Jan 16, 2018

The Morning Call Inadvertently Enables Deception


The Morning Call continues to inadvertently  support deception by one of its favorite sacred cows, The Wildlands Conservancy.   Last year I provided documentation to the paper demonstrating that the Wildlands was working with South Whitehall Township to ignore the voters referendum saving Wehr's Dam.  The paper continues to ignore this violation of the voter's trust,  and refuses to print my op-ed on the topic.  Yesterday,  the paper had a story about road salt getting into our waterways,  and  once again presents the Wildland Conservancy as the local authority on the problem, and the corresponding solutions to it.  The Wildlands recommends riparian buffers to help filter the salt from the streams.  What the Wildlands fails to divulge is that they get grants to design buffers in the parks, but that the storm sewer systems are piped directly into the streams,  bypassing the buffers.  This is the sort of  omission  and deception regularly used by the Wildlands to justify the grants that they use for these projects.  They are allowed to use a percentage of the grants for administrative purposes,  providing a revenue stream for their salaries.

The consequences of their distortions have been substantial.  Lehigh Parkway lost its beautiful decorative Robin Hood Dam, which was the last WPA construction in the park.  The removal of the Fish Hatchery Dam resulted in a massive trout kill during the next major storm.  They continuously cite current generalized environmental trends, but ignore the specifics related to a particular site.

In fairness to The Morning Call, circumstances help the Wildlands  pass off these deceptions. For instance, the Wehr's Dam controversy which stretched out for two years, was covered by five different string reporters.  There is no regular reporter assigned to the South Whitehall Township meetings. Allentown has City Council members, a park director, and a mayor who are not native Allentonians,  nor are they very familiar with the park system.  Never the less, the paper should be committed to protecting our icons,  before promoting any organization's agenda ahead of our history.

photo of former Robin Hood Dam, demolished by The Wildlands Conservancy

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