To the editor:

For some time now, due to the wild growth in residential construction on the island, I have been worried about the island’s water supply.

I wrote my city council members, Wayne Roth and Michael Scott, and asked what the state of the water supply was. Their first responses were merely a set of links.

To make a long story short, eventually I asked them, “can you look at me with a straight face and say…[that]… given the current rate of growth, the island has sufficient water with no degradation in quality for the next fifty years?”

Mr. Roth answered “No.” Mr. Scott didn’t answer at all.

Why, then, do we continue with this frenzied rate of construction? I understand that there are circumstances that somehow require it, but no one can explain them to me. The construction is extensive—the foot of Ferncliff, Wyatt (where the houses are unspeakably ugly to boot), that awful Visconsi wound, Lynwood Center, Weaver Road, a 60-room hotel — and there appears no pause in sight.

Mr. Roth was over a month in answering my question and then only because I prodded him; he said he thought my question was rhetorical. I wrote back that no, it was indeed not: if the city council expects that water will be insufficient, then I want to sell my house.

There’s an election on the horizon. Mr. Roth has an opponent, Rasham Nassar appears to be interested in environmental issues. She at least must be better suited as a steward of our city’s water supply than Mr. Roth, for he seems to have no interest in it at all. I’m voting for Nassar.

Anyone who has any interest in whether, when they turn on the tap, water will come out, would do well to do the same.

GEORGE JARECKE

Bainbridge Island