Whoops! There goes another northwest tree

June 20, 2007 on 5:16 pm | In General Musing |

One of the things I’ve always liked about living in Redmond is that I can step out my door, walk a couple of blocks and be here:
Perrigo Springs
I can’t tell you how many walks I’ve taken here over the past eleven years. Hundreds?

Here’s another pic from this winter. I ran into Redmond City Councilwoman Kim Allen on this walk. We did not talk about the future of these beautiful woods. Perhaps we should have.
Perrigo in Winter

Here it is today:
Perrigo today

I feel sad about the loss, but also a little fatalistic. It wasn’t that many years ago that our neighbors down the street watched in horror as forest was cleared to make room for the house I live in. Where do you stop? How long do we let the bulldozers chew up the forests? Who gets to decide?

My friend, Bob Yoder has been trying for several years to stop this excavation and his efforts came to nothing. Was it because I acted too late?

Parting shot: here’s another Redmond resident I met on the way back home. His world just shrank.
Redmond bunny

Share/Save/Bookmark

See more like that one:

2 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

  1. Not quite ‘nothing’. We managed to preserve 3.5 acres.

    Comment by Bob Yoder — June 20, 2007 #

  2. While I don’t assert to be any kind of expert on economics or the environment, I can offer an example from the other side of this coin.

    The town we live in, Pacifica, California, can’t grow. We’re stuck between the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. On top of that, the residents tend to be anti-development. Not just because of of the environment, but because the infrastructure is already hard pressed to maintain services for the residents.

    There was a huge issue on our last ballot. A developer wanted to takes several tens of acres between Hwy 1 and the beach and turn it into a mixed business-residential areas. Emotions ran high as each side of this hot potato accused the other of all sorts of impropriety.

    The arguments for the project cited the fact that our local schools are hurting, the roads are in need of major repairs, and the police and fire services are inadequate. More tax base is required.

    The arguments against it are: It’s wetlands. More people means more traffic and students in the school, and more pressure on water, electric and public services.

    The issue was voted down by a 2:1 margin.

    I don’t know what the right answers are. i’m just glad I’m not the Pacifica city planner.

    Comment by Dreah — June 21, 2007 #

Leave a comment

XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^
34 queries. 0.144 seconds.
Powered by WordPress with jd-nebula theme design by John Doe.