May 1, 2008
Uncommon Sense
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Somebody's ideas are all wet
There’s an unwritten rule around here that the left and right side columnists are not supposed to directly attack each other. I think the origin of that guideline was the belief that readers would quickly get bored with endless back-and-forth sniping — an idea that seems to have eluded the news media in their coverage of the Democratic presidential campaign. I’m certainly not going to break with tradition, but I will say that somebody recently wrote some pretty outrageous things on this page that I simply cannot allow to go unanswered.
For instance, on April 3, somebody was quite enthusiastic in encouraging Alexandra Manbeck to pursue an appeal of the judge’s dismissal of her lawsuit against the town’s wetlands ordinance. Somebody even said the loss was “happily, only the first round in the ongoing battle being waged over Lewisboro’s land use.” Happily? Really? Are Lewisboro’s taxpayers supposed to be happy over the prospect of a continuing, expensive legal battle — especially when the decision that was handed down made it quite clear that it was not based on some technicality or halfhearted conclusion, but on none of the allegations made in the various parts of the suit having any merit whatsoever?
Somebody also referred to the decision as the Lewisboro town government’s “courtroom victory over homeowners,” thereby furthering the myth that town government and homeowners are at war. Certainly, a small group of homeowners declared war when they filed the suit, but I seriously doubt that most people believe the Lewisboro town government’s intent when it instituted the wetlands regulations was to declare war on homeowners. In fact, the government’s intent was to protect homeowners by doing everything possible to ensure a clean, uncontaminated water supply. Surely, this is a battle in which everybody ought to be on the same side — but apparently that’s not the case.
On April 17, somebody continued this argument by ridiculing the entire regulatory process as nothing more than the silly, ham-handed efforts of clueless bureaucrats to enforce absurd regulations put in place by environmental extremists. What makes them “extremists” is apparently the fact that the threat to public safety posed by disruption and destruction of the natural ecosystem is perceived as a “remote risk.” Encouraging people to understand that degradation of the water supply — much like degradation of the planet’s atmosphere and all the other elements tied to it — is the cumulative result of many seemingly inconsequential actions is equated with regarding Lewisboro’s homeowners as “uneducated simpletons.”
The only extremism evident here is the attempt to pit homeowners against their own government, by framing this dispute in such polarizing terms. It’s something the right wing has been engaged in for decades, directly traceable to Ronald Reagan’s “We must not look to government to solve our problems. Government is the problem.” (Republicans ever since have done their best to ensure that people hate government, by trying to make it so totally incompetent it really can’t solve any problems.) But most people in Lewisboro recognize this for the blather it is. The consensus in this town has long been that environmental protection is needed, desirable and actually good for property values. Contrary to somebody’s assertion that the Republicans lost last year’s election because they “cynically dropped” the issue of homeowner rights, they actually lost because people realized there was “no there, there.” The whole issue was trumped up in the first place.
Town Supervisor Edward Brancati’s remark that the current Planning Board and wetlands inspector are willing to work with homeowners is not, as was claimed, a sidestep of the issue; it hits it right on the head. There were unquestionably personality and perception problems that were allowed to escalate, and became the focus of a small group that was itching for a fight. But the essential truths were and are the same: that town wetlands regulations are just that — regulations, not prohibitions — and in the vast majority of cases, the permit process is a simple one. The regulations are needed, just as building codes and fire codes are needed, not because anybody has “died in the wetlands” but because without them, the wetlands will surely die. And with them will go the town as we know it, homeowners and bureaucrats alike.
Consider that the same people who view such dire predictions as extreme, alarmist nonsense also tend to still dispute scientific findings about man’s role in climate change — and even the reality of global warming, itself, is something they have only reluctantly, and recently, come to accept. If impatience with such attitudes makes me an extreme zealot — and if believing that homeowners do not have a natural “right” to do whatever they like, wherever they like, and that having nobody overseeing the process could have serious consequences for all the rest of us — then I am guilty as charged. Even if somebody didn’t say that.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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