When I first learned of Paul
Revere’s famous ride is unclear. It
could have been 1957 or 1958. After all
these years, I recently read that the Massachusetts silversmith, galloping on a
borrowed horse named Brown Beauty, might not have said, “The British are coming!”
Instead, it was more like, “The Regulars are on the move!” On April 18, 1775, the Regulars were the minutemen’s
red-coated adversaries, marching to arrest patriots John Hancock and Samuel
Adams.
Whatever
Paul Revere said put him in America’s history books. And when Wayne County’s history of our
current coal-ash uprising is recorded, Neill Herring will be our modern-day
Paul Revere. Our friend hoofed it—afoot—to
252 W. Walnut St. to alert Derby Waters.
The Corps had changed its public-notice procedure. The
Press-Sentinel wasn’t on the list, but Neill was. Central Virginia Properties LLC had some big
plans for Wayne County.
Who?
That’s
exactly what Republic Services Inc. had hoped.
Who in Wayne County would pay any attention to an unknown entity such as
Central Virginia Properties? The answer
is almost no one except Neill Herring.
The bespectacled environmental lobbyist is a voracious reader with
encyclopedic knowledge of the sausage-making ways of government. Neill knows the value of reading the fine
print and asking questions.
On
Jan. 4, 2016, Central Virginia Properties LLC filed an application with the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build a rail spur to service its parent
company’s Broadhurst Environmental Landfill.
The mystery name didn’t trick Neill.
That’s why he went to see Derby at The
Press-Sentinel. But why did Republic
want these mile-long, wetlands-destroying sets of railroad tracks?
The
answer was there for the reading. The
rail spur was to accommodate up to 100 rail cars per day. And what was going to be in those rail
cars? Oh, as much as 10,000 tons of
toxic coal ash. Coal ash? What’s coal
ash? Most of us knew as much about coal
ash as we did about Central Virginia Properties LLC.
With
nine days gone in the Corps’ 30-day public-comment period, the race was on to
slow this dangerous almost-runaway-train scheme. You know what happened next. The
newspaper told you what we learned, and we hired a team of environmental
lawyers. A grassroots citizen group was
formed to oppose the rail spur and the dumping of poisonous waste in Wayne
County. Twice the Corps of Engineers
extended the public-comment period. As
the public uproar continued, Republic pressed on, confident its 2005 contract
had county officials handcuffed and neutered in the fight.
And
on April 5, 2017, Republic made a surprise “good-neighbor” offer to drop its
rail-spur and coal-ash plans and
discuss the possibilities of a new, less onerous contract. Cheers erupted. Then, we waited and waited. Several months later, the new proposal
surfaced. The good-neighbor plan had a
multimillion-dollar price tag dangling from it.
Cheers turned into jeers, but we are still hoping Republic will do the
right thing. In the meantime, we cannot
back down.
I
have never seen Wayne County this upset or as galvanized in its resistance to
an issue. Piling millions of tons of
pollution in our ultrasensitive ecosystem isn’t just an issue for today. It’s an unhealthy risk for our children’s
great-grandchildren and beyond. I
repeat, “If you won’t stand up for the people and place you love, what kind of
person are you?”
And
I repeat, “Thank you, Neill Herring.”
If you hadn’t
sounded the alarm, Wayne County would have lost this coal-ash war without even
knowing Republic’s “regulars” were “on the move.”
dnesmith@cninewspapers.com
