THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 30, 1995 TAG: 9501260018
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
Urban planners use the term LULU, meaning ``locally unwanted land use.''
The major LULUs include nuclear-power plants, airports, toxic-waste dumps, regional landfills and, of course, prisons.
``We're a LULU,'' said John McCluskey, chief deputy director of the Department of Corrections, and the man mainly responsible for finding sites in Virginia for more than 20 prisons - roughly half the present number.
On the Eastern Shore, many Northampton County residents already are fighting a proposed maximum-security prison, though it would employ 425 and the county is among the state's poorest.
Southside and Central Virginia are saturated with prisons, McCluskey said, so he is looking for sites elsewhere, including Hampton Roads, though he declined to say where in Hampton Roads. He's also looking out west in the Roanoke area.
The perfect prison site doesn't exist, he said. It would be isolated, yet have water and sewage connections, good roads and workers and medical facilities nearby.
McCluskey said his department has no list of guidelines to follow in looking for a prison site. ``The minute you start naming your preferables, somebody is going to say, `Ahah! You didn't do that, so you are wrong.' ''
When he joined the corrections department in 1985, he said he'd look for 600-acre sites in a rural setting. ``Now,'' he said, ``if we can come up with 200 acres with water and sewer, we're ready to strongly consider it.''
The difficulty of McCluskey's job over the next decade will depend to a large degree on the state of the economy. ``As the defense industry cranks down and things get tight,'' McCluskey said, ``people who thought prisons were LULUs all of a suddenly think they are not such LULUs after all.''
But if the times prove prosperous, finding prison sites will become all the more difficult.
Once prisons are built and area residents find work in them, McCluskey said, the prisons are viewed less as LULUs, more as area assets.
But expect years of bitter battles, as the old story is played out - not in my back yard! (Acronymically speaking, a NIMBY's a LULU.)
Ten General Assembly members, most from Hampton Roads, are backing a bill to give localities much more say in where prisons are built. The bill was drafted and pushed by Citizens Opposing the Prison, a new group fighting the proposed Northampton County prison.
The bill is a good idea. Gov. George Allen has publicly stated he will not place a prison where the neighboring community doesn't want it. In many cases, probably including Northampton County, local boards of supervisors will make the decision to invite or bar a prison. The more information those boards and all citizens can lay their hands on, the better.
KEYWORDS: PRISON CONSTRUCTION by CNB