Thursday, January 20, 2005
eco INFO bit~
COUNCIL SCALES BACK WATERSHED STUDY
http://www.citizen-times.com/cache/article/news/73918.shtml
With representatives of the selected firm sitting in the room, Council apologized to them and voted unanimously NOT to accept the staff's recommendation to accept the firm's $284,540 bid to do further work on a Management Plan for the Asheville Watershed. As Council representative Jan Davis is quoted in the AC-T article:
"This thing seems to have taken a whole life of its own that I didn't foresee"
Instead Council instructed staff to go back and use existing materials, and possibly a short-term consultant, to come up with a simpler plan. The impression from individual Council members' comments was for staff to focus on road and bridge maintenance, removal of exotic invasive plants, and emergency protocols.
As Council representative Brownie Newman is quoted in the AC-T article:
"If our goal is clean water, the natural processes that have been at work for thousands of years...do a very good job as long as we don't mess it up."
This action by the Asheville City Council is a major victory for the effort to preserve the Asheville Watershed.
The coalition of environmental and citizen's groups that came together to urge a different management focus will, with your help, continue to offer advice and direction to Council and staff. A Management Plan IS needed, but we want to exclude any possibility of commercial logging in the future. We will continue to update our website with developments and let you know if our united action is needed.
We urge you to thank City Council for its decision.
You may do so with one click by using our website's link: http://www.main.nc.us/wncceib/AWccwaaddresses.htm
Your active participation put this issue on the Council's and the pubic's plate and ensured it got the attention it deserved. Thanks to you, this unique treasure in our community has a much better chance of remaining as it is for future generations!!
