At the hearing recently, The Towns of Pittsford, Perinton and Brighton presented a testimony from A Mr Donald H Gray, professor emeritus, where he stated that vegetation, (trees) were a stabilizing influence on slopes, and basically held the soils together, preventing soil erosion. On looking at much of his very dated work on this subject, it became apparent that he was discussing natural slopes of forested land, and there was no mention of earthen embankment dams. His papers are twenty years or more old, and much more recent scientific work has been carried out by USACE, FEMA and others, specific to earthen embankment dams. Natural slopes with trees on them is a completely different scenario to a dam, simply because the dam has water pressure against it, forcing water to soak into the structure. This creates the Phreatic Line which is the area between the soaked lower soil and the dry upper soil. Once the soil becomes too saturated, and the line drops below the toe of the dam, a potential for a mudslide is possible. A steep slope such as we have here, aggravates the problem. Mr Gray never visited the site, and I doubt it was explained to him that this slope was an earthen embankment dam with a Phreatic line problem.