Laura Livingston’s letter commenting on the previous letter to the editor on Aug. 8 (“Puget Sound and environmental rhetoric”) continues the thread of environmental rhetoric that acted as the catalyst for the original letter.
Livingston attempts to continue the smoke and mirrors approach, which serves to only create crisis environment for issues that pale in comparison to reality. Some counterpoints:
First, the $1.2 billion Canada just allocated for treatment plans has been widely assessed as a PR move at worst and a delay tactic at best. If the plans actually go forward, it’s estimated that the plants won’t be completed and actually processing 100 percent of the current untreated volume for 15 to 25 years. Cost is expected to climb considerably and there is no commitment at all to fully fund the projects. King County’s Brightwater treatment plant alone is now costing some $1.8 billion. Victoria isn’t about to build four plants for $1.2 billion — ever.
Second: Last time I checked, the vast majority of the water and fish in Puget Sound flow by and through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, so the logic that the situation Canada creates is somehow not relevant is very illogical. You don’t need a degree in environmental science to evaluate that aspect. If the water in your kitchen faucet flows through my toilet first, how is it that you’re not directly affected?
Third: Perhaps the explicit point of the Aug. 8 letter should have been that everything is seen as a resource to be conserved by environmentalists except one — money. Disproportional spending on a problem may make someone feel good, but that is all it accomplishes. We simply don’t have what I’m sure is going to be millions on a campaign to convince people that washing their car is the crisis. In the long run, people will come to realize it’s B.S., and then when there really is an action or crisis that they can affect, you will have lost them. Motivate people with real specific issues and facts, and you will accomplish real tangible solutions. Create a faux crisis, and very real Sound pollution will either get ignored or underfunded.
Scott Lee, Federal Way
