
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 7, 1990                   TAG: 9006080717
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

CAN'T WAIT FOR GOVERNMENT TO ACT

ON MAY 10, as I sat listening to the members of the Citizens for a Cleaner Environment celebrate the court's closing of the Kim-Stan garbage dump, I reflected on the long, hard battle that had been waged by the citizens of Selma. The citizens, mostly Gray Panthers, knew how to fight.

Throughout the heat of summer, the freezing winter, the dust, the insults from truck drivers and the stench, the Gray Panthers maintained their vigil. No environmental violation was too small not to be reported and no garbage truck went unrecorded. Those not actually on the picket line staffed telephones and wrote letters.

Kim-Stan had made a mockery of the state's water control and waste management regulations since it was purchased by investors from Wise County. It was not until Kim-Stan received national attention that the bureaucracy became fully alert. But it was too late for Selma.

The victory of closing the dump, however sweet, was hollow. Millions of tons of garbage lie on the site of Waits Mountain, on top of underground springs and in the direct path of water runoff. Who is going to clean up now that the losers of the court case, Kim-Stan, have taken their money and gone?

More important, what have we learned from this empty victory? Only that you can't wait for government to act; it must be jump-started. Selma must lobby the state vigorously to clean the dump. And that, fellow citizens, is a far cry from what we were taught in high-school civics class. JUAN RAMIREZ EAGLE ROCK

by CNB