(The following letter was sent to Mayor Galante and the board of trustees. It is printed here at the author's request.)

Ground water in Roslyn Village has been a longstanding or running fact of life and will not disappear by virtue of resolution, summons, fines or cease and desist orders. In the not too distant past, during the construction of the Harborview Shopping Center, ground water was a problem. I believe this unwanted ground water was directed to the harbor vis-á-vis an out-fall pipe on Skillman Street. On the 11-acre site knows as the Stop & Shop property there was a natural stream of surface ground water the flow of which was interrupted by the constructed supermarket foundation. This water was flowing into a storm sewer on Skillman Street until just recently. Where that flow of water is going now and how it was handled is a question for your code enforcement people.

The point is, our community needs reasonable solutions to problems. What we don't need is another law or resolution. We have an operating budget in excess of $3 million, half of which is paid by the commercial interest in our village. The elected leadership of our Incorporated Village should be able to come up with a means of handling this village ground water without placing the burden on our struggling downtown businesses.

One solution may be the creation of an out-fall pipe similar to the one that was used to alleviate the Harborview water problem.

Trustees Marshall Bernstein and John Durkin should be commended for their stand that the ground water problem is one of natural causes and not the making of the local businesses.

Frederic Carlton

President

Roslyn Chamber of Commerce