Re: “It won’t be easy to launch the airport of the future” [Nov. 18, Opinion]:
The Commercial Aviation Coordinating Commission (CACC) and its spokespeople, state Sen. Karen Keiser and state House Rep. Tom Dent, call their choice of location for a Thurston County giant airport “greenfields.” It implies that the land they are about to steal for a new airport is empty and vacant.
The land is not empty. Tens of thousands of people live there. They live in single houses, condominiums and apartments. There are schools, supermarkets, parks and forests.
The Department of Transportation plans to obliterate vast numbers of properties. Offering fair market value for a house slated for destruction equates into virtually nothing.
If a homeowner refuses to accept the blood money, the home is condemned through eminent domain and the families are evicted as “squatters.”
Dent doubles down with a mendacious and sanctimonious excuse that the airport will be a “gift to our children. And a powerful tool for the disadvantaged communities (who) have been denied access” to low wage jobs.
Will Dent, Keiser and the CACC personally explain to the many children who live here right now why they have to get out?
Michele Planck, Olympia