“Jingle
bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way … oh what fun ….”
That’s
what our commissioners must have been humming when private-landfill
money was being waved under their noses by Addington and then
Republic.
“Oh
what fun” to have Santa Claus come to town and take Wayne County
out of the messy garbage business. The jolly old fellow was giving
us a place to dump our smelly stuff for free, and he was
paying Wayne County to dump out-of-the-county garbage at Broadhurst,
too. More than bells were jingling. Without considering entrapment,
the commissioners instead must have heard money “jingling all the
way” into the county’s treasury.
Ho,
ho, ho, huh?
Unfortunately,
our commissioners were seduced by the potential of millions of “easy”
dollars. They ignored the old warning: “If it sounds too good to
be true, it usually is.” That just-show-me-the-money attitude,
without imagining the consequences, opened the door to today’s
coal-ash crisis.
Hindsight
is always 20-20. Looking back, we know our leaders—in 2005—were
misled into amending a contract, with “minor” changes, which
appears to have handcuffed our government. Now, Wayne County is an
environmental prostitute with Republic Services as our pimp. In
2006, the first of 800,000 tons of coal ash was dumped on us.
Greed
is a tempting trap. Greed motivated Wayne County to step into
Republic’s snare. Greed motivated Republic to bargain for the
now-infamous we-can-do-anything-we-want contract. And greed inspired
Republic’s representatives to snooker us so their bonus checks
would be bigger.
Dr.
Norman Vincent Peale admonished, “There’s no right way to do a
wrong thing.” Now, Wayne County is choking on the
possibility of coal ash being shoved down our throats. Dumping
millions of tons of toxic coal ash into our already-stressed
environment is wrong. There is no right way Republic can justify the
risk it will bring us. However, its greed could drive Republic’s
stock price up on Wall Street.
Republic
is now trying to win favor by telling us what a good neighbor it
intends to be. There’ll be more open houses, picnics, fishing in
the lake and charitable giving. I’m sorry. Too much has happened.
I will never trust Republic’s coal-ash plan—at any price.
You
probably got Republic’s slick brochure in the mail. You would have
thought the waste-management company was selling lakefront lots to
nature lovers. Where was the flock of buzzards perched on top of
Mount Trashmore? Neither did the promotional piece have a
scratch-and-sniff feature so you could catch a whiff of the
“breathtakingly beautiful” odor. If Wayne County citizens want
to tour a landfill, I suggest coal-ash-devastated Uniontown, Ala. I
intend to visit there, but I won’t be taking a picnic basket.
There’s
a saying: “Goodwill is won by many acts, but lost by one.”
Republic lost its goodwill with me when it targeted our poor,
rural community and set a Jingle-Bells trap. Waste-management
companies know cash-strapped governments will take the bait. The
feds have a name for it: social injustice.
Our
county commissioners—past and present—were probably like me,
unfamiliar with coal ash. I didn’t know about it until I read John
Grisham’s Gray Mountain in 2014. Today, we should all know
coal-ash dangers. Once the toxic heavy metals get into our
environment, we are contaminated—forever.
We’re all susceptible to temptations. I’ve learned
this the hard way: “Some of the best deals you will ever make
are the ones you don’t make.” Addington and Republic came
in here sounding like Santa Claus.
Ho,
ho, ho … no!
This is
one deal Wayne County should never have made.
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
