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The earnest season

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Staff

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

There are many discernible periods in the cycle of our local governments. Soon it’ll be budget season – when things go into overdrive, culminating in a rapid-fire series of decisions.

Just prior to that season, the elected leaders of this university community are privy to numerous reports compiled by earnest, forthright young people as part of their education.

This end-of-semester flurry of analysis, recommendations and even proposed new ordinances is usually delivered to our local boards by a team of students. Their work ranges from exemplary and useful to overly abstract and not so useful. Almost always, the projects are aimed at making a point, and for that they should be received in the spirit in which they’re given. It might be tempting to get cynical when the kids get preachy, but the gist of what they’re saying is often spot-on and the issues highlighted are frequently indeed areas of concern requiring focus.

This year, as in several years past, students again brought up the pressing need for the community living near the Orange County landfill to be relieved of its longtime burden and made whole again. Students made their case with a study showing 47 illegal dumpsites in the Rogers and Eubanks roads neighborhood as well as numerous citations of duplicitous behavior on the part of a succession of local governments toward the community that hosts its landfill. This part of our local history has been, for decades, the awful example of not walking the walk.

In the wake of this new report – and all the reports preceding it and all the task forces and study committees past and present – it’s a little stunning to see that the county is thinking of extending its stay in the neighborhood a little longer. The argument in favor is, naturally, that it is the easiest and least-costly thing to do.

It’s as easy as directing the landfill staff to squeeze even more years out of the property. More years would equal more tipping fees.

That may sound fine to, say, anyone just starting to pay attention to the situation, but the reality is that more years of the landfill mean more years of failure on the part of local governments to live up to their word and their creed. It’s not just about the landfill; it’s about paying that debt that has built up – the one that is conveniently forgotten when something is easier or less costly.

It means more years of illegal dumping, more years of buzzards and stench and trucks rolling through constantly. It means more years of contaminated wells and lack of services and more years before that park promised three decades ago is even considered.

Most importantly, it means more years of environmental racism visited on a neighborhood in a place that professes to be a champion of justice.

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