Skaneateles and Owasco lakes, gems among Finger Lakes, supply water to several hundred thousand people in the village of Skaneateles, the city of Syracuse and parts of Onondaga county, and Auburn and suburbs in Cayuga county. Skaneateles water is so clean that it requires only minimal treatment before use.
Ann Marie Buerkle has a summer cottage on Skaneateles lake, and she lives in Onondaga Hill. She depends on Skaneateles water at both places, and she enjoys the lake's pristine beauty during vacations. She was raised and her mother still lives in Auburn.
So, Buerkle has a stake in keeping the watersheds she and her family depend upon clean. It is comforting to know our water supply is safe because Ann Marie Buerkle has a stake in it.
On the other hand, Buerkle tells us government oversight and regulations are unnecessarily burdening farmers,making it harder for farms to make a profit. We, instinctively, abhor the thought of government impeding farmers who work so hard for their livelihood and our food supply.
Surely the farmers in our watersheds are good stewards of their land, adjusting their farming practices and self-monitoring the surface water leaving their lands. Certainly they are aware that they could so easily contaminate the drinking water of Skaneateles water consumers and thousands more who depend on Owasco. They would never hazard a catastrophe. Would they?
We in Syracuse and Auburn can be totally confident that nobody needs to keep an eye on these watersheds and these farmers. Can't we?
Buerkle has repeatedly criticized the EPA. She would make more lenient the laws aimed toward farmers. She wants smaller government at any cost and she lets us know it at every "town meeting."
She pronounces on the Magic of the Marketplace! How many times have we heard Ann Marie soothe us with this phrase?
But wait: a 2000 cow dairy farm at the tops of both the Skaneateles and Owasco watersheds, up the hill and not 3 miles from Ann Marie's summer cottage on Skaneateles lake, is leaking manure runoff into nearby streams and onward to both lakes, according to yesterday's Syracuse Post-Standard. [Ann Marie Buerkle's camp on Skaneateles is near the upper right corner in the satellite image; Twin Birch Farms on Lacy and Benson roads is at the lower left.]
Let us hear from you, Ann Marie Buerkle. How do you reconcile your conflicting loyalties? Can we ever really trust you to protect our precious drinking water?
Then, if you do decide to justify protecting these water sources against certain farming practices, then how can you still support horizontal hydrofracking, potentially far more dangerous, and the damage more permanent, in your district or any district?
