Protect our wetlands, protect our groundwater
To the editor:
I attended the April 17 Lee County Board of County Commissioners meeting, when they voted 3-1 to move the lime-rock mining amendments forward.
Mr. Pendergrass’s recent letter to editor on wetlands is not credible.
At the BOCC meeting, Cecil Pendergrass was heartless when he told a passionate citizen who wanted to protect the environment; if you don’t like it here, move.
It is nice to say you are protecting the well being of the community, but lime-rock mining and development of filled wetlands will have a negative impact on the quality of life and the water we drink. This is not compatible with residents nearby.
Lee County commissioners must not push the lime-rock amendments forward.
In Mr. Pendergrass’s recent letter, “This is my home: Setting the record straight on impact wetlands in Lee County,” in regards to water quality, “‘Do any of these changes affect our water quality within our shorelines?’ Again, the immediate answer was no.”
I do not believe his response.
I do not believe he is sincere in protecting our environment.
This is my home, too!
Wetlands and lime-rock are nature’s water filters.
Development of former wetlands and increased lime-rock mining will impact water quality.
Quoting Rachel Carson from her book: “Silent Spring,”
“Rain, falling on the land, settles down through pores and cracks in soil and rock, penetrating deeper and deeper until eventually it reaches a zone where all the pores of the rock are filled with water, a dark subsurface sea, rising under hills, sinking beneath valleys. This groundwater is always on the move, sometimes at a pace so slow that it travels no more than 50 feet a year, sometimes rapidly, by comparison, so that it moves nearly a tenth a mile in a day. It travels by unseen waterways until here and there it comes to the surface as a spring, or perhaps it is tapped to feed a well. But mostly it contributes to streams and so to rivers. Except for what enters streams directly as rain or surface runoff, all the running water of the earth’s surface was at one time groundwater. And so, in a very real and frightening sense, pollution of the groundwater is pollution of water everywhere.”
We all rely on ground water as our source of drinking water in Southwest Florida.
Protect it!
Kathy Dobash
Fort Myers