Traverse City Record-Eagle

Your Views

February 13, 2012

Letters to the Editor: 02/13/2012

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Campaign off track

In my opinion, the Leelanau Trail Paving Campaign is off track. The half million dollars it is seeking to raise could be better put to use by helping small farmers feed our local communities. The trail in its natural form keeps our feet in direct contact with the Earth, and keeps our biking speeds slow enough so that we pay some attention to the natural world we are moving through.

Paving is an intensely fossil fuel-based industry with its many ecological and health drawbacks. Also, as a forward thinking region, we might better serve ourselves and the natural world someday by putting a mass transit line of some sort along the existing trail system — and not having to tear up paving first.

"We need not only to stop new paving, but to begin de-paving what should never have been paved in the first place." (This is a quote from Ellen LaConte's book "Life Rules.")

Laura Franseen

Suttons Bay

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