From the Mar 10 – Mar 16, 2005 issue

News

Rural Ruse

Deceptive Language Warps County Land-Use Debate

by Erica C. Barnett

The King County Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO), which requires some landowners in unincorporated King County to leave between 50 and 65 percent of their land untouched, has already sparked an initiative effort, a lawsuit, and a failed petition to re- call Democratic county land-use chairman Dow Constantine. Now it's generating letters that at least one state legislator found threatening enough to call in the state police.

Two weeks ago, Fall City resident Ron Ewart sent an e-mail to two members of the state legislature, where a statewide bill similar to the CAO was then pending, that read in part: "If you do not cease and desist very soon with this folly, someone is going to die and maybe many someones." At the behest of bill cosponsor (and e-mail recipient) Maralyn Chase, two state troopers visited Ewart later that day at his home, where they determined, according to patrol spokesman Jeff deVere, that the 67-year-old was "not a threat."

Dwight Pelz, a South Seattle county council member whom Ewart targeted as one of many public officials with "socialist [and] environmentalist" views, calls Ewart part of "an ideological group that has convinced itself that [the CAO] is not only unconstitutional but treasonous."

Not everyone opposed to the CAO holds such extreme views. Many who oppose the ordinance, including members of the anti-CAO Citizens Alliance for Property Rights (CAPR), see the debate as a question of how much control, if any, the government should have over landowners' rights to manage their property and maintain their rural way of life. The problem for officials like Constantine is that the "rural way of life" is increasingly a euphemism for suburban sprawl. "The people we hear from are not farmers. They're not foresters. They're suburbanites," Constantine says. In an e-mail, CAPR member Charles Strouss acknowledged as much, noting that he originally purchased his 40 acres east of Redmond hoping to subdivide it into as many as 50 lots.

"Most people, given a reasonable choice, choose to live in these 'burbs," Strouss wrote. Leaving that (debatable) point aside, is it really fair for suburbanites to escape regulation at the expense of urban areas, like Seattle, that bear the environmental and traffic costs of suburban sprawl?

barnett@thestranger.com