Your April 26 editorial “State should pay its fair share on preservation act” was good but, to us, incomplete.
The state also needs to enact the Public Lands Preservation Act to protect the open space acquired and maintained with taxpayer money, including those Community Preservation Act funds. There is not much point in spending the money on open space if the land is subsequently converted to a building site for some private or public project.
Protecting our open spaces is particularly important now as we seek to find ways to adapt to climate change, which is causing more violent storms. Nothing does a better job of mitigating the effects of these storms and their flooding than natural spaces that soak up water, conducting it to aquifers or releasing it into streams later.
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The Public Lands Preservation Act would require that for any change in use or transfer of lands protected under Article 97 of the Massachusetts Constitution (which includes most public open space land) there be analysis of alternatives, adequate public notice, and replacement with comparable open space land.
Judy Lehrer Jacobs
Executive director
Friends of the Blue Hills
Milton
Ron Morin
Executive director
Friends of the Middlesex Fells
Melrose