MATURE FOREST MORE IMPORTANT THAN HOUSES
The Naperville City Council will soon have the opportunity to preserve 32 acres of mature forest on 75th Street, or allow local developer Pulte Homes to rip it apart to build 94 duplexes in its proposed Naperville Ridge subdivision.
I say, let the mature forest live. Taxpayers have already paid for it when the land was purchased by the DuPage Water Commission.
A recent statistically valid city survey verified that there is a greater than 90% appreciation of the “natural environment” by residents who cite it as a key contributor to the city’s quality of life.
This forest on a glacial ridge has hundreds of keystone oak trees, millions of miles of integrated soil structures and verdant native vegetation, all of which is vastly more complex and superior to pipes, wires and concrete buried in dead property where all the life of said forest has been chomped and scraped off by drooling bulldozers.
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The appointed DuPage Water Commission and the elected representatives of DuPage County, Forest Preserve District of DuPage County and city of Naperville are the deciders; our local team for community safety and health. I urge them to listen to their constituents and data. Fund mental health programs and respect Mother Nature, who offers, free of charge, wondrous spaces for our well-being.
Naperville Ridge is not a NIMBY — Not In My Back Yard — issue. It is a NIOBY issue, Not In Our Back Yard. The forest is all of ours. Approve developments that invigorate already degraded land, like Country Lakes, which turned an abandoned, degraded golf course into a healthy subdivision, and Naper Commons, which turned an overgrown, compacted parking lot into another healthy subdivision.
Naperville Ridge dangles big money and asks permission to destroy a mature, integrated, healthy forest.
Do not do it.
Mary Lou Wehrli, Naperville
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