Dear Editor:
To the mayor and council: Please do not tamper with our agricultural land.
You have been elected under a public trust and it is your job to wisely manage our resources with a view to the future and an understanding of what is occurring in the larger world.
The global climate is changing and if you educate yourselves as to the severity of the problem, you will realize it won’t be much longer that we are having our vegetables trucked from Mexico and the U.S. coast. We won’t be receiving poor quality produce from China.
The last year has been the longest and most severe drought in California since recorded history. We have just driven up from the southern U.S. and the lack of water in the rivers and lakes is astonishing. Even Mt. Shasta has no snow on the summit — a mountain that has habitually been covered in snow. The lakes are down more than 100 feet and there is no water in 90 per cent of the rivers. The Colorado in the southern states is very long. The Americans will soon be clamouring for water. Their populations are in such high numbers that just feeding their own people will be enough of a challenge, let alone shipping produce up here.
We cannot rely on outside agencies to provide food in the future. To even think of covering over excellent agricultural land in 2014 is almost comical. What can you be thinking? You can’t eat money.
The overpopulation of the earth is putting more and more strain on natural resources and we can’t pretend we won’t be affected.
The removal of 87 hectares of land from the Agricultural Land Reserve for the Urban Growth Area is one of the most short-sighted, misinformed moves you can take for Summerland’s future.
Please, citizens of Summerland, don’t ignore this vital issue. Stand up for what we have left of our farm land.
We have a real opportunity here because, unlike many communities, we still have some farm land left. We should be engaging all of our citizens’ talents to come up with a vibrant, dynamic economic model that will take advantage of our location and our natural resources.
Please don’t let this mayor and council sell us out. Speak out.
Gerri Davis
Summerland