In response to Josie Wakerobin’s My Turn [“NIMBYism and the Sunrise Neighborhood Coalition” Recorder, Oct. 27], as a founding member of the Sunrise Neighborhood Coalition (SNC), I wish to thank the writer for calling us NIMBYs. Not in my back yard fits with our 33 homes of the 42 homes in our dead end Stone Farm Lane neighborhood who are members of the SNC.

The fact that the writer also said we are in favor of affordable housing is true and then wrote that the forest between our homes and the Connecticut River is struggling, saying climate change, invasive species and blight are to blame. This land was a gravel and sand pit until around 1960 and has regrown as natural forests do since then.

Wakerobin wrote that our neighborhood is mostly 0.3-acre lots with 3-4 bedroom, 2,000 square foot homes and that 11,550 square feet of multi-family condos on Stone Farm Lane will do a better job of housing people.

Back to affordable housing — this is not. The idea to turn our lawns into meadows or native grasses? Our concerns that the development will ruin the “rural character” of our neighborhood. We don’t care about ecology or forest health. Have done zero to address the land. The writer obviously has never met any of us.

Let us be clear. We have repeatedly requested an independent wildlife study be done. The column accuses us of vilifying the Conservation Committee (CC). Well the SNC asked the commission to do an Iindependent study. They passed a motion to do so. This motion was not done. The reason was that it was an “overreach” by the commission, according to someone at the state level. We asked for more information, none was provided. This we challenged at the next meeting with a reading of the appropriate Conservation Commission regulations which state they “specifically” had the right and power to get this independent wildlife study done. No go!

We are asking for the ZBA to please conduct this independent wildlife study. The property is 32 acres along the Connecticut River on the west side of the Turners Falls canal. It abuts our Rocky Mountain city park on the south and Eversource lines on the north. To the north is the Canada Hill city park leading to Factory Hollow. This is the only wildlife corridor connecting Sugarloaf Mountain to the Vermont border. It is less than 900 feet wide here with two, 2 family VHC homes in the middle. This is a unique property and as much as we need housing this is not the right place for building 11,550 square feet of condos with new roads, parking lots for 25/35 cars coming and going and having to be lighted up at night.
Yikes! I’m sure that will not improve our “rural character!” I’m also taking bets that the coyotes will not like it.

I was born in Greenfield and lived at 54 Smith St., GHS Class of 66. I played in this area from 11 to 17, fished, floated rafts, hide and seek, climbed Poet’s Seat and the rock faces.
So yeah! Call me a NIMBY and I say thank you!

Chris Ethier is a proud member of The Sunrise Neighborhood Coalition and lives in Greenfield.