By Richard Cook
I'd like to respond to Norm Sweeney's Guest Commentary of Jan. 3, 2012. Mr. Sweeney, perhaps you should read the report that the county commission accepted at their Dec 12 special meeting, it's posted on the county website. The author, G. Fred Lee, Ph.D. has a doctorate in environmental engineering from Harvard and 40 some odd years of experience in the field of landfill development. Dr. Lee's CV or resume goes on for ten pages and is impressive by any standard.
According to Dr. Lee, "As presently proposed with this draft permit, Recology-Nevada Land and Resource LLC, Jungo Land & Investments, Inc. will be able to dump large amounts of San Francisco, CA area garbage in Humboldt, NV, make a large amount of money in doing so, and leave the County and the State with a massive liability of impaired public health and destroyed water resources." Now that would truly be a waste of taxpayer money.
The commissioners don't work for the lawyers they work for the public and the public voted overwhelmingly in the last general election to reject a mega-landfill in Humboldt County. How it was that our elected and appointed officials got so out of touch with the public on this landfill issue will be debated forever and I am sure that there is lots of blame to go around but it doesn't matter, it's done and all that matters is, "What are we going to do about it?"
Dr. Lee's report validates what the vast majority of us have known for a long time - Jungo landfill is a bad, bad idea. It's unacceptable and illegal that our ground water would be contaminated and we're not going to tolerate it. If that means that the county commissioners need to shuck their ineffectual insurance pool lawyers dig into our rainy-day fund, there is a ridiculous amount of money in there thanks to gold, and hire lawyers who can stand up to Frankovich and company then so be it. This issue constitutes about as rainy a rainy day as this county has ever seen.
One big positive that has resulted from this fiasco is that the local political system was clearly broken and it's now beginning to correct itself - the public is paying attention to their law-makers and vice-versa. Faces of elected and appointed officials are starting to change and the next elections promise to be hotly contested as were the last; however, I wouldn't recommend that any candidate run on a pro-dump platform.
Mistakes were made and consequences are inevitable but that is what the courts are there for, they are the third pillar of our political system, executive, legislative and judicial. Courts are not always to be feared and avoided they are where disputes are resolved in this country. Let's face reality - that site can't be made to safely support that project as proposed, period. If NDEP issues the permit and the SEC upholds that decision in spite of Dr. Lee's report let's go to court and duke it out expert to expert until we either prevail or run out of courts. Some things are worth fighting for and local self-determination and the protection of public health are certainly among them.
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