Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure received a burst of applause when he told a gathering of business and community leaders that there should be no more warehouses in the county.

He is the first top official to have said publicly what so many have been saying in private, because, hey, some feel that the warehouse boom that has overtaken the area is like the goose that laid the golden egg.

While conceding that “there is nothing inherently evil about warehouses,” McClure said enough is enough and he contends that county residents feel the same way.

The warehousing boom has given a major economic boost to the region that has touched off a new awareness of the Lehigh Valley and Northeastern Pennsylvania areas and is acting like a magnet to attract residents to the area with an abundance of jobs.

In the process, it has triggered a housing price boom making it much more difficult for both residents already here and those moving in to find affordable housing.

Planners and other municipal officials have been agonizing over the warehousing issue for more than two decades as more and more of these super structures are built on what formerly had been farmland and other open spaces.

One of the most obvious by-products has been the proliferation of tractor-trailers carrying goods from these distribution centers to points throughout the East Coast and beyond.

McClure made his remarks at the annual state of the county gathering last month at the Hotel Bethlehem.

He praised the work of the county and the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission to develop a land-based freight plan that will give the municipalities responsible for zoning decisions more teeth to block warehousing. Some municipalities are already fighting back against more warehouse proposals.

McClure also pushed local governments not to offer tax breaks for developers looking to build warehouse space. He said while this might have been a need earlier, it is no longer the case.

While saying the county does not need any more warehouses, McClure said three of the largest companies with warehousing footprints in the region have brought good jobs to the area. He cited Amazon, FedEx and UPS. “We don’t want them to go anywhere,” McClure said. “They pay taxes; they employ people with good-paying jobs.”

He wants the county’s municipalities to control their own destinies through smart and effective land planning. “For too long,” he said, “some of them have not been armed to be able to fight back” to control unwanted development.

Now, however, he said that thanks to efforts of the bi-county planning commission, these municipalities have the tools to make sure that more open space and green areas are preserved,

“Our future is green,” McClure said. “Green is the color of nature, and green is the color of money, and green is the color of the traffic light that tells us to go forward.”

As he moves forward in his second term in office, McClure said by the end of this four-year term the county will have invested $25 million in farmland preservation and saving open spaces. Three county parks covering 300 acres have been preserved, and 3,000 acres of open space and environmentally sensitive land have been preserved, he said.

McClure also commended those who were involved in the county’s strong response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He specifically cited the county’s response at Gracedale, the county-operated home for the elderly. While other counties were selling their aging facilities, Northampton County took pride in continuing to own and operate Gracedale.

McClure said the region must prepare for the restoration of passenger rail service. He pointed to the current feasibility study to determine whether there is a market for passenger train service between the Lehigh Valley and the Philadelphia area.

“I suspect when the study is complete, we’ll be told that it’s going to cost billions of dollars and decades before we have passenger rail service,” he predicted. But, he said, this cannot be a deal-breaker. “That no longer can be the scare tactic to keep us from pursuing passenger rail service,” he added.

By BRUCE FRASSINELLI| tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.