Starting a new year, hopefully not repeating sins of the past

I suppose the desire to maintain Wellington Hills Park - as a park - can be seen simply as a NIMBY effort to save a 100-acre park.

But it is much more than that.

We know our climate is changing and the news is filled with stories of global catastrophes - lots of people suffering from environmental dangers.  Unprecedented droughts and flooding, mass migrations in Africa, water shortages almost everywhere, famine and crop losses.

So we ask ourselves - what can we do to be better citizens of our Country and the planet?

Personally, I think the proposed plans from the County and School District for Wellington Hills Park are counter to the needs of people, the environment and the planet. Haven't we learned from decades of bad urban planning the necessity of preserving green spaces?

  

Destroying a green place and replacing it with asphalt and concrete, creating more traffic snarl - while diminishing rural space are so retro... throwbacks to post World War II development that resulted in the boom in suburban track homes and the destruction of once stable neighborhoods … and the megaphoned distorted concept - 'development is good, hang the future'.

Wellington Hills Park is our domino. If we can keep it as a park - preventing one domino from tumbling into unrestrained development ... we will have done something special.

Yes, on a global scale, it may be a small thing towards countering the destructiveness of climate change ... but minimizing the cascade of negative environmental occurrences has to begin somewhere - why not here?

We save a green place ... we keep trees which give us breathable atmosphere ... we keep natural soil for rain water to filter through for replenishing aquifers ... we allow natural habitats for a myriad of God's creatures - aquatic, bird and mammal ... and we keep some balance in the needs of humans to connect with the natural world.

Sports complexes? Schools? Yes, these things are good and part of social orderliness ... and if we plan things correctly they would be built in appropriate locations and not "just because" there is cheap land in a rural location.