Why have a plan at all?

     Commissioner David Roush wants to remove any and all references in a master plan to saving streams, wetlands, woods, animal habitats. He says there's nothing in the code that defines benefits enough to tie the hands of local government -- make that read development and mining interests -- with a lot of silly rules about clean water and air.
     This kind of thinking is what made him so popular with Union Bridger area residents when he was running the Lehigh Cement plant over there, and with environmentalists in general.
     Silly me, I thought he'd be a better choice for Westminster District than Michelle Jefferson, or even Doug Mathias, the only Democrat to run for the post. Big problem with Mathias was that he was so desperate to get some Republicans to vote for him that he did a Mitt Romney and started saying stupid things to appeal to the Right.
     Roush didn't say much at all, in public, which is in keeping with his style while he was on the county economic development commission.
     He seemed a good fit on the EDC: his voice was a counterbalance to the sometime over-reaching and strident rhetoric of the more zealous voices at the other end of the spectrum. But he had plenty to say off the record, in the audience that he thought would agree with him (same tactic that backfired on Romney). While a member of the EDC, Roush let it be known among insiders that he disapproved of any attempt in a master plan to preserve the homes of people in the Mount Airy area where there was a proposal to zone for industrial development.
     You have to be tougher than that if you want to zone for business, was his position -- then. Now, it's property rights, so long as you are the landlord owner of the site under consideration. You can bet that in his eyes, Lehigh's property rights trump the property rights of any homeowners or farmers between a mine and the Union Bridge plant.
     Now the commissioners are reviewing the master plan and it would appear -- no surprise -- that what they're after is essentially no plan at all. Just a laissez-faire, open season for a  big money approach to making more money.
      Clean water comes in plastic bottles, and clean air from air conditioning and household filters, right?