To the Editor:

A message for the Newtown Planning and Zoning Commission — and for those planning to attend a public hearing scheduled for April 7 at the Municipal Center addressing a proposed 76-truck terminal and 345,000 sq ft warehouse near residential neighborhoods.

What is zoning and urban planning?

[Canada’s McGill School of Urban Planning states,] “Today, urban planning can be described as a technical and political process concerned with the welfare of people, control of the use of land, design of the urban environment including transportation and communication networks, and protection and enhancement of the natural environment.”

Please notice that people come first.

[According to a 2001 report from American Journal of Public Health,] “In its most basic form, zoning separates land areas into broad categories of land use — for example, residential, commercial, and industrial — with the assumption that separation of land use promotes the public health and welfare of the population.”

Zoning 101 continues, to quote this 2001 journal reference entitled “Zoning, Equity, and Public Health”:

“Industrial areas generally carry a higher environmental burden than do purely residential neighborhoods in terms of pollution impacts and risks. Some of these burdens include adverse air quality, noise, traffic safety, congestion, and vibrations from heavy truck traffic; use and storage of hazardous materials; emission of hazardous and toxic substances, which enter the air, soil, and water; illegal dumping of hazardous materials; proliferation of waste handling facilities; and poor enforcement of environmental regulations and inadequate response to environmental complaints.

“These burdens all contribute to the undesirable and unhealthy living conditions in industrial areas. Balancing economic development, community sustainability, and environmental and health conditions in industrial areas is a tremendous undertaking that will require planners, public health professionals, and experts from many other disciplines to work together. The public health community has been largely absent from or made marginal in these discussions.”

Please, Newtown P&Z Commission, zone wisely applying these principles of urban planning. Listen to urban planners. Zone in the interest of tranquil Newtown residential neighborhoods, ones with young and old and everyone in between, separating residential, industrial, and commercial areas, especially the first two.

Do it for beautiful Newtown. It’s just pure and simple Zoning 101! Reject the Wharton Warehouse Proposal on April 7, 7 pm at the Municipal Center, 3 Primrose Street.

Ray Bigelis

Newtown