The Sammamish Reporter story (“Property rights dominates ecological planning,” Friday, July 10, 2009) contains some information that is not complete. Below is information that should have been included.

The Sammamish Homeowners have tried our best to work with all parties involved in the SMP update.

We have educated ourselves on the issues in an effort to improve the Sammamish SMP from a document that was not understandable, to one that stresses greening the shoreline and improving water quality.

We are available to talk to anyone any week they wish and have gone out of our way to discuss these issues.

We have called for scientific documents and pride ourselves on using facts and logic to address these very complicated issues.

While doing this we have notified all parties of what we were doing and why we were doing it.

Then we put our concerns and reasoning to paper and recorded our ideas in the May 19 revision to the PC Draft SMP Update for all to see and comment on.

Our red line draft has been available to all parties since May 19 and is also available on the Sammamish City web site.

No one has really challenged any of the reasoning or the conclusions.

If anyone has a question or wishes to talk we are available.

We are familiar with being bullied and actively work against this tactic.

We do not run the SMP update process. We do accept all opportunities we are allowed to engage in discussing the issues, but we do not run the meetings, make the agendas or determine who attends.

Even with this significant disadvantage we use common sense to show why our ideas are more correct or we find brilliant solutions that others are using to solve problems and propose them for Sammamish.

The May 19 revision to the PC Draft SMP meets the requirements for SMP updates.

We are available to discuss this issue by issue with any one.

The Sammamish City Council is the legislative group that makes law.

That is why the Department of Ecology gave them $140,000 grant to update the SMP.

We can not match the power of DOE (DOE does intimidate). But we hope the power of reason and common sense will prevail.

Many of us were, and are, members of Save Lake Sammamish and supported the Metro sewer extension, better production methods for the Carnation Dairy in Issaquah and better procedures for the gravel processing, also in Issaquah.

Addressing these issues improved water quality and lake health, and SLS deserves praise for this.

We are to the point were homeowners both on the lakes and on the plateau will be asked to do more.

I hope all will become involved in the solution as it will take all in the drainage basin to make the changes required to continue improvement.

Most of the homes on Lake Sammamish are severely constrained between the bike trail and the lake.

We have asked most of our neighbors to give all but five feet of their yards to Shoreline Enhancement Areas.

This asks and requires that they at their own expense pull out their landscaping and replace it according to a template that is not yet available.

The City of Issaquah is about one year behind Sammamish and few of it’s residents are yet aware of the coming regulations.

We hope that Issaquah citizens will be as cooperative and become as involved with the continued improvement to water quality.

This is extremely important, as Issaquah is the major source of water and pollution (about 80 percent) in Lake Sammamish.

Many of the wetlands that mitigated water degradation have been filled in for tax generating development.

The lack of mitigating wetlands at the water source is a huge hole that hinders water quality improvement for Lake Sammamish.

But there is no way to put all the malls on Gilman back into the lake protecting swamps of the past.

Sammamish Homeowners are and should be concerned if their homes will be allowed to be rebuilt if disaster strikes.

The Planning Commission was told that it was required to develop code that would not allow many homeowners to rebuild.

This advice is the largest example of why most homeowners became involved in the SMP.

It will take all of us to continue to improve our lakes, Homeowners, City Councils, DOE, SLS and the Courts.

We offer our help and resources to reach the best balance of use and water quality.

Mike Collins

Sammamish Homeowners Association