You can tell by the letters to the editor that a number of Black Diamond residents aren’t happy about the forthcoming land development that just passed through their City Council. With more than 6000 new houses planned, the current residents are about to suddenly become a minority.

The 4000 or so people who live there now will soon become “Old Black Diamond”, while the new 15,000 residents that will move in over the next decade will be designated “New Black Diamond”. That has to be a weird feeling for a town that’s had about the same population for 100 years.

That schism between the old and new currently exists in Maple Valley, but it’s slowly working itself out. By working itself out, I mean that Old Maple Valley is being slowly forgotten and gradually ignored by the newcomers. You can count on that process repeating itself in Black Diamond.

But, it’s YarrowBay’s property, and they can do pretty much whatever they want with it, including the development of every single square foot of their parcels. Don’t believe me? They even took out the space between the Yarrow and the Bay.

If you are a property-rights nutcase, then it’s a great decision for you. The right to do whatever you want on your own property gets another tally in the Win column. As I wrote in this space previously, I’m OK with that. If people want to keep their towns the way they are, then they need to buy up the land to keep developers from building on it.

YarrowBay is developing this the usual way, with a team of lawyers battling it out to reduce the costs of the development, and assert their rights to build on the properties. It would have been more fun if someone had been standing on the front porch in underwear holding a shotgun and a beer, while ranting about the guv’ment gittin’ thur hands off mah land (can you tell that I miss West Virginia?).

Instead, we have $300 suits, $3 smiles, and some platitudes about building a “community”. This isn’t great news if you like the community you already have.

Fortunately, you also have rights. Specifically, the right to be a pain in the (bleep).

If you want to really slow down the new construction, work on making those new homes seem very undesirable for new home buyers. The city already does a good job of this on its own. For example, I avoid Black Diamond whenever possible, since I sometimes like to drive 36 miles an hour (one mph over the limit).

When prospective home buyers show up to look at houses and continually get speeding tickets, they won’t come back.

So if you also want to help with the effort, here are a few strategies you might try:

Negative Public Image

Start a Chamber of Anti-Commerce, whose goal it is to promote all of the bad things about your community, true or not, and make people believe that Black Diamond is probably the worst town in Washington. Create a “Worst of Washington” list and website, with Black Diamond at the top.

Enlist the tree huggers

The environmental impact studies have already been done, but spawning salmon and spotted owls don’t read those impact studies. They move to wherever they want, and we have to stay out of their way.

Help a spotted owl find its way to Black Diamond, and find it a nice tree to live in while there are still some trees standing. I’m not sure what the big deal is about spotted owls anyway; the feathers are tough to pull off, and they’re kind of gristly anyway. Use a slow cooker if you’re really hungry for one.

Obnoxious Road Signs

I was driving through a small town in Nevada recently, and a resident had an old sign in the yard that said, “This is Harry Reid Country”; a reference to the Senate majority leader. Right next door, their neighbor had a larger, newer sign up that read, “Now leaving Harry Reid Country, sorry for the inconvenience”.

There are only a few main roads leading to these developments, so try to convince one of your neighbors to put one in their yard. Something like, “Help destroy this community. Buy a brand new house today!”

Of course, if you’re trying to sell your own house in Black Diamond, these campaigns won’t help you at all. Those of you who aspire to be pains in the (bleep) may want to give everyone else a chance to sell their houses first.

Good luck, Old Black Diamond. Better get out of the way, here comes YarrowBay.