Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 6, 1993 TAG: 9303060267
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
BOUCHER GETS QUESTIONED ON WASTE DISPOSAL
A Floyd County activist stood up at a Radford town meeting Friday with Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, and held up a map of Virginia covered with red dots.Landfills, said Pete Castelli, head of the regional Citizens Clearing House for Hazardous Waste. Sludge. Waste sites that need cleaning. Waste sites that accept out-of-state garbage.
"We're under attack," he said, between questions about Social Security and health care. "I'm concerned that our future looks like dumping and burning."
Boucher said he is sponsoring a piece of legislation that would allow local governments to determine whether to allow outside waste into their landfills.
"But what if the citizens disagree?" Castelli asked.
Boucher said the move would allow localities the control they need and desire and that local governments answer to the people. "He's lying to you again," Darlene Wilson, a Wise County activist, told the crowd. She says she will follow Boucher from town meeting to town meeting until he gives her an answer on the legislation issue.
Wilson, who has formed a group called "SOAR: Save Our Appalachian Resources," says government is looking at landfills and incinerators as a way to boost local economies.
Boucher said he believes firmly in recycling, but it will take more than that to dispose of Virginia's trash. He said he has not promoted incinerators as a way of dealing with that trash.
Wilson, meanwhile, is criticizing Boucher for accepting campaign donations from coal companies or companies that are related to waste disposal.
And, in a letter she released at a town meeting in Dickenson County last month, she asked that Boucher either return those donations or resign from the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Transportation and Hazardous Materials subcommittee.
She also accused Boucher of working for the waste industries.
"That's absolutely absurd," Boucher said later. He said that while some waste disposal companies may prefer his legislation to other proposed regulations, they certainly aren't happy with it.
And he said, too, that he received campaign donations from a number of environmental groups.
"If my bill passes, the counties will be better off because local governments can ban waste from coming into the state," he said.
Wilson also criticized Boucher at Friday's meeting for facilitating Virginia Tech's liaisons with agencies that he should be regulating.
In the past, she has said she feared that Tech would be influenced by the groups that pay for their research. Tech professors have categorically denied those claims, saying their salaries come from the university and that their research is scientific and unbiased.