Opinion/Letters: It's time to replace lawns with trees, native plants to reduce pollution

It's time to replace lawns with trees, native perennials to reduce pollution

We on Cape Cod see the annual summertime harmful algae blooms in our ponds and bays. We realize that melting ice may raise sea levels and flood our beaches and neighborhoods, especially when combined with more frequent and stronger hurricanes. We see the crescendo of apocalyptic fires and floods that fill the nightly newscasts. What do our lawns have to do with these threats to our Cape?

Lawns by themselves do no harm. We need them for baseball, soccer, and football fields, for volleyball and lacrosse games. We see the huge expanses of lawns on the grounds of British palaces and on golf courses and want to imitate that beauty.

Mowing, fertilizing and leaf-blowing our lawns, however, do damage to the Cape and to all of us. Lawnmowers are notorious polluting machines, often worse than an automobile. Leaf blowers kick up dust, make noise, and pollute our shared air with gas fumes and carbon dioxide. Fertilizer runs off our lawns into our shared aquifer, ponds, and bays, and feeds the algae, which then produce dangerous toxins that make our waters unsafe for swimming. Those actions reduce property values for all of us and have a negative impact on our tourist industry.

How can Cape residents address these threats? First, convert your lawn into a garden of trees and native perennial plants. Any remaining lawn can be changed into a natural landscape of groundcover plants, with paths as needed. Give away your mower and leaf blower.

With all the time and money you have saved, put a nice bench in the midst of your gardens for watching the birds. You can hear their songs, now that the loud mowers and leafblowers are not around. Congratulate yourself for doing the right thing for future generations, who will carry the burden of our polluting actions of today. And enjoy our precious Cape Cod.

Steve Waller, Centerville

Bourne employees' public complaints about McCollem unprofessional

I want to give my support to Bourne Town Administrator Marlene McCollem in the wake of the resignation of DPW chief Shawn Patterson. She is doing an excellent job, her annual review backs that up.

I have managed businesses and people for 35 years. Being a supervisor or manager is not a popularity contest. Sell ice cream if you want to be popular.

Anyone who has managed people can see this has been a setup from the get-go. Based on my management experience, this is clearly a situation where the good old boys have been doing it their way for a long time and they don’t like being held accountable. It's interesting how these disgruntled employee complaints about McCollem are from men. I wonder how these two disgruntled managers would handle their direct reports questioning their management style. I wonder what they would do if their direct reports used the local media and social media to air their complaints against their manager. There is a new sheriff in town, they are questioning her management style in a public forum, which is totally unprofessional. In the private sector, they would have been fired a long time ago.

McCollem is responsible for running a $70 million-plus budget. The job comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility. The town administrator and the select board should not be influenced by the good old boys going rogue gathering support from friends using the media to spread rumors. The friends weren’t there and neither was the local media, They don’t know any better than I do what was said or done or why. If employees are allowed to get away with this kind of behavior, it is just a matter of time before the chickens will be ruling the hen house.

We are extremely fortunate to have such a highly qualified town administrator. She deserves the Select Board’s and the town’s support to get the job done. She knows what she is doing.Dave Bergeson, Sagamore Beach

Brown column about 'woke' speech makes sense

Thank you, Lawrence Brown, for your sensible column about “woke” speech, "Liberalism in America is waning. Strategic change is needed to save it." (Aug. 27) I agree with you and am grateful for your brave comments about this issue.

Well said!

Phyllis Koppel, North Chatham

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Opinion: Time to get rid of lawns to reduce water and air pollution