The other day I was on a work conference call – actually a Zoom meeting and there were people praising Costcos and saying how they traveled to Massachusetts the past week to shop there. Honestly, I can’t imagine traveling to shop at a Big Box grocery store during a pandemic but I guess different people have different values.

I had to puke in my mouth a little bit, off camera, as I’ve been opposed to the Rapp Road development which includes a Costco and a large apartment and townhouse complex in undeveloped woods right next to the butterfly corridor. Honestly I don’t care much about the Costco part of the proposal – it’s mostly in an abandoned residential neighborhood – but I do like many of my fellow environmentalists worry about the apartment complex. The Costcos is still a bit problematic in the sense their building a gas station over a sandy sole source acquifer so all gas leaks and spills will almost immediately mix into ground water and the proposal still demolishes some remaining pitch pine and dunes, that are easily restored to Pine Bush.

So it probably shouldn’t move forward or we should at least demand a tough mitigation to protect as much of the remaining Pine Bush as possible. So much had been lost in fifty years, even more is disappointing a few acres at a time – becoming harder and harder to sustain especially as climate change makes the Pine Bush with less late winter snow even harder to breed butterflies and other native species.

I’ve heard Costco in other parts of the nation are perpetually crowded. You have to think yuck during the pandemic. I can’t imagine shopping at any big box in the near future. A few times during the pandemic I’ve been to Walmart to get things not at Aldi’s, but I’ve finally drawn a line in the sand and said no more. It’s not worth getting Coronavirus to get something I can order online and get in a few days. I dont mind discount groceries and stores that have a limited selection but do we need such massive temples of consumerism?