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Letter to the Editor - THE VIRGINIAN PILOT

Posted on: Monday, 12 September 2005, 09:00 CDT

Camden landfill gripes are mostly garbage

Dumbzilla best describes the words emanating from some misinformed Chesapeake officials and a few citizens about the proposed landfill in Camden County, N.C.

A Sept. 4 letter claims it will be 10 stories high, will create a smell up to 7 miles away, will generate 1,000 truck trips a day, will leak (they all do), pose a fire hazard, etc.

In the real world, we find a Chesapeake landfill off Dominion Boulevard that is 15 stories high, and SPSAs landfill in Suffolk will be 260 feet tall. Insurance firms demand that private landfill operators have their own firefighting unit.

The new Portsmouth marine terminal will result in 1,500 truck trips a day; 95 percent will travel on Chesapeake roads, far more than the truck traffic from Camden. Incidentally, those roads are U.S. highways built with federal tax dollars.

If odor was a factor, why did the Chesapeake City Council rezone land downwind from Mount Trashmore II for $350,000 condos, $750,000 homes and lots selling at $300,000 to $750,000 each? Why did Regent University build dormitories right up to the place where all of Virginia Beachs municipal waste is buried?

And try to explain why no one at the Norfolk Yacht Club and the surrounding affluent neighborhoods ever complained about the landfill right on the Lafayette River, which is now a golf course.

Let him or her who does not create refuse cast the first empty soft drink can.

William O. Stockburger

Norfolk

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Stink over landfill is justified

Your excellent Aug. 31 editorial on the regional lack of cooperation was timely indeed. It is obvious in the lack of support Chesapeake is getting in its commendable stand on the Black Bear LLC landfill.

Virginia and North Carolina abound in fallow tobacco fields near Interstate 95. These no longer needed fields are high and dry and probably cheap.

So why Camden County? Likely due to its proximity to a deep- water port and connecting roads. The landfill will eventually destroy a large part of Chesapeakes water supply. It will one day invade the Dismal Swamp groundwater and then further pollute the southern branch of the Elizabeth River through Portsmouth.

With a south wind, beach goers at Virginia Beach will be swept by the smell of a growing garbage dump. And in Norfolk, only the top floors of the new Granby Towers will be above the heavy stench of rotting garbage being barged through the harbor and river to be loaded on trucks at the Garbage Port.

Citizens of Tidewater need to press their elected leaders now to defeat the landfill, and find out why SPSA officials did not raise a warning when they first learned of the plan.

Fred Bashara

Norfolk

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Just ask a librarian

Your article about the deep Web (Business, Sept. 5) pointed out the limitations of search engines to access most information online.

Libraries have offered free, remote access to full-text online databases and magazines for years. You get what you pay for, and libraries pay for access to reliable resources for the public. It starts with a library card.

The best way to find information, online or in a book, is to ask a librarian. They can clarify the question, create a search strategy, filter the results and discern an authoritative answer. The best of search engines pale in comparison.

Sean C. Bilby

Collection development

Norfolk Public Library

Norfolk

n

Sham environment hearings

The federal National Environmental Policy Act, signed into law in 1970, is about public participation and open government. It is about studying major federal actions before wasting massive sums of money on projects with adverse human and environmental effects. NEPA does not stop projects; it just requires full disclosure and public discussion, and that disclosure and discussion has sunk many poorly conceived pork-barrel projects.

Unfortunately, the same public disclosure and discussion does not apply to the so-called hearings being held by House Resources Committee Chair Richard Pombo, ostensibly on improving NEPA.

Although the rumor mill informed us on Wednesday that Pombo is bringing his NEPA hearings to Rep. Thelma Drakes District in Norfolk on Saturday, Sept. 17, a visit to the House Resources Committee Web site did not mention the hearing, less than a week away. And we still dont know the time or location.

Rep. Drake is ill-advised to aid and abet Rep. Pombo in these sham hearings, the real intention of which is to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act, the cornerstone of environmental law and protection in our country.

Glen Besa

Regional director

Sierra Club Appalachian Region

Richmond

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Excuse for high gas prices

Oil companies are using the disaster created by Hurricane Katrina as an excuse to financially rape the American public. The oil companies are already making record profits. Its only greed and politics, and it makes me sick that our government is allowing this to happen.

I find it hard to believe that refineries dont have a backup plan. If these refineries only generate 12 percent of our gas supplies, as Ive heard, where is the other 88 percent coming from?

Our government needs to intervene and put a cap on just how much the oil companies can charge. Our patience and wallets are already very very thin.

Brian Turner

Virginia Beach

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Farrakhans fault-finding

Re Farrakhan promotes new movement (news, Sept. 9):

Interesting that Minister Louis Farrakhan apparently found fault with everyone except the looters and the malcontents who made everyone elses lives miserable during this humanitarian crisis.

Glenn A. Cahoon

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Source: Virginian - Pilot

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