In response to the Heralds article on Dec. 11 and John Kosters Letter to the Editor, Put Emotions Aside, on Dec. 20, I would like to add this.
I am in favor of revisions to the building codes in the floodplain. I, too, see permits being issued for areas that are directly in the path of rivers in Snohomish County.
However, there are some human factors at play here that arent being discussed. The fertile, flat valleys were formed by the river moving back and forth in the process known as meander and migration. After the valleys were settled, human management of this process began. Loggers and gravel companies were issued permits to remove logjams and gravel. These were both done to limit the meander and migration of the river so as to limit property erosion and flooding. Notice I said limit, not eliminate.
Since the early 1990s, strong environmental and tribal forces have worked in the Dept. of Ecology and the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife to stop the removal of these logjams and gravel bars. Consequently, the riverbeds are filling with gravel and logjams causing the river to move, bringing in more gravel and sediment to fill the riverbeds. Incidentally, this process of sedimentation is not good for fish, as some might like you to believe. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out that flooding will become more frequent and severe due to these two human changes to river management, and that is exactly what is happening.
We must either go back to using human management, using new technology, to keep flooding and erosion to a minimum, or we must move people and properties out of the valleys and allow the rivers to take the valleys back to their pre-human state.
For the Dept. of Ecology, Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, Environmental and tribal interests and, most importantly, our Governor to put their heads in the sand and pretend that what I have described above is not happening is criminal to those people and landowners that have paid their taxes faithfully.
Thank you, John Koster, for having the courage to speak the truth to your constituents in Snohomish County, even when it is politically incorrect.
Lori Kratzer
River Resource Trust
Arlington