To the editor:

Joni Mitchell wrote and sang the original song “Big Yellow Taxi” with lyrics “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot with a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot.”

According to a state report, which cost taxpayers $100,000 (charge us $1.50), the development of a 150-room resort (a pink hotel), a resort spa (a boutique) and 18-hole golf course (a swinging hot spot) along with private lakeshore villas and recreational facilities (tree museum), at Clinton and area lakes (paradise), makes good local governments (leave us the birds and the bees, please).

Why don’t we cash in and commercialize the public’s lakes and natural habitat areas? Our state leadership wants us to. We could have another Branson. I can almost hear those cash registers going cha-ching. We could appoint a puppet committee to tell the voters that the economics would supersede the conservation.

But will our future generations see these pristine areas as we see them now, taking them for granted and not knowing what we have until it’s gone? “The more we exploit nature, the more our options are reduced, until we have only one: to fight for survival,” – Morris K. Udall.

Jeff Bivens,

Lawrence