Wind Mills, Bottled Water and Prison

The Morning Call reports (read the article here) that Northampton County Executive John Stoffa, while speaking to a group at Northampton Community College addressed the situation the County faces related to prison over-crowding.

He noted:

'One of the things that you have to realize about the Lehigh Valley: A lot of people are moving here. They're not all good people who come here,'' Stoffa said. ''We've got gangs now. We have drug problems. We have murders. A lot of these people end up in the prison system and right now our prison is busting at the seams.

Stoffa believes Easton can't house the prison alone, other communities will need to have prison facilities and the County may have to work jointly with Lehigh County.

On a more speculative, out of the box thinking, part of the presentation Stoffa is reported as saying:

He said he's looking into whether the county can put electricity-producing windmills at its 275-acre Gracedale complex in Upper Nazareth Township. ''It would be wonderful if we could have windmills up there that would power the whole complex. I don't see windmills anywhere in the Lehigh Valley. I don't think they are that bad-looking,'' he said.

''We have excellent water in some of the land that we've acquired. I've wondered if we could sell the water and keep the proceeds to support our parks,'' he said. After the meeting, Stoffa said a recently acquired property in the Totts Gap area in Upper Mount Bethel might be a source for the water.