PLANT TREES, GET DUMB

I've been misquoted by newspapers before, but never with such mind-bending effect as in last week's Worcester County Times in a story about a public meeting to address flooding problems in Berlin.

As the meeting centered around ways that individual home owners could help alleviate the flooding in their yards, I made the offhand comment that one oak tree pulls some 1,000 gallons of water a day out of the ground and that planting trees could help slow down water flows. Plus, I said, "The more you plant the less you mow."

But the newspaper has me saying: "The more you plant the less you know."

Gardeners, farmers and tree planters everywhere, beware! There is a new disease stalking the land--Planters' Dementia. Heck, I've planted so many trees it's a wonder I still know my own name.

My friends have been having fun with this--"Now we know why you're so dumb"--is typical, but after the laughter everyone wonders how this made it into the paper.

I called the editor, who was apologetic, but who I could tell also thought it rather funny. He offered to print a correction, but I declined. They'd probably get that wrong too, I said, and besides, nobody reads a story about flooding in Berlin anyway.

Later the writer called. She was embarrassed and apologetic. I was curious. How did this happen? Well, it turns out that she had "knows" instead of "mows" in her notes and she just wrote it that way.

The fact that it doesn't make much sense apparently never dawned on her.

Of course, my other comments about the flooding in Berlin never were mentioned, and that was the reason I had attended. I've been trying to tell whomever would listen that the main reason there is flooding in Henry's Mill and Henry's Green subdivisions is fairly simple--some of the homes were approved to be built in the flood plain. Am I the only one who gets this?

Build in flood plain, homes will flood. Duh. What part of this is difficult to understand?

In addition, most of these subdivisions are platted on hydric (wetland) soils, that is, soils with a high water table that is often right to the surface during the rainy season.

Wetland soils are wet land. Duh.

I also mentioned that the land that was rezoned for an industrial park contains wetland soils and a flood plain. Nobody commented. I guess town officials will just wait until after buildings go in and people complain about flooding. Then they'll scream bloody murder and order another expensive study by the Corps of Engineers.

By the way, when the current mayor was running for office on a platform of fixing flooding problems, I had been working on a nearby project and had discovered the problems with the other subdivisions. I called him and explained the situation. I wasn't playing the blame game. I thought he'd be excited to know such problems could be avoided in the future. He listened but then said it didn't matter because he was friends with one of the developers and he didn't want to embarrass him.

Politics and the environment. So it goes.