Editor,

Yesterday evening, the Swan Lake Preservation Group placed a flyer on my doorstep. In it, they portend the Fakkema family’s use of their own private property on the west side of Whidbey Island in a legal manner.

I oppose Swan Lake Preservation Group’s actions in preventing the Fakkema family’s plans for their own property.

The Swan Lake Preservation Group is a radical environmental group mired in “nimby-ism.” It wishes to transform Bos/Swan Lake into an open estuary to Puget Sound, which they claim to be its natural state.

Their plan has always been bogus at face value. This body of water has not been open to Puget Sound for thousands of years. However, they insisted otherwise. Eventually, their plan was shown to be historically, environmentally and geologically ridiculous by Washington state officials hired to evaluate this plan using our tax dollars.

Angie Homola, a Swan Lake Preservation Group legacy member, ensured those tax dollars were spent thus when she was an Island County commissioner. Since then, this group has further attempted to distort reality by attempting to designate as a salmon stream the occasional stream that transports rainwater to the Bos/Swan Lake basin, another entirely absurd concept.

Now, in another brazen attempt at nimby-ism, they want elected officials to impose 200-foot tree buffers adjacent to Angie Homola’s residential neighborhood.

If Angie Homola and the Swan Lake Preservation Group want that, they should put their own money where their mouth is and purchase the Fakkema land themselves.

William Burnett

Oak Harbor