It is not too late to speak out about the Town of Newburgh’s Comprehensive Plan.

This blueprint for town growth is now being updated from its last version in 2005, and the Town Board and Planning Board seek your comments on revising the Town’s goals.

Let’s take them at their word and offer our suggestions.

Town officials have promised us three public hearings and there’s been two. No date yet for number three, but traffic and road congestion was a major topic at the last meeting.

Traffic is like water; if you block a stream it finds another route and will flow wherever. More intense land development means more traffic and that leads to more air pollution, wasted travel time, short cuts through residential neighborhoods, dangerous speeds, nervous drivers, more accidents, higher insurance rates, hiring more police. More commercial development, like warehouses, leads to more truck traffic, slowing everything down, increasing noise and air pollution, using local roads, causing more accidents. Right now, NYS DOT Region 8 estimates there are 10,000 trucks per day traveling on I 84 in Orange County.

Then think about climate change, with floods, unusual storms, sea level rise, drought and fire. How will the revised plan deal with that? We might need more consultants and other experts to develop emergency plans.

And if residential building keeps increasing, the town will upgrade our utilities, using public money and raising our taxes. Under discussion now is a new tap on the Delaware aqueduct, new sewer lines, a new water treatment plant, possibly a new sewage treatment plant.

All of these projects intensify development, as would a rebuilt Danskammer power plant, running on fracked gas. Thankfully, that project is now on pause, denied permits because of a NYS law called the CLCPA, which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, slowing down climate change.

My message to town officials: we need to calm down our frantic growth.

I hope you’ve decided to speak up on the Comprehensive plan revision. You can wait for the next meeting or comment now. The 2005 plan is on the TON website. Click ‘government’ and you can read it. You will also see an option that takes your comments.

If you do this, we have nothing to lose.