LEADING US DOWN THE WRONG PATH

WHO'S DICTATING WHAT TO WHOM?

Submitted to Shelton Blog by Katherine Price Mason County Progressive

This past winter, a few Mason County residents had a guest column in the 12/9/10 Shelton - Mason County Journal titled “The time is now", with this opening sentence: “Job creation, growth and development are not just political promises…” These residents styled themselves “Citizens for a Prosperous Mason County", and their charter members included such well known biomass-supporters as Dick Taylor, Matt Matayoshi and Steve Bloomfield.

I was re-reading their guest column today and one passage in particular struck me: “Allowing a small segment of our community to dictate what is best for our community will lead us down the wrong path.” I could not agree more.

However, Mr. Taylor and his friends would have us believe that the significant opposition to the ADAGE facility was “a small segment of our community".

Unfortunately for Taylor, Matayoshi, Bloomfield, et al., the ADAGE proposal has been scrapped. ADAGE has withdrawn their permit application to ORCAA, and the air-breathers of our community are breathing easier.

However, fast on the heels of the relief that ADAGE was leaving, came the City’s disastrous decision in determining that a second biomass incinerator in the harbor will not have a significant effect… as in the City’s “Mitigated Determination of Non-significance” concerning Simpson’s proposed Solomon Renewable Energy Company plant.

I am sure it is simply an oversight that the Citizens for a Prosperous Mason County have not yet added Solomon to their website as businesses they support. Currently, the only business they do support on their website is ADAGE.

I agree with Taylor, et al., that allowing a small segment of our community to dictate what is best for our community will lead us down the wrong path. In fact, it has lead us down the wrong path. I suggest that allowing one family, the Reed family, a/k/a Simpson and all of its incarnations, to dictate what is best for our community for more than a century, is to allow “a small segment of our community" (a very small segment of our community) to dictate what is best.

With all of the scientific and medical studies available which prove biomass incineration to be a highly polluting method of producing electricity, allowing a small segment of our community to continue to lead us down the wrong path (the path to additional tons of pollution by situating a second biomass incinerator in the Shelton Harbor) is not in the best interests of the residents or the businesses in Shelton.

Dick Taylor would like to be a Port of Shelton Commissioner; Matt Matayoshi is the Executive Director of the Mason County Economic Development Council (a huge supporter of ADAGE); and Steve Bloomfield styles himself as a “Clam Pirate".

These folks are the people who actually represent that small segment of our community who want to continue to dictate what is best for everyone. You will find their names on county and city advisory groups, advisory commissions, advisory committees, and advisory councils. The same names, again and again, and yet these same folks caution against “Allowing a small segment of our community to dictate what is best for our community…”

I suggest we already have a “small segment” of our community dictating what is best for us, and it is time that the citizens take a hard look at who these people are and what their agenda is.