“We also share President Carter’s
conviction that the wetlands in Wayne County are worth every effort to preserve
and protect.”
Who said that?
Here’s
a hint.
On
March 16, he also told us that the Broadhurst Environmental Landfill is
“breathtakingly beautiful.”
If
you were in the Jesup auditorium of Coastal Pines Technical College that night,
you heard the jeers when Russ Knocke, Republic Services’ vice president of
communications, bragged to the standing-room-only audience what a beauty his
company’s garbage dump is. But to Mr.
Knocke’s credit he apologized, saying, “We let the community down. We have not been involved in the community as
we need to be. … We failed you.”
No
joke, Sherlock.
From
an ivory tower—2,100 miles away in Phoenix—Republic crafted a strategy to turn
its private landfill into potentially the nation’s largest toxic coal-ash
depository. Without regards to what
citizens thought or cared, four mile-long rail spurs almost slipped through the
United States Army Corps of Engineers permitting process, under the name of
Central Virginia Properties, LLC. Nine
days into a 30-day comment period, the ploy was discovered. And for eight months, tiny Wayne County has
been up against America’s second-largest waste-management conglomerate.
From
the start, it’s been a David-versus-Goliath battle. When you consider Republic’s largest
shareholder is Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, what else could you
call our fight? Fortune magazine has
just reported his wealth has grown in 2016 by $15 billion to an estimated $90
billion.
Bill and Melinda Gates are using
their wealth to be two of the most altruistic visionaries on the globe. Their foundation is investing billions into solving
worldwide woes. Public health is one of
their key initiatives. That’s why I was
dumbfounded when I learned Bill Gates stood to profit from putting our
community and its environment at such an unhealthy risk.
The only way I could rationalize
such contradictory behavior was that this must be a classic example—as a result
of the enormous size of his holdings—of the proverbial left hand’s not knowing
what the right hand was doing.
On
April 19, I wrote to Gates and asked him to intervene on behalf of 30,000-plus
distraught Wayne County citizens. Two
days later, I sent a letter to his chief investment officer, Michael Larson,
who sits on Republic’s board of directors.
I waited and waited. No reply
from either. Maybe they didn’t get my
letters, so I tried something else.
When
Republic Services hosted its annual meeting in Phoenix, I sent—via FedEx—individual
packages to each officer and director. Again, there was no reply.
Since
mid-January, Wayne County volunteers have plunged their lives and dollars into
this David-and-Goliath confrontation. Now
the surging band of crusaders to save Coastal Georgia stretches from Savannah
to St. Marys and beyond. People are
realizing Wayne County’s threat is their pending disaster, too. That’s why I appealed to former president
Jimmy Carter to reach out to Bill Gates.
President Carter sent a handwritten note to the co-founder of Microsoft,
asking him not to dump toxic coal ash in the ultrasensitive ecosystem of
Broadhurst.
With
President Carter’s permission, his letter was made public. National news media picked up the story. That’s
how Russ Knocke’s quotation landed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. If his words reflect Republic’s honest
concern, toxic coal ash will not be dumped in Coastal Georgia.
Otherwise, in our rural corner of
Georgia, we would say Republic’s spokesman didn’t just step in “it.” He tracked it all over the house.
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
