Putnam County’s Efforts to Improve Lakes, Waterways is an Outrage
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
They say you can live for months with no food, but can you cannot survive a week without water. Water is the key to life.
Nowhere is that truer than in Putnam County. Waterways are one-third of our county acreage. Many of our population centers and homes are built around lakes. Without clean water our property values will plummet and so will our tax base.
Under state law, the county is responsible for keeping our local waterways clean, but shockingly they have taken little responsibility to do so. We need to look no further than what happened when the county got infrastructure funds from the federal government. Instead of helping our waterways, they gave $400,000 to our golf courses and then divided the rest among towns to do as they please.
Water problems are growing all over our state. But no county in the state has more lake closings from dangerous toxic algae blooms than Putnam. And the problem keeps getting worse. Yet there is no county plan offered to clean up our lakes and the streams that feed them. The county is like Nero, who famously fiddled while Rome burned!
It is not surprising, therefore, that the state government is becoming alarmed with local inaction and has passed legislation to regulate and fund action to clean streams feeding lakes, here and across New York. Local politicians, however, have suddenly decided that this help from the state could impinge on their ability to award more development contracts (a key source of power in politics).
Continuing their do-nothing attitude, they now want to pass legislation at an upcoming county legislature meeting on Sept. 6, nullifying this state aid. As a resident of one of the many lake-based communities in Putnam, I am outraged by this attempt at maintaining power at the expense of our community and county.
If the county legislators want authority in this matter, they have to show they are ready and able to protect our waterways. So far, they have shown they simply cannot be trusted with this critical life-and-death responsibility.
Michael Zagarell
Lake Peekskill
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