JIM SCARCELLA
OCEAN BREEZE

The following was addressed to Mayor Bill de Blasio:

We are writing to express concern about the impending loss of Mount Manresa to (over-)development.

The Manresa site is a sacred place. When I was young, there were festivals and religious ceremonies on the grounds, with music, refreshments and dancing.

The trees on the site are irreplaceable. They filter out microscopic pollutants of auto emissions from traffic on the Staten Island Expressway.

The tress also remove mast amounts of excess storm water that would otherwise make the service road and Fingerboard Road impassable.

We are requesting an emergency reconvention of the Staten Island Growth Management Task Force, wherein our lawmakers and concerned citizens find a way to reimburse the developer for the purchase of the property, and have the Manresa property become a public/private park.

This site is too important to be bulldozed and replaced with 60 townhouses, 150 cars and SUVs, with waste water to flow to an already overburdened sewage treatment plant in Port Richmond, and an increase in asthma of citizens of Rosebank adjacent neighborhoods.

Thank you for working on a solution to getting Mount Manresa preserved.

[The writer is a trustee with the Natural Resources Protective Association.]