In the past decade, the greater Seattle area has experienced growth in both industry and prosperity unrivaled in West Coast shipping hubs with the exception of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Surprisingly, it is not the shipping or exports that led to such growth; this is possible anywhere. It is the jaw-dropping location, a huge influx of tech-based and domestic start-ups and an ever-growing workforce eager and proud to live in the greater Seattle-Tacoma area that has caused this growth.

This growth could disappear just as fast as it came if we now make the wrong economic and environmental choices, the most recent being the proposed $3.4 billion Northwest Innovation Works methanol production plant. To permit this factory is a step backwards. It will literally occupy the same site as a previous environmental/economic trade-off — the World War II-vintage, asbestos-laden Kaiser Aluminum Plant. The contaminating effects of the Kaiser plant are still being discovered and remind us of the entire Asarco copper refinery, which spewed toxicity that soaked into Vashon.

As a student at Chautauqua Elementary School a decade ago, I joined my fellow classmates in having my hair tested by government representatives to see if I was poisoned by the polluted air and topsoil. I urge everyone who has endeavored to safeguard our health, natural resources and our future generations to inform themselves regarding this looming proposition, which would put the airborne contaminants of the largest methanol plant in the world at our doorstep.

Let us embrace the beauty of our area, not the industrial destruction that has become a common sacrifice. This plant would provide methanol to China to produce more plastic knickknacks and toys, some sure to wash up onto our beaches along with polluted tides.

— Hart Tahoma Heffelfinger