To the editor:
Can you help me confirm or rebut a local rumor?
I have heard that, in a public act of contrition for having not included any public input in the initial Yellowwood Lake road project planning, Indiana Department of Natural Resources Director of Forestry Jack Seifert has decided now that he will publicly embrace and engage our local arts community with a contest to design and paint murals on the two large concrete walls that were needed on the upper Yellowwood Lake watershed to keep the environment from ruining the new multi-million-dollar road. It is also said that the mural competition entries will be judged on their similarity to the original forested landscape previously present on the site.
The art project is apparently part of a Forestry effort to fulfill a mandated federal requirement to restore forests and wetlands (the old Yellowwood road and the creek bed) to mitigate the loss of forest and wetlands taken for new road construction. It also is a subtle nod and a tip of the hat to the tourism that sustains us all. If true, it becomes a real turning point in our struggle to have DNR Forestry recognize Brown County forests as more than merely cash-cows.
I anxiously await your reply. Thank you for your help in sorting out this matter.
Your ever-loyal reader,
Charlie Cole, Brown County
Editor’s note: Brown County commissioner Diana Biddle said last week that she did not know anything about this possible mural. Messages also were left with Seifert and Brown County’s district forester with the DNR; they had not been returned as of deadline. If this really is an opportunity, we will get the word out ASAP.
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