I received a good bit of direct feedback this week regarding a story I had written about the Shoreline Master Plan, property owners, and the ecology of Lake Sammamish.

As I write this column, on Wednesday morning, I am heartened by a few conversations I had with lake shore residents at last night’s Sammamish council meeting.

Particularly, Mike Collins, representing a group of Sammamish homeowners, demonstrated some of the best attributes of citizen involvement in processes like these — consideration and credit where due. I have tried to include as much of his comments in the Letters page here, and what I have edited for the sake of space is included online.

But, Mike’s contribution aside, the concerns expressed by the founder of Save Lake Sammamish, Joanna Buehler, as written in our paper, also brought out some less impressive reactions. There was some good old fashioned foot stomping and pouting by some landowners, crying foul and apparently furious that someone not lobbying for the interests of development should have anything to say about the SMP.

I even heard one impassioned appeal against the “victimization” of water front land owners.

Landowners? Victims? In the long history of the United States there have been many groups which could rightly call themselves “victims.” Landowners aren’t one of them. To place themselves in the role of the noble wronged requires a massive suspension of reality and perspective.

Like the other submission I received over the weekend, which claimed that America was on its way to becoming a Communist country — dictating what other people do with their property. Talk about a stretch. This writer went on to say the idea that “they should do it ‘for the greater good’ is just wrong and it goes against our basic rights as U.S. citizens.”

And I guess this is the core of my problem with thoughts like this. I don’t see the idea that private property is one of the key foundations of a free society, but that common good isn’t, as being a very proud and honorable ethos.

Moving into weird territory, the SMP issue even brought out the climate change deniers, the least appealing and valuable of all contributors. Yes, we all know that the planet goes through its own cycles of getting warmer and cooler, and that it has been doing so long before Detroit. But this fact does not automatically acquit the actions of man in his time.

“In the 1970s (Earth Day, etc) we were supposed to die from various global and ecological catastrophes within 10 to 20 years, and amazingly we’re still here. But many people made lots of money from ‘green’ clothing and products, taxes and fees imposed on ‘polluters’,” wrote one reader, now probably a former reader.

Yes, but since “Earth Day etc” many bird, animal, fish and plant species have been made extinct, untold millions of acres of irreplaceable forests have been cut down, mountain tops have been removed, rivers have caught on fire, reefs have died, a hole has formed in the ozone layer… this isn’t environmental marketing, mate.

And, yeah, I know you have your scientists. There are scientists who can present me with proof that the Holocaust never happened too. The idea that the purpose of the conservation movement was to make money from gimmicks is ridiculous, and hopefully will soon cease to become part of any meaningful ecological considerations. We have so diminished the beauty of our earth, and even to the death there are those who will argue that it isn’t anything to do with us.

Assuming a course of positive evolution, this idea will soon pass on and over the edge of the flat earth. Until then, I look forward to hearing genuine and considered thoughts from all corners of the SMP landscape.