Dear Editor,

The letter to the editor published in the Herald on November 12 by Robert Callard was so full of inaccurate information, that we are totally surprised that the West Seattle Herald published it.

This letter was clearly an attempt to trash good work by people from both the Barton and Murray basin communities to come up with needed solutions to CSO required projects mandated by federal and state requirements in both basins. There are typographical errors in the published text that make it hard for readers to know what is being referred to—we are surprised that the Herald editorial staff did not catch them. The project would not be within 200 years of Lincoln Park, nor east of 35th Avenue. This writer simply did not have his geography correct. Nor his facts. His letter is a biased, and totally unsubstantiated version of the report from the Murray CAG, of which I was a member.

Before returning to the facts that are so twisted in Mr. Callard’s comment published in the Herald, let me try to set straight what is going on in both of our regions. King County is obligated to find proposals that it can begin to work on in December to stem CSO’s in the Barton and Murray Basins in West Seattle. They made proposals about these solutions in March and April, and were met with community opposition for their plans. The impacts proposed for the Murray Basin caused significant community opposition, and led to the formation of a community advisory committee. This committee urged inclusion of the Fauntleroy community, as 45% of the flow of CSO on an average peak flow event comes from the Barton Basin. In June King County created a community advisory committee (CAG) to help forge a solution that would work to solve this problem. Members of this CAG immediately recognized that the issue involved BOTH basins; and we asked King County to add a member to our CAG from that basin. They did, he was Flad Ostomovich. Mr. Ostomovich did not come to many of the meetings of the CAG, and at the last minute refused to lend his name to its recommendations. This was unfortunate, as all of the meetings of the CAG were public, advertised by King County, and held at the Fauntleroy Community Center. The report of the Murray CAG has been posted on the Internet by King County. It included alternatives to the site discussed at the November 1 meeting, as well as many other ways of reducing storage needs for CSO’s in both the Barton and Murray basins.

Construction of the proposed CSO project would not necessarily lead to the negative effects described by Mr. Callard. It does not necessarily need to have impacts on the ferry traffic. The foundation of his arguments for these impacts are not spelled out in his letter—it is just conjecture that there would be these impacts. He also makes all kinds of assumptions about particular traffic related impacts that involve many “shots in the dark,” like increased air pollution, the effects of the almost finalized King County upgraded pump station, and fails to think through the timeline for these likely impacts. Other details in Mr. Callard’s letter are totally unsubstantiated by data included in either King County Waste Treatment Division documents or, miss points covered in the CAG report. It does not appear as though Mr. Callard has read the CAG report, nor is very familiar with the King County Waste Treatment Division documents that have underpinned King County’s work on this project.

King County must come up with solutions to CSO issues in both the Murray and Barton Basins by the end of 2010. The Murray CAG was an open meeting process from June through November to provide recommendations to King County on this matter. The rant by Mr. Callard needs to be tempered by the logic of the Murray CAG’s report. The Herald should consider running a copy of the Executive Summary of the CAG report, as this project is so important to people in much of West Seattle.

Bill Beyers