Maury Park

Leave the pier alone

Another hit from the King County “bully.” Why does information coming from our “representatives” seem to aggravate so much?

Please leave the Maury Island Regional Park pier alone. No one has gotten hurt on it. Check out the marine life on it and around it; it’s thriving. How can this be a high priority project? Save our money.

My dog and I love the pier and the park just the way it is. The county is making decisions to further its agenda without answering obvious questions — such as how much money is this contract going to be? Who gets the contract and why? What are we really doing to improve anything?

This is a little Island and a little world. Let’s get along.

Larry Yeakel

K2 Commons

Misgivings about proposal linger

I have great respect for the opinions of my friends Dan Carlson and Michael Laurie, but I have a hard time reconciling the dual visions by which they seek to allay all misgivings about the K2 development.

Dan’s column, which by the way fails to answer its own fundamental question, presents us with a project of such scope and magnetism that it must be mitigated by its own public transportation system as well as by bike and horse trails through, I’m guessing, dozens of intervening private properties.

Michael’s vision, based largely on trust, tells us of an almost serene locale filled mostly with nonprofit businesses and quiet condos, where — I’m sorry, I just don’t believe it — the only planned retail outlet is a cafeteria. In the next breath he adds that the developers readily agreed to limit retail business to 20 percent of the total project. In a place the size of a professional sports arena, that’s a pretty rich figure. If I wanted to start a shopping center, I’d take 20 percent of Qwest Field any day, and who wants to be the only store, or even one of a few stores, in a complex that size?

The part about the condos does make sense, however, since the only way to justify a development this size in a town this small is to recruit lots more people to live here. Say, you don’t suppose, do you …?

Richard Odell

Glacier Northwest

A few thoughts about the plan

Thoughts about a gravel mine expansion:

A multi-faceted discussion

Property rights, individual and corporate

Business rights

Profit margins

Providing a needed building material

High-grade fill for construction projects

A major source of greenhouse gas emissions

Puget Sound in crisis

A viable and diverse near-shore marine environment

An industrial barging facility in the aquatic reserve

A unique madrone forest

Carbon sequestered in trees and vegetation

Future carbon sequestration lost when the trees and vegetation are removed

Carbon released when the wood is burned

Dig a deep hole here to fill holes somewhere else

270,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil stored on site

10,000 gallons of aquifer water used for daily operations

A landfill and wastewater treatment facility

An active seismic area

A sole-source Island aquifer

Mayor Nickels vision of a Green Seattle

Island contractors use sand and gravel

Sand and gravel barged to the other side

What to do when the sand and gravel is gone?

Import needed sand and gravel

Can we afford it?

Keep the mine small and sell the sand and gravel on Island

Tim Robinson