Dear Editor,
Razor clams need their sand. Clams, a natural public resource that fills our beaches to overflowing with happy people, provides a link back to our childhood and creates wholesome family experiences. Besides the intrinsic value, clams provide to coastal communities $4,500,000 of economic spin-off per season. There is no match for a cold winters evening watching thousands of twinkling gas lanterns off into the distance or the thrill of a low tide at daybreak on a spring morning. It stirs the primal senses in a wild coastal setting. Are these precious life's experiences to disappear over time?
Over the last few years there have been many interesting articles written attempting to explain the phenomenon of ongoing erosion on the SW Washington coast . They deal with sand supply interruption by dams, channel maintenance dredging, jetty construction, sand budgets and many other reasons too numerous to mention here. One concern does not get much attention and that is the ever- pressing desire to develop close to our natural beaches where erosion and accretion are occurring in a natural rhythm that matches the ocean's desire to be untamed.
There is great economic and political pressure to develop as close to the ocean as possible. There is very little of this type of land available and in a robust economy there will always be folks with the where-with-all to bid up the price of desirable land. From this unhappy occurrence it naturally follows that precious property has high taxing value which means it becomes a revenue source for local jurisdictions and needs to be protected and exploited for its highest and best use. If the previous theory holds then clams and mother nature are at odds with it and on a collision course.
As we develop businesses, homes and intense housing projects in the historic erosion zone bad things happen. Soon, when land in front of Joe Public's high priced property begins to leave, for whatever reason, he calls on his local elected official to get economic relief. He, in turn, calls on his elected state representative, who in turn, calls his congressional representative to help Joe out of his predicament. Joe and all his elected officials put their collective heads together and call the preferred coastal engineer to develop a solution that meets Joe's needs. Since Joe and all the elected officials want the erosion fixed right for the long term, rock becomes the tool of necessity. Joe may be happy but this solution may not be a happy ending for Joe's beach front neighbors.
As history has taught us when hard rock is applied to face the ocean environment two things happen. The beach steepens and shortens as the sand is carried off into deep water and the original erosion event picks up and moves down the beach to visit Joe's neighbor who then calls his local elected representative and the whole process starts all over again and it never ends until the whole coast looks like Mount Rainier.
Back to the clams. With this scenario there will be no clams and all the great experiences your family had long ago and have today will be gone forever into a relic of history to be only remembered or told as a rural legend and not a legacy that our coastal communities so richly deserve.
Brady Engvall
3714 Oyster Pl. E
Aberdeen, Wa. 98520
(360)268 5518
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