HIGHLAND WITHDRAWS

While it’s been our tradition the past few years to pick an individual as our Newsmaker of the Year, we found that no one, or nothing, eclipsed the moment on Wednesday, November 21, when the public relations firm under contract with the Highland Companies sent out an innocent little email, stating that the company was withdrawing its application to quarry 2,400 acres of prime farmland in Melancthon Township.

The ramifications of that “moment” are sure to be many, and remain to be seen. Will Highland be back with a different proposal in the future? Will the Aggregate Act be changed to scale back the primacy of this resource over all others? And perhaps most interestingly of all, what will happen to the strong coalition of local people who have come of age as activists as a result of this issue?

All of these are things to watch in the future; for now, we celebrate that Wednesday morning as our “News Moment of the Year.”