Virginia's Trash Pile is Growing
http://www.timesdispatch.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-06-14-0164.html
Check out this brief update on our state's garbage-importing monopoly. I was employed for a short time by Campaign Virginia against this issue (those ads in the Sunday paper that say "help save our natural resources"). At that time 25 states were importing their trash into Virginia, making us the second-largest importer of waste behind Pennsylvania. This report says that gap has narrowed by 8.7 million tons, after the building of new landfills in Prince William County and Norfolk. There are plans to increase the number of barges on the James River to include Charles City as a trash port.*
When a grassroots organization canvasses key precincts all over the state for years (in conjunction with other lobbying to ensure relevancy) collecting a high volume of signatures and it has no effect, its a sign that public opinion is meaningless. Landfills are just one of many pet projects that each county bureaucracy has to fund their private ambitions.
"The landfill has enabled the county to build three schools and hold down taxes."* Urbanization complicates and swindles the life of everyone living in a given area, attracting special interests to manipulate zoning and enforce eminent domain, confusing the true role of government and spending. Rural counties promote a straightforward life of personal responsibility where all a legislator has to do is represent the people who live there, not encourage new business or play the markets. The more rural and pristine a county is the less money is needed.
"We are really taking on other states' environmental and financial responsibilities,"* -Jim Sharp, Campaign Virginia
One of the posts at the end of the article is mine. It's amazing that waste management employees etc. post their emphatic support, thinking as long as the editor looks for a "range" of opinions to post, it will appear that the public is split down the middle on the issue (as if waste management employees make up half the populace). Thinking that just because they are the ones paid to do this dirty work it means they as citizens are being considered by local government and not its own private ambitions. That kind of "consideration" is fleeting.
*http://www.timesdispatch.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-06-14-0164.html