Dear Editor:
The danger of Accumulative Impacts and Susceptibility to Contaminations of Both Our Environment and our Humanity.
Parsippany is foolishly paving over its last remaining ground water recharge areas.
If, when given “strict scrutiny” we must see Parsippany is running out of “ground water recharge areas” and is now experiencing as in past times a water deficit. Parsippany depend on two private sources to maintain its need for water without which there would not be sufficient supply. At present 65% or less of Parsippany’s water comes from the “Buried Valley Aquifer” which suffers from drawdown in summer months and beyond. With continued loss of Environmentally Sensitive Landscapes loss of ground water recharge only increases along with its susceptibility to contaminations with accumulative effects in water quality and quantity issues, which will surely lead to future costs increases and human health issues.
Our present Administration has no Environmental resource Inventory and does not protect ground water recharge areas; as they are not recognized or considered sensitive in themselves. The recent loss of two major such “sensitive Areas” the waterview landscapes, and the UPS office complex both of which under higher standards would be recognized as such, in future long term sustainability scenarios. Instead we have private economic interest; engineering replacements that cannot and will not give to us what nature has provided at no costs.
Under Parsippany’s form of “Home-Rule” we have somehow been made second class citizens rather than first class, as large corporate landowners subvert and change our master plan; waterviews suspension and elimination of the Steep Slope Protection Ordinance is a good example. Parsippany seems to think that when developers or landowners make bad investments in property, creating hardships for themselves, through desires of market driven speculation developments; not actual needs knowing that for example; steep slopes, forest, wellhead protection areas or ground water recharge areas will be permanently erased or forever degraded by impacts, they have more rights than the citizens of this town. Under the Title of Home Rule therefore Parsippany’s citizens are placed in a second class status over outside corporate forces; the exact opposite of the original intention of so-called Home Rule.
With the denial of science climate change seems not to be part of the decision making process, this is said being water is life and its health directly related to our welfare and safety. Already we are discovering our water has been compromised by many environmental factors; developing “remaining sensitive landscapes like the present one here in question along with the others for private economic interest over public interest is a form of sanctioned business over life and the right to profit at the expense of others. Our government; our home rule continues to ignore the people and science itself. Waterview still remains as the greatest example of this, when overwhelming public opposition with sound just cause and the elected Council vote of No was overturned on in closed session with the use of bully law suit tactics and fears of public housing. Public Housing cannot be built in environmentally sensitive landscapes, nor should any other type of development especially that not actually needed.
We must realize an economy desperate for work cannot allow work for the mere sake of dirty deals and landscapes lost forever while already existing developments stand idle, empty or abandoned. We are destroying the future for others and this we have no right to do.
Parsippany’s further loss and degradation of our ground water recharge, well protection area’s allowing increased impacts; environmentally sensitive areas, lost forever, are a crime against the environment and the future generations. More and more impervious surface spells less and less available clean water and future problems, all this for short term results. This is not a matter of politics but science and beyond reason and doubt what we surely can expect. We are sadly experiencing in our time a war against science and reason in the name of money. We have turned freedom and liberty itself into the prerogative of making money beyond what anyone individual or corporations actually has need for that money in any advancement of the common good.
Nick Homyak
Lake Hiawatha
