Letter: Don’t trust cities with our shorelines

My wife and I enjoy walking in Leslie Groves Park. We also enjoy annual activities in Howard Amon and Columbia parks. We make use of the recreation trails along the Rivershore and enjoy the solitude of parks such as Chamna, Chiawana, and the Yakima delta.

These areas are managed by the Army Corps of Engineers for the benefit of the public. We worry about plans to give these properties to local governments who may feel it is then their fiscal duty to monetize these properties through development and sales to private parties.

On Aug. 2, we attended a presentation by Gary Petersen, Brad Fisher and others promoting the idea giving the publicly owned shoreline to local governments. They said that they were not interested in developing the river shore, but this was belied by Mr. Peterson’s comments.

He described an effort to convey shoreline to Kennewick under WRDA, the current conveyance mechanism passed by Congress in the 1990s. The scheme was aborted only because WRDA requires that any transfer be for non-commercial development; clearly the only reason for the current push for a different mechanism is to allow commercial development.