Preservation in the News

By: Jennifer Calhoun 

LAUREL HILL — About 50 environmentalists from Scotland and Richmond counties gathered at the Laurel Hill Community Center on Tuesday night to listen to the activist who brought national attention to Love Canal, a toxic waste dump in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

The event was part of the eight-county tour called Don’t Dump on Us: Keep North Carolina Healthy.

The tour, which is sponsored by a coalition of local, state and national environmental protection groups, calls on lawmakers to keep large, commercial landfill companies out of the state and establish a statewide solid waste policy that includes recycling programs.

It began in Winston-Salem on Monday and ends with a rally in Raleigh on Aug. 20.

Lois Gibbs, the former stay-at-home mom who discovered that her Niagara Falls neighborhood was built near 20,000 tons of chemical waste in 1978, spoke at the event.

Gibbs, who is the founder and executive director of Center for Health, Environment & Justice in Falls Church, Va., encouraged attendees to keep out landfills by staying politically active.

“The only way to stop them is to get political,” Gibbs said.

“It’s important to take part in the democratic process. These decisions are almost always a political decision.”

The tour began two weeks after state legislators passed a law that would make it harder and more expensive for landfill companies to build in the state.

The bill adds a statewide disposal tax and increases the number of hoops a waste management company has to jump through to obtain permits.

The decision was important to Scotland County environmental activists, who had been battling to keep out a large commercial landfill since 2005.

Earlier that year, the county’s Board of Commissioners had been approached by a solid waste company wanting to build a 400- to 500-acre solid waste dump that could have brought the county about $4 million in annual revenue.

Bob Davis, co-chairman of the environmental group Scotland County of Tomorrow, said he was pleased with the General Assembly’s decision.

However, he said, the fight is not over.

“Our goal is going to be to keep folks aware,” he said.