It's a hard truth that some people still don't get: We cannot go on as we have been doing. We cannot continue to build, pave, destroy natural habitats and deplete aquifers in the name of growth, development and profit, because it's destroying the very fabric of the Earth on which we depend for life.

The Winston Farm is a tiny corner of the Earth, but it's a perfect microcosm of the challenge that we all face. The developers want their profit, the Town Board its potential tax base. It's the American Way! But we all have to be honest: growth and profit at what cost?

Saugerties is already choking on traffic. Its aquifers are strained and always in danger of becoming contaminated. People need housing while houses stand empty, because it's not profitable to rehab them.

Now we are faced with a proposal to build 133 single-family homes, 115 townhouses, 800 condo/apartment units, a campground with 157 cabins and RV sites, 425,000 square feet of commercial retail space, a 150-room hotel, a conference center with 300 more hotel rooms, a 5,000-person amphitheater, and 375,000 square feet of lab or light-industrial space on what is now pristine woodland and open fields.

In other words, another whole town. Want to destroy the quality of life in Saugerties? This will do it.

There is already plenty of land in Saugerties zoned for commercial development and potentially available for housing projects. We already have a large conference hotel in the village. We don't need a single inch of Winston Farm to have those things.

I read that last year the Open Space Institute offered $10 million to purchase the property to build a state park. That would have been a $6 million profit over what it cost the developers to purchase it, but that wasn't enough for them.

What a relief it would be, to have that precious place finally protected as a state park!

I ask the Town Board to refuse this proposed catastrophic overdevelopment, for the good of the whole region and all the life that it holds.

Susan J. Murphy

Saugerties