Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 20, 1994 TAG: 9401200291
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Sounds gross, right? However, before you start holding your nose, let's take a closer look at that sludge.
Boats with heads automatically polluting our lake? Things get murky when you start asking for evidence. Obviously, in certain circumstances, untreated sewage in water can pose serious health and environmental threats. But large bodies of water generally dilute sewage, and boats discharging sewage (whether through Coast Guard-approved heads or not) do damage only when they congregate in places where water doesn't circulate and fresh water doesn't flush out the stagnant.
In most ecosystems, there are other far more harmful sources of sewage: local sewage-treatment plants that cannot handle the raw sewage when flooding conditions exist, agricultural runoff (cows in the water along the lake's shore), underground septic tanks, flocks of ducks and wild geese, and golfers who walk to the shore to relieve themselves. I believe it's almost impossible to assign responsibility for sewage discharge to one specific source.
I read in the Roanoke Times & World-News that a swimmer became ill after swimming in the lake. A boat was seen in the cove where the swimmer became ill. Were samples taken to determine exactly what caused the swimmer to become ill?
Discharge from boats remains a red flag due to the unpleasant picture it portrays. However, is it fair to compare emissions from boats to the massive discharge from the Roanoke sewage treatment plant when a flood occurs? What about Boones Mill, which doesn't even have a treatment plant but empties sewage into one of the lake's many sources?
Whatever happened to our lake being one of the cleanest bodies of water in the nation? This newspaper's Dec. 5 Horizon section carried a news article by staff writer Cathryn McCue (``The idea was to stop this ... and then they found this ...") that might give us an idea as to what's really making people ill when they swim in our lake.
HENRY E. WIESEN
FINCASTLE
Why not combine I-73, ``smart road''?
INTERSTATE 73 and the f+idumbo ``smart road'' - a logical combination.
For years, I've read with interest about the pros and cons of the smart road. I've been of the ``con'' persuasion until I-73 was proposed. Since both are years in the future as to financing, why don't engineers at the Virginia Department of Transportation and our lawmakers consider the desirability of combining the two projects? Push to have I-73 constructed through Montgomery and Roanoke counties and combine the two as the first phase of I-73.
It would be desirable to have the Blacksburg-I-81 link cross I-81 at the Ironto exit and continue southward to the west of Salem, thus providing a much-needed western bypass of the Roanoke-Salem metropolitan area. I'd consider it very undesirable to have another interstate feeding extra traffic through to the I-81-I-581-Webber expressway corridor with the congestion that already exists.
Eventually, U.S. 220 South will require upgrading, and any money necessary for that could be applied to I-73. I think it should be constructed where it will serve the most people and fill the greatest need. The U.S. 460-U.S. 220 route fits that criteria.
DOUGLAS W. JONES
CHRISTIANSBURG
Bell's no friend of public schools
BECAUSE state Sen. Brandon Bell has decided to propose school-voucher legislation in the current session of the General Assembly, the Roanoke Valley now has a good idea of how much he cares about public education.
School vouchers aren't the friend of public education, and Virginia has had a long tradition of quality public education. School vouchers will put further strain on our already overburdened school budgets and dilute the quality of our public schools.
Sen. Bell has taken on the mantle of Mike Farris, the poster boy for the radical right of the Republican Party. Given the defeat Farris suffered in the last election, one can only wonder why Sen. Bell has taken his current position on school vouchers.
As the chair of the Roanoke City Democratic Committee, I'm happy he's making it easy for the Democratic Party to defeat him in 1995, which will be necessary to protect public education in Virginia.
AL WILSON
ROANOKE
Historic records allowed to rot
DURING the Civil War, a lot of our county and city records were lost. Now historians and genealogists are fighting another battle, to hang on to what records we have left.
There are boxes and boxes of important documents, which were solicited by the Virginia State Archives from county clerks. These are still in the original shipping boxes, stacked in the aisles, inaccessible, crumbling to dust. They've not been inventoried or preserved, as was promised.
We need proper funding to preserve our documents at the Virginia State Archives, and we need to let the public know that this vital information is in danger of being lost forever.
BEVERLY KENNEDY
SALEM
Drug use isn't a victimless crime
I HAVE the solution to the drug problem. And it doesn't involve the giving-up attitude implied in Sydney B. Self Jr.'s Jan. 11 letter to the editor in which he says nice things about legalization (``Drug usage can't be stopped, so let's try to control it'').
Punishment - f+irealo punishment. Make dealing in any drug in any amount a capital crime. In other words, a death sentence for the dealers. That would obliterate the drug problem in less than five years.
Sadly, I'm sure there's not enough moral courage left in these socialistic United States of ours to come to such a meaningful solution. Certainly not in Congress or the executive branch of government, and especially not in the courts.
Incidentally, I wish proponents of drug legalization would visit the special-education classrooms filled with ``crack babies'' who are unable to learn or interact effectively. Drug usage isn't a victimless crime, and legalization will not make the crack babies go away.
DAVID A. BENHOFF
BEDFORD
by CNB