Last week, many of my neighbors received an unsigned letter from a high-sounding organization, calling itself the Association for a Better Long Island. The letter was alternately deceiving and downright false.

The letter criticized efforts to preserve the Underhill property. The Underhill property is 81 acres of environmentally sensitive land in Jericho. It boasts rare and endangered species of plants and animals and lies in a state-designated special groundwater recharge area critical to clean drinking water for our children and grandchildren.

Most residents want to see Underhill acquired by the state and the county. The Jericho school and water districts and dozens of environmental and civic groups support the preservation effort. Two weeks ago, hundreds turned out for a huge rally in support of preservation.

The letter used the intense development of the Hamlet East as an excuse to build a 270-unit housing project at Underhill. Of course, precisely the opposite is indicated. Because of the density nearby, it is even more important to retain this open space to recharge the drinking water aquifer beneath Underhill. The letter said that government was not serious about acquiring the property, even though state, county and town officials are working to do just that. And, the letter said that the internationally respected Nature Conservancy "found that it is not ecologically significant land." That's out and out false.

Developing Underhill as proposed would increase taxes for schools and other government services while it would decrease property values. The loss of open space, increased traffic congestion and diminished quality-of-life would hurt everybody but the developers. And the proposed project would be like anchoring 270 houseboats on the Croton Reservoir, the source of New York City's drinking water. The city wouldn't stand for that and neither should we. Who could possibly support this preposterous notion? Only a developer, right?

Yup! It turns out that the Association for a Better Long Island is no lofty social or civic organization at all. It's a lobbying organization for the island's most powerful real estate developers, a group whose members lobbied for years to prevent preservation of Long Island's Pine Barrens, Suffolk's largest special groundwater protection area.

This letter says it's from ABLI's "Land Use Committee." We all know what use ABLI wants to make of land.

ABLI is known in the environmental community as the Association to Blacktop Long Island and their members have been doing a pretty good job of it to the point where Underhill is one of the few pieces of land developers haven't yet paved over.

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. I found out one other thing about this disinformation group. One of its leading members is Roger Tilles, who owns the Underhill property. So, in addition to representing the development at any cost crowd, ABLI is, in this case, a front group for Tilles himself.

So the next time you get a letter from an organization whose name doesn't tell you who they are or what they do, take it with a grain of salt. By the way, we're your neighbors at the Society of Preserve Underhill.

Joseph H. Lorintz

President

Society to Preserve Underhill