Sounder Editorials

Don’t forget the land owners who have a lot to lose

Pay serious attention to those Orcas islanders who bought property near the Eastsound Airport on the assumption that they would have certain development rights.

That’s our pleading to the Port of Orcas, the Eastsound Planning Review Committee, the San Juan County Long-Range Planning Department, the county Planning Commission and, ultimately, the Board of County Commissioners. These are the bodies that have begun or will soon be debating whether some people’s development rights should be greatly reduced in order to protect public safety.

More specifically, these public bodies will play the key roles in deciding whether to create what would be known as an Eastsound Airport Overlay District, and how wide it should be. How they answer those questions will determine the number of property owners whose development rights could be greatly reduced.

Nobody can argue with the fact that those who live or work in the flight path to and from the airport encounter a certain amount of risk that their buildings could be hit by a falling airplane. Two planes crashed last year just south of the runway, and not far from an affordable housing complex.

Moreover, as Long-Range Planner Pat Mann points out, that risk will increase as the population of the island grows and more and more pilots use the airport.

But does that risk justify creation of an overlay district, and if so, how big should it be? As Port Commissioner Al Edwards told Mann last week, no plane has ever hit a building on Orcas Island. Moreover, he said, there is far greater danger of an auto accident, yet nobody is proposing that all the roads be closed.

But this is a debate that goes beyond legalities or some threshold determination of risk levels. If those who may lose some development rights take their case to court, a judge would have to sort things out. We’ll leave that portion of the argument alone.

For now, our primary concern is that when people spend their hard-earned money based on representations as to what they can do with their purchases, those representations should be honored except in extremely rare circumstances where it can be proven conclusively that public health and safety are seriously threatened.

We sympathize greatly with people like Clyde Duke and Ri Warren, who see their long held plans being jeopardized by this overlay district. We hope that their pleadings will be taken extremely seriously.

The Sounder will continue listening to arguments both for and against an airport overlay district, and the amount of land that would be affected.

For now, however, we remain unconvinced that one is needed. Eastsound has been designated the core for commercial and industrial development and affordable housing. These vitally needed services can’t be located elsewhere on Orcas Island. And since Eastsound has only so much space, our preliminary conclusion is that some future development will have to be located near the airport.

Let the debate begin.

OPALCO: This company has a tough act to follow

OPALCO without Doug Bechtel? Ham without eggs? Thanksgiving without turkey?

It’s hard to imagine the local electric power cooperative without Bechtel, who for 14 consecutive years has provided both superb leadership and vision to this important local organization. One would be hard pressed to find a local leader more accessible and comfortable solving problems than Bechtel.

There’s an old cliche that nobody is indispensable. OPALCO is about to find out if that is true. The local electric power cooperative will be losing a one-in-a-million type of leader.

Meanwhile, we commend both Bechtel and the board for setting a timetable that could run for as long as a year before Bechtel retires and the new OPALCO general manager is hired, oriented, and up-and-running.

We also find board President Ed Marble’s expression of confidence that OPALCO will find a worthy successor to Bechtel encouraging. Marble was on the board 14 years ago, when several excellent candidates applied for the job. If history is any indication, more fine candidates will apply again. We hope that Marble is right, but we’ll be surprised if the board can find somebody as good as Bechtel.

Meanwhile, we’re happy to report that Bechtel will be staying on Orcas Island, where his skills will be put to good use for several community organizations. In particular, we can’t wait to see the next production from Actors Theatre of Orcas Island, the organization he created.

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