THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 9, 1994 TAG: 9412090010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A22 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 39 lines
What happened between June 1993, when you took an editorial stand against locating a large state prison on the Eastern Shore, and Nov. 13, when you touted a 1,267-inmate, maximum-security facility as the salvation of the Shore?
There'll be benefits, you said, if we agree to house Virginia's most dangerous people. The prison will purchase food supplies locally, we've been told. You can drive for miles over here and see nothing but cotton, soybeans, winter wheat and industrial farm-grown tomatoes destined for commercial packers. What local food supplies? Oysters? Crabs?
Jobs for unemployed locals? A Department of Corrections official has told us that seniority transfer from other prisons will take some of the jobs; that if local people wanted to work at a prison on the Shore they should have been in the system two years ago. A former co-chairman of the Governor's Commission on Defense Conversion and Economic Adjustment has told us that the state looks at prison-guard jobs as a good way to transfer workers from the military to the ``private'' sector. How many jobs does that leave for locals?
We're already living with the reckless behavior of one state agency, the State Water Control Board, which has overpermitted withdrawals to exceed the water available from this community's sole-source aquifer. Where will the 200,000 gallons per day for the prison come from?
I see benefits for the ``rest of you,'' who want to dump the most dangerous people somewhere out of your back yards. I think, however, you were right in your first editorial: ``The Eastern Shore isn't a good place for a large state prison.''
M. E. MILLER
Eastville, Nov. 30, 1994 by CNB