to in 2004 providing Woodinville (Woodinville Resolution 250) with $20 million in odor mitigation is now zero. The $3 million you hear about now isn’t Woodinville’s money. It belongs to Snohomish County.

Toby took the time to understand the potential danger we face. An honest statesman is hard to find these days. I’m proud of Toby and wish there were more like him.     Reasonable debate based on facts is not anti-government. It’s what we all expect. We’re not getting it from King County and that’s the problem.