Ohio University has considered offering The Ridges to developers for $1.  After decades of struggle by students, faculty members and community members to protect the former Athens Mental Health Center grounds, now called The Ridges, from development, OU President Robert Glidden is considering this ecological and economical insanity.

            Athens and OU are already way too developed, with the loss of green space going at a horrific rate.  The OU Ecology Committee, which included a majority of administrators, spent two years and 20 meetings to debate future land-use of The Ridges from 1994 to 1996, and found that all of it should be protected from development.

            This was widely publicized in February, 1996.  But, with the fast turnover of students and reporters, OU is gambling that people will just forget.  We need to organize now, and organize fast if we are to stop this upper-income retirement center development on Dairy Lane, so that at least we can keep the Ridges public land protected, before it joins the fate of the thousands of acres of private land that has been destroyed in Athens County in the past few years.

            Please, come to an organizational meeting of the newly revised Campaign to Protect The Ridges Wednesday, August 20 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Athens Public Library meeting room on Home Street in Athens. 

            Find out more at www.hockingvoice.org and call me at 753-2278 if you are interested in helping to save The Ridges – again.  We must be vigilant or we will lose the great green space and wildlife habitat that we too often take for granted.