Keeping An Open Mind

To the Editor:

One never knows when reflections will cast streaks of sun or dark shade. When I asked Bruce Walczak if he had children, and “Don’t you care about their future drinking water?” Bruce wrote a very kind letter to The Newtown Bee thanking the Conservation Commission and the Inland Wetlands Commission.

 Light is thus beginning to shine on complex and sensitive issues: open space, aquifer protection, watershed recharge.

I hope that our community will follow Bruce Walczak’s lead in keeping an open mind and a grateful heart that members of the Conservation Commission and Inland Wetlands Commission as well as the Pootatuck Watershed Association are putting in many volunteer hours to try to protect these natural resources and to educate the public on how to protect them.

We must let our rain water go back into the ground (to recharge our aquifers) rather than letting it flow away to the ocean. We must let our forests continue as the giant filtering systems that nature intended. We must let our buffer zones next to rivers, ponds, and swamps do their job purifying run-off water. We have to because without these resources there is no need for an education budget, economic development, or even a government. Spending one’s day looking for drinking water that isn’t there is time-consuming.

Sincerely,

Pat Barkman

49 Taunton Lake Road, Newtown                              January 6, 2009