LETTER: Don’t cut down trees by Sportsmen’s Club

Talk about it

To the Editor:

It is really all about quality of life, quality of water and air quality for all our citizens, not just a view or parking for a few.

Now our chainsaw-wielding park department is looking at cutting down a grove of cottonwood trees on Lake Mitchell. There is talk of building another boat ramp and parking lot, as an excuse to take out the cottonwood grove, park and picnic area. We are talking about the cottonwood grove between the Sportsmen’s Club and the east boat ramp. There are 60 cottonwood trees there; some could use a little trimming, but there is no good reason to cut them down.

Why isn’t the City Council and Lake Mitchell Advisory Committee more concerned about the lake water quality? Taking out the trees just a few yards from the shoreline is destructive. They protect the shoreline; the roots filter water on its way to the lake, provide shoreline stabilization, and shade for fish, fishermen, and picnickers in that park. A paved parking lot would create more unfiltered runoff into the lake. The west-end boat ramp has tons of parking if anyone finds the east end one crowded.

Where is the $25,000 SolarBee that operated last summer in the bay? Have we given up on improving water quality, and are we speeding the demise of the lake by destroying trees and replacing them with parking lots?

We are hoping our new mayor and council members will exercise some conservation sense and not destroy this lovely nature area. Wouldn’t money be better spent on doing something upstream to clean the water entering the lake?

The water quality problems on Lake Mitchell arose when the west end of the lake was dredged in the 1980s to remove the cattails that were filtering the waste from Firesteel Creek. More development with more runoff from paved and fertilized “developed” areas have complicated the problem. Today the lake is already green and as full of algae as it usually is by the Fourth of July. I have heard the EPA is interested in runoff problems from the fertilizer plant, too.

Let’s work at preserving wilderness and cleaning our lake and Firesteel Creek. Consider the principles of preservation, conservation and do no harm.

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