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Exercises

It's Our World, Too!

by Philip Hoose

    One afternoon in late August, Andrew Holleman's mother stood at the table reading a letter that had just come in the mail. She seemed upset. "What is it, Mom?" he asked. Shaking her head, she passed it to Andrew.

    Andrew's eyes narrowed. It was from a company whose president was announcing that he wanted to develop the private land next to Andrew's yard. The developer wanted to build 180 condominium units.

    Andrew was stunned. He had loved and studied and explored that land ever since he could remember. Each summer, he pulled bass from the stream that ran through it. Every winter, he played hockey on the frozen stream with his friends. Using their field guides, he and a friend had learned to identify nearly all the plants and animals that lived there. Andrew especially liked to follow the stream back to a flat rock, where he would sit, whittling and thinking. From that rock he had seen deer and foxes pass by. Once a red-tailed hawk had settled onto a snag about ten feet away and stared at him, cocking its head as if it were trying to figure out what sort of creature Andrew was. The thought of losing all that was unbearable.

    Andrew looked at the letter's final sentence. His parents were invited to an open meeting at town hall to hear the developer describe his plans. The meeting was only four weeks away. Sitting at his kitchen table, Andrew went through a kind of metamorphosis. His initial shock melted into anger, and then the anger changed into a cold determination. Somehow Andrew Holleman was going to stop that development.

"Are You Still Looking?"

    Andrew needed information, fast. He knew there were laws in Massachusetts, where he lived, that said when you could and couldn't put buildings on wetlands. And most of the land next door was wet all the time.

    His mother dropped him off at the library, and soon Andrew was staring at bookcases full of Massachusetts law books. He needed to find the Hatch Act, which his parents had told him was the law that controlled the development of wetlands in Massachusetts.

    Two hours later, Andrew's mother returned to find him barely visible behind a mountain of law books. She picked out a book of her own and sat down. A few minutes later, she heard him shout. Several nearby readers looked up. "Finally I found it," Andrew remembers. "It was clear: The Hatch Act said it was illegal to build within one hundred feet of a wet land unless you had a permit."

    "I asked the librarian what else I could read. She reached behind her desk and handed me the master plan for my town, Chelmsford." A master plan is a guide to the way all the land in a town can be used. It tells which land can be developed for industry, which land can support houses or apartments, and which must be left open for parks or nature areas.

    Quickly he found the land by his house on a map that came with the plan. "I could see that the developer wanted to develop 16.3 acres; that's how big the site was. But 8.5 acres were zoned as wetlands and 5.6 of the rest were considered to be poor soil. It looked like only 2.2 acres were considered developable."

    Weary but happy, Andrew got up from his desk and pulled on his jacket. Now he had the ammunition he needed.

"Please Sign the Attached Sheet."

    Andrew knew the developer's plan was probably illegal, but that didn't mean anyone else knew, or that anyone else would care. He needed a way to educate people about the developer's plan and its weaknesses before the meeting.

    He decided to write a petition opposing the development and ask the registered voters who lived in the neighborhood to sign it. He could then send copies to local politicians. If they could see that most voters were against the development, Andrew reasoned, they might be persuaded.

    The petition had to be short and to the point. "I knew it couldn't be more than a page long, because people tend to ignore longer things," he says. "I gave basic information about the site and the law. Then I said, ‘If you agree with me that this land shouldn't be developed, please sign the attached sheet.’"

    Every night for the next few weeks, Andrew raced home from school, did his homework, bolted down dinner, and then headed out to gather signatures. He was very patient. "Some nights I would be out for two hours and I’d get only five signatures, because people would bring me into their house and offer me cookies while they discussed it with me. That was fine with me. I didn't want to get in a hurry and leave out information. I wanted to make sure I had a chance to answer every question they could think of."

    Andrew also created a petition at school. Even though they couldn't vote, he hoped his schoolmates would want to add their voices to the fight. "Some kids didn't agree with me, but the majority did. I just kept on going."

    And he continued his research. He called the state Audubon Society's Environmental Health Line and asked for ideas. Dr. Dorothy Arvidson, a staff biologist, told him how to get a list of the state's endangered and threatened species from the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.

    When the list arrived in the mail, Andrew recognized three species － the wood turtle, the yellow salamander, and the great blue heron － that lived on his land. He remembered that one day he had found a wood turtle shell in an old trap. He had picked it up and taken it back to his room. The list gave him an idea for how that old shell could be useful. He thought the turtle would approve.

