The Bellingham City Council last night voted 5-2 to support the Clean Water Alliance legal action against Whatcom County's designation of Sudden Valley as an Urban Growth Area (UGA). Grant Deger and Bob Ryan voted against. The city attorney will file an Amicus brief in support of the citizens - mainly Tim Paxton, Lois Garlick and Sherilyn Wells - who have been working for years to prevent our city drinking water from being further polluted by excessive development of Sudden Valley.

This action by the city validates the good work these people have been doing. They have been been heavily criticized for being radical and too extreme. Even supposed clean-water supporters - tree huggers without guts - have abandoned them. Some local environmental groups have ignored them and refused to support them - apparently thinking the issue too hot and would hurt their contributions from the fat-cat liberals. This also is a slap at local environmental "hero" Dan McShane of the county council - it was he who pushed Sudden Valley as a UGA. His wife is a top honcho on the NW Ecosystem Alliance. You can start to put the pieces of the puzzle to together, can't you? Good work, citizens. Nothing in today's Herald.

Here is a link to the Public Facilities District website. There is no link to it from the Bellingham city website even though it is a subsite of cob.org - as if they were hiding it. Not much information here. Very vague. In the May 12 post below I could not find the site. Amazing - no link from the city site.