August 25, 2025, Planning Board Special Meeting Transcript - WEHI

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 95 that over my career, over 40 years, every single piece of property that we looked at up for preservation was in prior ownership and ultimately, it always depends on the seller, but that's what the game is about. So these -- oh, sorry. Wrong slides for you. I am going to skip right through it. We all know about climate change. Just biodiversity, you heard about that. People and nature, we haven't heard much about that. We're are losing connection to nature and that's a major challenge for humanity. Here you see available lands, all of the lands in pink or purplish color are lands that are remaining available for preservation. All right. Here's the thing, we have talked a little bit about this. But this property provides the essential ecosystem services to the community. It protects the drinking water supplies. Not just to West Orange but to 22,000 people in Essex Fells who depend on that drinking water and further down into the Caldwell's and down to the New Jersey American Water Supply. So that's an incredibly important piece of information that this 120 acres is providing. Improving air quality by sucking up and sequestering them.