Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 22, 1990 TAG: 9006220777
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The silliness can arise in any of the valley's localities; the latest instance happens to come from Salem. That city, by God, is going to hold fast to the honor of having . . . its very own landfill.
Virtually any other community in these United States would leap at the chance to have its garbage taken elsewhere for disposal. Not In My Back Yard, and all that.
But this is the Roanoke Valley. And under the rules of the local-government game here, no more than two jurisdictions can agree on any one thing at any one time. To do otherwise would be to lose face.
In an astounding display of cooperation and mutual concern for the welfare of the entire valley, Roanoke and Roanoke County are well along the long road toward establishing a regional landfill at Smith Gap. The project is the result of careful planning, and should serve the solid-waste-disposal needs of the valley, including Salem, for decades.
Yet, like a pathological hoarder who can't bear to part with the worthless junk he has accumulated, Salem can't seem to abide the thought of having its trash leave town. Or ash, in this case, left from garbage that's burned to produce power.
Instead, the city prefers to expand the borders of its own landfill at Mowles Spring Park, just inside the Salem-county line.
To the uninitiated, it might make more sense for Salem to let its landfill fill up and then close it. Then the city could send its trash and ash to the more remote Smith Gap and use the Salem site to enlarge the park. How naive! The overriding consideration is something else: The Smith Gap landfill is a Roanoke (city and county) project; Mowles Spring belongs to Salem.
Among the land Salem would like to acquire is private property adjacent to the landfill but just across the line in the county. Under Virginia law, localities can use their powers of eminent domain to buy private land for public purposes - even if the sellers are unwilling and the land is in another locality.
But there could be a hitch. Salem can acquire the land, but it can't force Virtually any other community . . . would leap at the chance to have its garbage taken elsewhere for disposal. the county to rezone it for the purposes Salem may have in mind. At the moment, for understandable reasons, the county isn't in an accommodating mood.
Would rezoning, though, be necessary?
Its plan, Salem says, no longer calls for burying waste on the land in the county: The idea now is merely to use the land for drainage-control measures.
Big deal, says the county: The land still would be part and parcel of an expanded Mowles Spring landfill.
Litigation, anyone?
Wasting local-government time and resources on silly lawsuits would be nothing new for the valley. Ditto for duplicate (and triplicate and quadruplicate) services and facilities. If one compact valley of 200,000 people and 300 square miles can have four public water systems, three school systems, four law-enforcement agencies, two civic centers, etc., two landfills are of relatively small moment.
But there's a bright side, too. Like Tom Sawyer with the fence that needed whitewashing, the Roanoke Valley has managed to make garbage attractive. In the rest of the country, people try to foist their trash on someone else. The valley, with its jurisdictional jealousies, has managed to convince itself that having your own landfill is a matter of civic pride.
America, take note. This could be the answer to the garbage crisis.
by CNB