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Concerned over the chosen site for new care facility

To the editor:
A recent trip to the site of the new proposed Green Acres nursing home located next to the freeway in a commercial strip in North Branch provided some depressing views for the fate of senior citizens in Chisago County.
This defoliated field has been bulldozed flat as a pancake, evidently in anticipation of future commercial development.
A major gas transmission pipeline runs diagonally through the site.
This gas line, the Viking, has reached the end of its useful life and will need to be dug up and replaced at some point after the new facility is built.
According to a county consultant, old people donít want to live in the peaceful, quiet and clean setting they currently have at Green Acres.
Instead these people would rather live where they can watch the action.
Unfortunately the site the county has chosen will only provide residents with the ìactionî of watching harried shoppers getting into and out of their automobiles next to a noisy freeway and a polluting, congested bridge overpass.
The new name of the facility should be changed from Green to Brown Acres to reflect this reality.
The real policy behind the move is that county commissioners evidently believe the 100-plus wooded acres at the current nursing home site are waste on the old.
Better to sell the land off cheap to developers to clear cut and bulldoze it for new home sites for livelier, more ìproductiveî county citizens.
Mark Oberg
Lindstrom

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