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Letter: NCHS Student Supports Town Helping Land Trust with Fowler Property Purchase

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I am Will Santora and a current senior at New Canaan High School. Over the past three years, I have worked closely with the New Canaan Land Trust as a steward to land preservation. The work that I have done involved my time as an intern as well as a club leader in the high school. The close contact and relationships that I have built within the Land Trust community have helped me grow as an individual and provided me with an education that is normally not provided in high school education. Because the Land Trust has provided me with education in land stewardship, I have learned that any possibility to preserve even more open space is incredibly important in a town like New Canaan.

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No Idling: NCHS Friends of the Earth Club Works for Cleaner Air and a Better New Canaan

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Idling cars are a major pet peeve for New Canaan High School sophomore Will Santora. The 15-year-old is aware that it’s illegal in Connecticut to idle a motor vehicle for more than three minutes, yet he estimates that up to 80 percent of the cars that back up at the NCHS lot when school lets out are idling. “You waste gas, you waste money, you are polluting—and all for no reason,” Santora said from Room 115 at the high school on a recent afternoon, surrounded by a half-dozen likeminded sophomores and juniors. “You don’t need to leave your car running at all. And people sometimes just forget to turn off their car or they don’t realize it’s going, so that is a big issue because it does pollute a lot and if you idle for more than 10 seconds, you are already starting to waste gas.”

In the next month or so, Santora and this group of high school teens—together they are the Friends of the Earth Club, an extracurricular group—will purchase and install a “no idling” sign on school grounds.