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Letter to the Editor

Here we go again

Jim Newton, Livingston Manor
Posted 7/26/22

To the editor:We’ve been introduced, once again, to a ‘developer’ who imagines a way to turn our wilderness into a millennial wonderland! I refer to the proposal currently under …

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Letter to the Editor

Here we go again

Posted

To the editor:
We’ve been introduced, once again, to a ‘developer’ who imagines a way to turn our wilderness into a millennial wonderland! I refer to the proposal currently under consideration for houses, new roads and a hotel around Fir Brook where, for some reason, the sight of tall trees and free-flowing water just is not what some people want.
50 years ago Richard Nixon signed the Clean Water Act. This was after a river in Ohio had caught fire for the 5th year in a row! Waste from the industrial Iron Belt had made water not only undrinkable but a fire hazzard! This was a bipartisan, no-brainer that finally woke people up about what could happen to our water if left unattended by regulations or laws. Reasonable people realize that the head waters of some of our country’s most important rivers have their ‘first flow’ right here in our Catskill Mountains...Fir Brook being one of them!
V. Paul Reynolds who writes for Maine Outdoors refers to such headwaters as ‘a natural resource of national significance.’ Dare we foul this up?
The area around Claryville is and should remain a place of natural beauty. In the recent report in the Democrat of the Town meeting which was held to discuss this proposal, we were made to feel that locals have some sort of responsibility to create housing and recreation for the people who now are able to ‘work from home’... that without destroying the natural beauty (which is exactly what has attracted these folks in the first place) they’ll either be at a terrible loss, or just somehow not be personally or professionally fulfilled!)
One cannot blame the owner of the property for wanting to cash in on the opportunity. But the public needs to beware of all those popular buzz words like: environmentally friendly and preserve the natural beauty. How is that even possible within the scope of a large scale project like the one on the table?
The fact is that every roof and every driveway created after the trees are cleared for any and all dwellings accelerates runoff and, along with it, carries the pollution created by soaps, lawn fertilizers, pesticides, etc. Don’t be fooled by the coercion of promises.
Collin O’Mara, president of National Wildlife, recently commented: Americans know that protecting all our waters- from tiny trout streams to major rivers to major wetlands - matter to all of us ... because the reality is that we all live downstream.

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