Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 21, 1995 TAG: 9510230036
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKY GAP LENGTH: Long
In between Hogback and Rich mountains, just a few miles from the West Virginia border, lies a quiet valley named after Wolf Creek.
Not much happens here - Melinda Belcher's cows sometimes get loose, the creek floods now and then. Even the traffic on the interstate that runs the length of the valley becomes a gentle hum in the distance. Residents hardly hear it anymore.
Leverett and Peggy Trump retired here six years ago, Peggy being a native of Bland County. They picked a pretty spot, with a small field, some woods and a stunning view of Hogback Mountain.
About the same time, an out-of-state company called CaseLin Systems Inc. was choosing a site three miles up the valley for a business venture that could net it millions of dollars - a medical waste incinerator.
The Trumps' peaceful retirement has turned into a part-time fight against the garbage burner.
"It's the worst possible place for it," Leverett Trump says. At 3,000 feet, and surrounded by ridges, the valley is prone to thermal inversions. Fog - and sometimes smoke from distant forest fires - gets trapped, like air pollution from the incinerator would, Leverett Trump says. "It just gets in there and stays for days."
Belcher is the Trumps' neighbor. She would be the closest dairy farmer to the incinerator. She worries that chemicals would drift down onto her 150 acres, where her cows graze, and contaminate their milk.
"It scared me because this is my livelihood," says Belcher, one of the most outspoken opponents of the incinerator. Dairy farmers, who test their milk every time it's picked up, are watched more closely than the incinerator would be.
"That's what got me. They're going to check these boys once a year," Belcher says. "And this is really gross, but you think about what they're going to be burning. There is going to be a smell, and it is going to drive people away."
CaseLin has applied to the state Department of Environmental Quality for a permit to burn 40 tons of hospital gowns, syringes, body parts, bloodied sheets and other infectious waste every day, most of it from out of state. Most residents of Bland County don't want it. The Board of Supervisors doesn't want it. Even the county's two General Assembly representatives, both Democrats, have grave concerns about it. Residents have made trips to Richmond, testified before legislators, signed petitions, written lots of letters - done all they can, in other words, to heed Gov. George Allen's call for Virginians to take an active role in government decisions.
At a GOP fund-raiser recently in Roanoke, Allen re-emphasized that "local control" works best. "That's just a fundamental belief - that we can trust people locally."
Opponents of the incinerator say the governor doesn't seem to trust people in Bland County. In keeping with the administration's focus on economic growth and job creation, the state recently loosened its rules to allow the incinerator, they say.
"I want us to be a pro-business state, but not to the point where we jeopardize the health and welfare of our citizens," says Sen. Jack Reasor, D-Bluefield.
He thinks Allen's two appointees to the five-member Air Pollution Control Board tipped the scales to change the medical waste incinerator regulations to favor industry.
Not so, says one of those appointees, Michael Harrington of Lynchburg.
"I think the question comes down to, where do you strike the balance?'' says Harrington, president of Harrington Corp., a manufacturer of pipe fittings. Everyone on the board has a "sincere desire to protect the environment, coupled with the desire not to excessively restrict the state in moving ahead with economic development. You can't just simply operate in a vacuum."
When CaseLin first proposed the project, the county had no zoning and little power to bar the burner. Opponents looked to Richmond, but the state had no regulations for standards specifically for medical waste incinerators. With four other applications pending for similar burners across the state, the General Assembly imposed a moratorium on permits until rules were developed.
The DEQ formed an ad hoc group, with industry, technical, environmental and citizen representatives, which came up with standards in 1993. The Bland County opponents supported them as strict enough. Reasor says he was told by DEQ at the time that the CaseLin permit would not pass muster under the rules.
But a law enacted in 1993 delayed adoption of the rules, giving the Allen administration a chance to influence the process. Emission standards for particle dust, carbon monoxide and other pollutants were relaxed, as were several design and operation requirements, such as operator training and certification.
The new regulations adopted by the air board are based on "sound science" and will protect the environment and public health, Secretary of Natural Resources Becky Norton Dunlop said. Technical experts at DEQ thoroughly examined and documented the safety of the burners, she said.
"I understand that some of these issues are very emotional," Dunlop says. "I just think that, frankly, sometimes emotion carries the day on environmental policy and sound science gets, frankly, thrown out the window because it is more exciting to focus on controversy than the scientific evidence."
A legal dispute between CaseLin's principals over another joint project, a landfill in Page County, could mean the incinerator won't be built. Still, opponents say they believe the state skewed the rules to favor the company over their health and environment.
"I was raised to believe the government would take care of us. I hate to say it, but I've lost faith," Belcher says.
Molly Thompson, a longtime Republican and vice chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors, is behind Allen on most issues, but parts company on environmental policies - and especially on the incinerator.
"I really wonder if he knows what it would do," she says. "Should this come to Bland County, then I think all of Virginia needs to be aware of what is permitted. If we get one, you can get one, too."
by CNB