Organizing an Ambush

    As the night of the meeting approached, Andrew went over his list of things to do. A neighbor had already contacted some reporters who had said they’d be there. Andrew had written letters to newspaper editors opposing the development. The petition now had over 180 signatures, and there was no one left to visit. He had sent copies to town officials and to his state senators and representatives.

    Finally he wrote a speech to give at the meeting. Every night after his homework, Andrew gathered his parents, his brother, and sister and asked them to help him rehearse.

    He opened by saying how much he loved the land. He said it provided a home for three endangered species. He said that the sewage from so much development would poison the local groundwater － and Chelmsford's wells, the town's drinking water. He even proposed an alternative site for development: the old drive-in theater. Raising the wood turtle's shell aloft and shaking it at his family, Andrew ended by listing all the reasons why the developer's proposal should be rejected. "Well?" Andrew would ask his family, totally inspired. "What do you think?" "Speak more slowly," his brother would suggest. "How about doing it one more time?" his mother would add.

    When it came time to leave for the meeting, Andrew felt the calmness and confidence that comes with having prepared carefully. He had been organizing almost nonstop for a month. The trap was set, and Andrew was ready.

"Where Did All These People Come From?"

    At 7:30, the developer and town officials watched in amazement as hundreds of Chelmsford residents lined up outside the town hall. The developer had sent letters to only fifty nearby residents. Where had all these people come from? And where were they going to put them all? First they changed rooms to the selectmen's office but even then the crowd spilled out into the hall. Finally a town official begged the girls’ high school basketball coach to end practice early and let them have the gym. By 8:00, there were over 250 people in the bleachers.

    The developer began by presenting his plan and then asked if anyone wanted to speak. Andrew rose and walked slowly to the front of the room, carrying his note cards and the turtle shell. There was applause, and then quiet.

    Andrew's speech went perfectly. The only surprise came when Andrew suggested the developer build instead at the site of the old drive-in movie theater. "I found out the guy had already started a condominium there."

    The struggle was far from over. Although now it was clear that most neighbors opposed the development, the developer wasn't about to give up. Over the next ten months, he presented his plans to the conservation commission, zoning board , appeals board, and selectmen. They all had to say yes for his plan to go through. Andrew was determined to help them say no.

    "I went to every meeting, usually with my parents," Andrew remembers. "Sometimes I went to two or three meetings a week. Usually they were on school nights, and often I didn't get home until eleven. My mother kept saying, ‘Don't get burned out; if you need to stop now, it's okay － you've already made a good try.’"

    Because they were together so much, Andrew came to know the developer. Although he hated the man's plan, he didn't hate the man himself. "It's like how lawyers can be fighting tooth and nail in a courtroom one minute and then be friendly out in the hall," Andrew says. "That's the way we were. When it was time for business, we got down to business."

    The developer seemed to respect Andrew as a worthy opponent, even if he was young －although once, in a meeting, he hollered, "I'm not going to discuss hydro-geological information with a twelve-year-old!" "He was really worked up," Andrew recalls. "I didn't take it personally."

    Together with a few neighbors, Andrew's parents formed a neighborhood association and went door-to-door asking for money to hire a lawyer and a scientist to testify at hearings. They ended up raising $16 000.

    Dr. Arvidson, the Audubon biologist, never seemed to run out of ideas for Andrew. Once, while she was giving him a long list of suggestions, Andrew interrupted. "Hey, I'm only twelve years old," he told her. "That's no excuse," she said, and went right on talking.

Victory!

    Finally it came time to test whether the soil at the site could hold the enormous amount of sewage － dishwater, bath water, toilet water, water from washing machines － that would be created in 180 condominiums.

    While Andrew, his father, and several town officials watched, the developer fired up a back-hole and dug about fifteen deep holes in the soil. Muddy water quickly filled all the holes but two and then spilled out onto the grass. That meant sewage from the proposed condominiums would flow right down into drinking water. The plan had failed the test. Two weeks later, the zoning board of appeals met to make a final decision. The developer, sensing that he was about to lose, asked to withdraw his application. That way he would be able to try again, for fewer condominiums. But the board ruled that the site was simply not suitable for development. Andrew had won!

    When the zoning board gave its ruling, Andrew felt like shattering the hearing room with a mighty whoop, but instead, he walked over and shook the developer's hand. No reason to burn bridges, he told himself.

    Now Andrew is hard at work with his ultimate plan, which is to convince the town to buy the land and use it as a nature preserve. He won't rest until the land he loves is absolutely safe. "If I don't do it," he says, "no one else is going to."

    (1 967 words)

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