HomeMy WebLinkAbout061526 email Public Comments in support of Proposed Fireworks BanALERT: BE CAUTIOUS This email originated outside the organization. Do not open attachments or click on links if you are not expecting them.
Dear Jefferson County Commissioners,
Below is a slightly edited version of my 26 April comments on this issue, re-submitted as part of the official public comment record on this matter.
As a resident of Brinnon I am writing to very strongly support a permanent, county-wide fireworks ban.
Our perspective from Brinnon is especially important to this discussion. For a period of many, many years, certain residents in Brinnon have sponsored a massive yearly illegal fireworks
display that rivals that of small to medium sized municipalities, drawing out of town residents from throughout the region.
This display, located on the banks of the Dosewallips River, results in toxic pollution of the river, terrorizing local veteran(s) suffering from PTSD after-effects of the Iraq war,
other local neighbors, and domestic and wild animals and birds.
The risk of fire is real, indeed in a recent year, this massive illegal fireworks display triggered a brush fire, ironically next door to the Brinnon Fire Station.
We are all aware that we are not talking about legal ‘safe-and-sane’ fireworks; we are instead talking about illegal fireworks (legally obtained from local first-nations vendors (e.g.
Potlach) but entirely illegal off-reservation.
One person’s freedom ends at another person’s eardrums. Those of us who choose to leave town on the fourth of July, or to ‘crank’ our stereos in attempts to mask the vast noise of these
displays, should not be forced to do so in order to support the illegal activities of certain of our neighbors.
As climate change and drought increase the risk of wildland fires year after year, it is inevitable that somebody’s illegal fireworks display is going to spark a catastrophic fire.
The only way to prevent, or at least to mitigate this very real risk, is a total fireworks ban.
Leadership sometimes means weighing competing interests and curtailing certain ‘freedoms’ of some of your constituents when necessary to protect the ‘freedoms’ of other constituents
and the community as a whole. Our freedom to enjoy the peace and quiet and safety of our community should vastly outweigh the freedom of others to carry out illegal activities in
our neighborhood. To me, this seems self-evident.
Finally, as more and more neighboring jurisdictions, counties, and municipalities with populations that exceed Jefferson County’s by literally multiple orders of magnitude, we otherwise
risk becoming a fire works ground of last resort in a race to the bottom scenario where folks from the I-5 corridor travel specifically to Jefferson County for the explicit purpose
of ‘blowing-sh*t up’. We cannot stand for that.
Please support a full, permanent ban on fireworks in Jefferson County.
Steve Walker
331 Dosewallips Road
Brinnon.