On Sat, Mar 27, 2004 at 09:09:38AM -0600, Todd Miller wrote: > I've encountered activist regulators who deliberately sandbag on issuing permits > for completely legal projects simply because they're anti-development. Please allow me to correct what I perceive as a mis-wording: they're not "anti-developemnt". They're "anti-destruction", because that's what SOME [1] so-called "developers" do. In fact, one group of them is doing it RIGHT NOW: as I'm typing this on a Saturday afternoon, I can hear the chainsaws roaring on the hillside across the way. They're clear-cutting a beautiful wooded ridge that slopes down to the Gunpowder River, less than a mile from where it flows into Loch Raven Reservoir. Soon the tiny little brook that flows off the north slope it will carry all kinds of runoff into the river. I know this because I paddle by a similar location 1.5 miles north all the time, and what used to be clear, sweet water in that micro-stream is now stinky -- and carries the unmistakable smell of the lawn chemicals which are constantly sprayed up on the lawns up on *that* hillside -- already clear-cut/built on/paved/landscaped/etc. Why is this happening? Because Toll Brothers has decided to destroy this beautiful place, in an sensitive watershed (which oh-by-the-way supplies half the drinking water for Baltimore city and county) and put up 40 $750K houses. Never mind that we have plenty of actually-affordable housing here, and that low-cost housing is desperately needed a mere 10 miles away in the city. Never mind that our schools are already full. Never mind that our winding little country roads aren't up to carrying more traffic than they already do. Never mind that during the drought of 2002 nearby wells ran dry and they're planning on drilling 40 more right in the same area. Never mind that at the "community input meeting" that the room was packed to overflowing, standing-room-only, with a crowd spilling into the hallway and even outside the building -- a crowd that spoke UNAMINOUSLY against this. Nope, Toll Brothers, the land-rapers, the destroyers, the greedy pigs, and their $300/hour lawyers managed to ram this through. Of *course* they did: they're really quite good at it. Use Google and see. They're not a 2-billion-dollar company because they play nice; they're a $2B company because they steamroller any opposition. (They're also not a $2B company because they build low-cost housing: not nearly enough profit in that, you see. Whereas putting up shoddily-built $750K houses is immmensely lucrative.) See, as one resource of many: http://www.firemountain.net/sparks.html which has links to some interesting material, including an American Rivers/NRDC report documenting the relationship between sprawl and drought -- and we had the worst one in recorded history here the year before last. Note also the fascinating articles from the Boston Globe and Washington Post. And in a final, vicious insult to the community, do you know what they're going to call this abomination? "The Sanctuary" Soon they will be done, and they will be gone, their pockets bulging with their dirty money, off to rape the next community (or maybe ours again). We will be stuck with the loss of a beautiful place, the overcrowded schools, the wells that go dry, the too-busy roads, and, of course, the bill for all this. So I don't really have a problem with "activist regulators": I view them as a necessary line of defense against SOME developers -- the ones who are poster children for unlimited corporate greed and environmental destruction. They are our enemies. They are the enemies of everyone who values the planet and wants to take a stand against its wanton destruction -- doubly so when its ONLY rationale is to satiate raw greed that can, in reality, never be satiated. ---Rsk [1] I said "some" because some developers actually do good things, like revitalizing inner city business and housing areas, and so on. They are to applauded for doing with land and buildings what should be done with everything possible: reuse/recycle. One local developer, in fact, is trying to turn a disused military site into affordable housing combine with basic shops (grocery, etc.) and build a little community that's at least partially self-contained. That's a terrific idea, and again, I applaud them for it. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sun Mar 28 2004 - 07:04:33 PST
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