Support Conservation Easement

Editor: We are losing our remaining open space/ natural areas rapidly to development in Chatham. Each year houses are built in areas that do not seem suitable for development or that at least I thought were already protected as conservation areas.

I was on the land bank committee about 15 years ago when we purchased Sylvan Gardens and other small, scattered sites for conservation and open

space protection. We had overwhelming town-wide support for that work. We undertook an analysis of potential undeveloped areas for land bank purchase and found only very small, very scattered tracts of land, none over a few acres. There isn’t much left in Chatham.

We are now confronting the possibility of adding 19 conservation acres of the Goose Pond forest, contiguous to other natural areas, at no cost to the town. Were this land privately owned, we would have been eager to purchase it with land bank funds years ago. We own it now. Please

support the warrant article in the May town meeting to add a conservation easement on this important property.

Robert Zaremba

Chatham