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
POST ABOVE REPRINTED FROM JANUARY OF 2018
ADDENDUM MARCH 17, 2020: A month has passed since I was told by another publisher of The Morning Call that he would look into my documented allegation that the Wildlands Conservancy was actively conspiring to subvert the Wehr's Dam Referendum, and demolish the dam. The miniature Robin Hood Dam pictured above was demolished by the Wildlands Conservancy, its rubble piled around the stone bridge piers, which degraded the esthetics of the bridge. Before, during and after, the Morning Call never wrote a word on that destruction....They remain missing in action once again, as another historic icon of the valley is threatened.
Are you surprised Mike? Is there any there, there at the Morning Call anymore? Who down there knows Allentown from Des Moines ? I seriously doubt it. So expecting them to give a rats ass about a damn is at best wishful thinking. Expecting these same people to think the good and holy people of the Wildlands Conservancy would ever do anything nefarious is just beyond their comprehension. After all, how could good people ever do anything bad?
ReplyDeleteSadly this is what we are dealing with, this is the level of their ignorance, this is the extent their indifference. This does make them lousy journalists but we may assume they are oblivious to this as well.