Editor:

 I am very concerned – as every Scarborough citizen should be – for the future of the Scarborough conservation commission. With an obviously pro-development/anti-environment town council and planning board (a board chaired by one of the town’s largest developers!), our conservation commission needs to be strengthened not weakened.  But unfortunately, that is exactly what the Council has done with the new restrictive guidelines it has seen fit to impose. 

 We should all be asking – town council members included – WHY the conservation commission felt they had to go to the state DEP to have their environmental pollution concerns heard. I strongly suspect it’s because their many attempts to alert the town to the Eastern Village development retention pool problems fell on deaf ears – very deaf ears!

 Conservation commission members did not overstep their bounds. They did what they were supposed to do, what they are charged to do – protect the environment of our beautiful town. I thank Chairman Paul Austin and the other commission members who had the courage and strength of character to do their job.

  Town Council Chairman Jeff Messer says it largely boils down to ‘what do we as a community need from a conservation commission?’ The answer to that question is a very strong commission that will proactively protect the sensitive shorelines, waterways, marshlands and woodlands of our environmentally unique town – a commission that has sufficient power and scope to act as an important counterbalance to those who would gladly overdevelop this town and do great harm to the environment in the process.  We have enough foxes watching the hen house as it is. Give us a town conservation commission with more clout not less. 

 Rita M. Breton

 Scarborough