Citizens of Mississippi and Louisiana: If you will, take a minute and consider what is happening at Chatawa, a little community on the Tangipahoa river between Magnolia and Osyka, Mississippi. It is a community of hard working, God-fearing people who support each other and help each other in every way they can.
Chatawa is a great place to live, a place of quiet beauty centered around St. Mary of the Pines, which was once a school and church. You didn’t see locked gates or “No Trespassing” signs when it was St. Mary’s. People were welcomed by those wonderful ladies, the School Sisters of Notre Dame. You could not visit St. Mary of the Pines and talk to the sisters without feeling better when you left.
One day we learned that St. Mary’s had been closed. The sisters were moving out. Sometime after this we learned St. Mary’s had been sold to people unknown, for the purpose of developing a retreat. These people had quietly been buying up land surrounding the Chatawa area. No problem — they have that right.
Then we saw the master plan for developing this area. We suddenly realized we were about to lose our quiet haven and scenic river to people whom we do not know and who intend to destroy the life we know by slowly squeezing us out. You have seen this happen in other places.
Think about this: If these people intend to build a religious retreat as their master plan states, what are they going to do with all this other land they have bought and are still buying? They cannot make me believe that they don’t have plans within their master plan for that land.
Where is all the waste water and dirt from new construction going? Water flows downhill and, my friends from Louisiana, so does anything that is in that water.
Those of us who are against what is happening in Chatawa are not fighting for gain. We quite simply have nothing to gain. We are, however, fighting to maintain what we already have. If this project is allowed to proceed as planned by the people who are buying all this land, what is next? I seriously doubt they intend to buy all this property just to let it grow up in broom straw and blackberry vines.
There is only one outcome: The destruction of the area it flows through. Who stands to gain from this master plan? Certainly not the people who live in this area.
— Charles Roland, Chatawa
