Guest Column: People should attend illegal dumping meeting

Guest Column: People should attend illegal dumping meeting


DEE LOVELL
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 01/05/08
It's the start of a brand new year. It's also a good time for city and county elected officials to begin a better era in which their government actions take better heed of the wishes and needs of their constituencies. To paraphrase Republican Gov.Charlie Crist's democratic approach to leadership: "Elected officials work for the people ... They are our boss."
Bravo. Let our city and county commissioners take note and act accordingly. Don't try to pull the wool over the voters' eyes.
Does the St. Augustine City Commission actually think they can get away with a token, in-house solution to a gravely serious environmental mistake? They not only removed contaminated landfill from one historic minority community (Lincolnville) and dumped it in yet another (West Augustine) only to unbelievably now try to repeat the same mistake and bring it back once again to Lincolnville?
How dumb do city officials think its citizens and voters are? The answer is, they apparently seem to be a lot smarter than the commissioners.
Fact: Not one of them seems concerned enough about the racial and human rights significance of this see-saw dumping of hazardous waste in and out of our major black communities.
Fact: The city's initial, illegal and irresponsible dumping of some 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil from Riberia Street to Holmes Boulevard was caught and reported by an alert and often maligned citizen activist. The city was fined a paltry sum of close to $35,000 and ordered by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to remove the landfill from the Holmes Boulevard site.
Fact: The DEP and city's agreement on where they plan to move this landfill is now being hotly contested and legally appealed. Hopefully a court judge or hearing officer will see the folly and fallacy in the self-serving city commissioners' actions.
Fact: The landfill was originally tested by an independent lab that found contaminants including arsenic, pesticides and PCBs and lots of just plain trash which the state DEP said poses "a major to moderate potential for harm."
Community residents of Lincolnville, West Augustine, the city of St. Augustine and St. Johns County are urged to attend a public meeting next Thursday, Jan. 10, at 6 p.m., in St. Paul AME Church, 85 Martin Luther King Ave., to find out what can be done to prevent the state and city's actions.
Representatives of the state DEP, members of the city commission, other officials, community leaders and residents have been asked to participate so that citizens will have a chance to raise questions, seek answers and discuss alternative solutions.
The public is encouraged to attend this open meeting.
• Dee Lovell is a former Baltimore Sun editor and weekly arts columnist for The Washington Post. She transplanted her community activism from Washington, D.C. to St. Augustine five years ago.

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