I was truly dismayed this week, driving along Spier Falls Road where it follows the Hudson River at Moreau. There I witnessed road crews scraping the lush moss and beautiful native wildflowers and EVERY LIVING THING off the roadside ledges that steeply rise from the Palmertown Mountain side of the road. Since this mountain range lies within Moreau Lake State Park, I asked a state-parks person to inquire about what was going on. He contacted the county public-works folks and was told "They're doing routine ditch clearing, sticking to the ditch and any hazard trees that could fall into the roadway." Hah! Just look at these next photos of what the ledges look like now compared to how lovely they used to be, and tell me this devastation looks like "routine ditch clearing."
Now:
Now:
Now:
Now:
I do not see a single "hazard tree that could fall into the roadway" on any of these ledges.
4 comments:
Those "after" photos made my stomach do a FLIP -- how could anyone be so insensitive, even if they had "a job to do...?"
if anything, I bet those mosses & other plants were STABILIZING those ledges !!
That is SO frustrating!
Just goes to show that an agency can have too much money and/or need to keep its employees busy.
Besides bordering on sacrilege that is a terrible waste of time and man power. When they changed the road in front of our place a couple of decades ago they sent people out to carefully scrape every scrap of loose slate and dirt off the ledges. We shook our heads, utterly confounded at so much trouble with so little point. Weathering and nature's generous hand with windblown seeds returned those ledges to their previous state in no time. I hope that the same happens with yours.
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