Regarding the Aug. 20 letter, “They’ve got their house in the woods.”

You seem to value the woods, open spaces and not being crammed into a sardine can.

Let us look at the farmer who wants to become a part of the city, who wants to use his cropland to build homes and take his trees down to make room for even more homes. Imagine a new country sardine community, a sea of rooftops from shore to shore!

Trees clean the air you breathe! And the water you drink! Please get informed on the issues of protecting a watershed and Puget Sound waters.

Sprawling cities do not help provide affordable housing! It costs a city (you, the taxpayer) dearly, to keep reaching outside its city limits. Instead of chopping down old growth trees, infill and sustainable living within the city, is the way to grow and build. Get involved in city planning and insist on responsible growth, insist all new neighborhoods plant plenty of trees.

Look around Oak Harbor how developers first clear-cut the land and then put up neighborhoods. With all the cutting down of trees they have to spend lots of money to control the runoff problems created by removing all the trees. So you see builders do not build in the trees or around the trees, they remove trees.

People, who buy a piece of property within an existing neighborhood and keep the trees, and build around them, are responsible. Angie Homola is an architect for responsible growth and development. Just the type of commissioner Island County needs.

Julie Garrod

Oak Harbor