Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 26, 1991 TAG: 9103260464
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B4 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: BLAND LENGTH: Medium
At least one of the four supervisors had second thoughts about the project, and blocked formalization of the land sale for the incinerator.
Caselin, the firm that plans to develop it, already has paid the Bland County Development Corp. for 5 acres in the industrial park and has an option on 5 more.
County Attorney Willard Lester had prepared a partial release on the property and the supervisors were scheduled to accept it at their meeting. However, two of the supervisors - Chairman Fay Lambert and George Schaeffer - also are members of the development corporation that operates the industrial park, and Lester said they should abstain from voting.
So the vote ended in a tie, with William R. Ramsey voting for it and Gary Nelson against it. Nelson said he was having second thoughts about the incinerator, even though the board earlier had authorized a letter supporting the project.
Now County Administrator Gary Cutlip cannot sign the release until the board takes further action.
"We told the people this morning that no action would be taken. . . . I think it would leave a bitter taste," Nelson said. He wanted the vote postponed until another meeting is held on the incinerator.
Ramsey said the board told the group it already had sold the property, and this was merely making the sale official. Nelson was unmoved. The petitioners already had left the meeting.
"Those names were accumulated in approximately the last 36 hours," said Tony Brizendine, a spokesman for the group calling itself Citizens Aligned for Safe Environmental Development. "Most of the people who signed this just want a good public forum."
The petition asked that the supervisors delay further action on the project until after such a forum can be scheduled.
"I thought we had already gone through the process," Lambert said. A public hearing had been held after Mike Perkins made the proposal, and drew only a few people. "I feel that we've taken the necessary steps to alert the public to it," Lambert said.
"When Mike first came to us about this, it was an open public meeting," he said. "Mr. Schaeffer went to Charlottesville to view a medical incinerator there at the University of Virginia."
He said he had no problem with another meeting, but the state Department of Waste Management and Air Pollution Control Board would be holding further hearings on the matter, anyway. He said the board planned no action on the project at this meeting.
"The decision, the public hearings, that's still to come," Schaeffer agreed. "The board's not voting on anything today."
"It's eased my mind on it," Ramsey said of Schaeffer's report.
"I guess the thing that really convinced me on it . . . if you go back and look at the communities that have hospitals, they have medical-waste incinerators," Lambert said.
Brizendine said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is coming out with new standards for such incinerators, but "if an incinerator goes in now, it goes in under old EPA standards." He said Tennessee, Kentucky and Pennsylvania have placed moratoriums on incinerators.
The group's visit at the start of the meeting also prompted Ramsey to call for a public hearing on a proposed asphalt plant at Rocky Gap.
The Air Pollution Control Board has an application for such a plant but would not schedule a hearing unless the supervisors asked for one. Despite assurances that emissions would be controlled, Ramsey said, he felt people would want a hearing on it as some do for the incinerator.
The supervisors also learned that the Wythe-Bland Recycling Committee would hold an information meeting at 7 p.m. April 8 at the courthouse.
by CNB