Letters

Leave the Tuckahoe Woods Preserve as is! The land was acquired by eminent domain and is attached to other woods for preservation. Lands are bought and land is donated to the town and village for preservation, and no building! This low-income housing should not be a money-maker for the village or town, the builder, architects, or public officials. Open lands are needed, for the consumption of carbon dioxide by the trees, shrubs and grasses, giving us back oxygen.

Going back years, with the different workforce demographics, you never looked to low-income housing, whether it be for the Polish, African Americans, Irish, etc. — but now, with the influx of an illegal and legal Latino workforce, it is a necessity? That would be discrimination to the past ethnic workforces, because you didn’t supply affordable housing for them. But it is okay now? No, it is wrong.

We are running out of open land, and we are gaining giant, wealthy estate grounds. If you build on this land, you will disturb wetlands, natural filtration and runoff areas — and never mind all the microclimates and their inhabitants.

Also, this land has been disturbed, by the old observation tower foundation and the Kurt Billings bench, by the Village of Southampton. An illegal landfill, two large areas cleared and filled, with debris and who knows what? And now they are stockpiling road grindings, asphalt, at the top of the hill, and all the oils and the pollutants are running down and contaminating the wetlands. If you build there, you would have to clean the dump sites first, at a huge cost.

By adding houses or buildings in these woods, it would create more runoff from the roads and parking lots, septic systems, and buildings. Vehicles leaking oil, gas, transmission oil, brake fluids, antifreeze and hydraulic oils. People will pollute by dumping their waste oil and garbage, and within several years the property will become rundown and neglected.

I am sorry, there must be another solution. Find rundown homes elsewhere, preserve the open spaces. We need less building in every way possible.

No one thinks of the environment, the animals, the macro- and microclimates, and how they play a vital role. This isn’t about making a name for one’s self by proposing this and having one’s name on the housing complex, or making or receiving money.

We had a situation years ago, but no one did anything then — what makes it different now? If you build, you will be doing an injustice and discriminating against the past ethnic workforce that laid the groundwork for today’s society.

Keep the natural lands intact.

Timothy E. McCarthy

Southampton