Editorial

Date: June 9, 2006

Groundwater at stake in PDR planning

As a graduate student in the Urban Planning program at UWM, I strongly support the county purchase of development rights (PDR) program. There are many reasons to preserve our agriculture land, but the biggest and least talked about reason is groundwater.

As development continues in Washington County, our limited ground water resource is further depleted. The farmland and open space that helped recharge the groundwater reserve is gone.

We need to preserve the areas we have now to reduce further water issues. We only need to look to Waukesha County to recognize that if we don’t do something now to protect our groundwater, we may be forced to find an expensive alternative in the future. Just think about what that might cost us.

Adam Sayre, West Bend