I want to thank Bob Silbernagel and Mike Wiggins for the well-written column and articles about the efforts to save the Old Spanish Trail. As accurately reported, Orchard Mesa Neighbors in Action has done some excellent research — and continues to do so — to gather and interpret existing conservation easements.

I found interesting the response by Jess Wallace, the East Slope engineer for the development that threatens important public easements of the trail. He fails to disclose a solution to the conundrum of a piece of property that does not have an adequate access plan to satisfy city requirements. But he does launch the predictable and oh-so-tiring defense of “same old stuff,” attempting to dismiss concerns about the Trail as a NIMBY-type of argument.

In some ways he’s right. The eight miles of Old Spanish Trail are in somebody’s backyard: Mesa County’s, to be exact. Folks who live on Patterson, on Seventh Street, in Palisade, in Fruita, are as concerned as folks on Orchard Mesa about this historic area. This is why we are simply asking the city of Grand Junction to postpone any decisions regarding any proposed developments adjacent to the trail until research is concluded and informed decisions can be made. We know that many easements already exist and are well-documented; within a few weeks we hope other remaining “missing pieces” will be discovered.

Please visit omneighbors.com for more information.

VICKI FELMLEE
Grand Junction

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 9:38 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.