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Guest editorial: When it comes to growth, enough is enough

Vincent Crestone
Summit Park

As we watch a series of torrent fires burn across the west ravaging acres of land and setting innocent structures ablaze containing the lives and memories of those who once inhabited them, we have to look no further than our own rivers and lakes to see new islands of terrain once covered by water and rivers cubic feet per second flows impacted by lack of rain and snow.

Yet as we watch natural forests give way to heavy equipment, used to demolish trees and manipulate mountainsides, think Woodward, Quarry Junction, Woodside, Rt 248 corridor along I-40, a clear pattern emerges of how money and a two party political system are quickly eschewing layers of the very environment we live in. One party, along with developers and companies like Vail Resorts, openly flaunt and tout their views of global warming as that of a fiction novel, and beg the citizens to shell out more money to support their environmental destroying endeavors while they enjoy huge tax breaks thanks to the hands of those same supporting citizens. The other party and its supporters along with environmental organizations present concrete evidence to stop the mass destruction of land and natural resources as it taxes infrastructure, water supplies, but asks its supporters to exercise responsibility in protecting the canvass we live in.

If we remove ourselves individually from political orientation, are we really so tunnel visioned by the very fact this town and county continue to grow in unprecedented form filling the pockets of realtors, developers, politicians and big business whom directly contribute year after year to this natural environmental reduction debacle? Do we really need to continue draining our water system and natural resources to accommodate more people? Or would we be better served to put the brakes on and salvage some of what this town has left in terms of landscape? Is there really a need to pass more bonds and raise taxes, to fund entities and ideas geared to wreaking havoc on an already fragile environment? And what about our schools getting overcrowded from the influx of people, then having the city and county beg residents for more money?



No matter one’s stance on the issue of growth and environment, one thing’s for sure. If locally, we keep up this wild west spending and development, we will surely find ourselves like many of the ocean’s underwater species. Depleted beyond the point of numbers and return.

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