Editor,

Comments on the Whidbey News-Times website by former Island County commissioner Angie Homola, located below the article “Island County in deep water over Swan Lake work,” demonstrate why she should never again hold elected office.

To wit, Ms. Homola writes, “The Washington State Department of Ecology granted the county some $416,000 to purchase the estuary and surrounding habitat with the caveat that the county would pursue fish friendly tide gates.”

Bos/Swan Lake is not an estuary. An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it and with a free connection to the open sea.

Bos/Swan Lake is a fully enclosed lake with no free connection to the open sea, and it has been this way for thousands of years.

The only stream that runs into it exists only during periods of heavy rain.

In the early- to mid-20th century, farmers drained Bos/Swan Lake using pumps in order to graze cattle there. Fence posts are still visible mid-lake when water levels are low.

Nonetheless, Ms. Homola’s still-ongoing longtime agenda has been to turn Bos/Swan Lake into an estuary-like body of water having an open connection to the sea, based on the false premises that this lake is estuarial juvenile salmon habitat that has been destroyed by recent human activity.

Homola used her elected position as a county commissioner to push these false narratives.

Her own writings indicate she continues to do so. She is a radical environmental extremist.

William Burnett

Oak Harbor