Anti-Waterview Development Fight About Health, Safety and Life, Says Resident

In the upcoming municipal election, there is one issue that is not political: Waterview rezoning.

This is an American landscape issue which involves not only quality of life in Parsippany but biodiversity of life. and most of all, clean and safe water.

If you investigate, you will see Parsippany has problems with its aquifers and water supplies, much of it coming from overdevelopment. This information can be found in the Highlands Coalition and Rutgers University Water Resource Studies. 

Mayor James Barberio and the Planning Board, when allowing developer RD Realty to go forward with the outrageous proposal [to build a retail/residential complex consisting of Whole Foods Market, a big box retailer and a townhouse community], have alienated many of the citizens.

This crisis of environmental demise and disregard for the once beautiful and Arcadian sense of place here in Parsippany have gone too far. We can no longer have "pride in Parsippany" and side with a developer that cares less for this area other than the "Whole Foods" market, which has plenty of available vacant space to occupy.

How can Whole Foods not be concerned that its franchise will be part of this American landscape demise? Issues like drinking water and future water supply are beyond any political platform. They involve our basic humanity and its sense of place in balance with elements of life itself.

It appears providing short-time work for some contractors and a developer that has money sources from who knows where, are being allowed to take precedence over our community. It is as if the Planning Board has no sense of time or place as far as what is happening to the planet and what already has happened in Parsippany.

Parsippany has reached its absolute limit with this type of development. There is no need or desire for such a devastating rezoning measure. It only serves an odious contingent of ignorance regarding the present loss of land ethic in our nation. It is merely short term economic stimulus, which will only benefit certain individuals at the expense of the integrity of our sense of community and place. 

Not one member of the Planning Board has any expertise in any ecological or environmental sciences, nor do they most likely believe despite evidence that our very planet has changed. Parsippany is already heavily trashed and littered, its sewer systems are antiquated as far as preventing runoff from storm waters. Our streets alone contribute to the millions of plastic debris that infect not only our town, but the rivers surrounding us from the Rockaway to the Passaic and to the Jersey shore. The Troy Brook ecosystem and the mature upland forest that exists on the Waterview property do more harm to us already than can be imagined.

If the economy can be used as an excuse to develop our landscapes for stimulus, we have truly lost our country. One who does not respect the land or realize when enough is enough is not an American, but a mercenary.

No land, no people. It is bad enough, please let's not make it worse.

Don't rezone Waterview.    

Nick Homyak
Lake Hiawatha