Editor,
As a once-upon-a-time Island County Water Conservancy Board member, Water Resources Advisory Committee member and 25 year private well owner, I have to say that your article about huge price increases by the Cascadia water system comes as no surprise.
Except for Whidbey Naval Air Station and the confines of the City of Oak Harbor, the entirety of Whidbey Island homes, farmland, businesses and wildlife get their drinking, bathing, gardening, landcscaping and car washing water from rainfall and its residuals that soak through the earth that we all walk, play, poop and drive upon until reaching the aquifer below.
First and foremost, we need to protect our island’s aquifer. It’s all we got. It’s all we’re going to get. Most of us don’t get river water from distant sources.
Ranging from small neighborhood water associations to town and community associations with hundreds of customers, there are nearly one hundred water purveying businesses on Whidbey Island alone… or once was. This did not go unnoticed by opportunists hoping to cash in on what is most certainly going to be a bonanza business opportunity as population density continues its relentless march; much like lemmings have for countless centuries.
Climate change isn’t helping the situation. It affects us here on Whidbey Island too.
“For-profit businesses” like Cascadia have foreseen this as a capitalistic opportunity, resulting in their purchase of as many private associations as they can get their hands on. Not only that, but there have been other efforts to have government take over with an island-wide water district having a water distributing mainline that extends through the island’s full length… which of course would be a bonanza for the district’s managers and result in unending taxation, allocation restrictions, and price setting authority; all of which says nothing about the numerous aqueduct and water right logistics involved.
If nothing else, Cascadia’s enormous price increases should wake sleepy eyes to what is already happening behind our backs. Our longtime residents have seen a carnival of relentless opportunists alleging superior expertise with deviously over-simplified explanations in efforts to convince a gullible public and elected officials to grant them reckless permits.
We are an island with very different logistics than the mainland. Let’s not forget the “Wright’s Crossing” fiasco.
A century ago, our world was historically changed when an inventor famously declared “What has God wrought?”
We might well ask “What has our bridge wrought, what is coming next, and will we survive?”
Al Williams
Oak Harbor
