ANONYMOUS made this post on September 11.
"Your comments, People have to get involved and pay attention to what the Board is doing, or what will happen may not be the same county and land we all appreciate so much.
This sounds like you could be talking about the Battlecreek Landfill.
People got involved; People Paid Attention; The county and land are not the same anymore! And like the people have tried to tell you over and over....their voices were simply a distant cry to the Board sitting at that time. At least, the flood plain folks had positive results with the present board. And at least the landfill is back in the hands of the county."
Everybody -- post the history here. Who did it. What did they do. I think this is not over. The landfill is still costing us money. Big money, when you compare it to our tax bill. This is not resolved.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
The following is a quote from a Letter of the Week, in the Page News and Courier in 2003:
-----------------------------------
The current lame duck board seems to be bent on leaving scorched earth behind, as they dump their frustrations in a heap, depositing a legacy that will cost us dearly for years.
After leaving office, the retiring supervisors will sit back with a smirk and blame the chaos on a new board. end quote
The original permit was supposed to last 40 years.
It was designed for up to 250t per day.
The problems began when Page County's Board of Supervisors began altering, tweaking, and revising the contract with the first landfill operator, Tellurian.
It got to the point where no one really understood what the contract actually said.
At some point, the supervisors agreed to allow up to 1500t of trash a day.
It was when the Supervisors began to use the landfill as a moneymaker, that things got out of hand.
Thousands of citizens tried to tell the Supervisors that you cannot use a "DUMP" for this purpose. Especially in Page County, with its mountainous terrain.
Thank you for that information. A lot of times, people vaguely hear in the background that something is going on, but don't really pay attention to WHAT, because they think it doesn't impact them. This landfill has really impacted all taxpayers in the county, because it is taking our tax money.
We don't have all that much property tax money, in the context of our budget. We spend about $60M a year running the county, and only about $11.3M of that is coming from property taxes. Last year, it was only $6.7M
The rest of the money to run the county comes from grants from state and federal mostly, and a little in personal property tax. But the costs of the landfill, they don't get paid back by any state grants. So if we spend money each year on the landfill, it comes directly and disproportionately from each of our pockets.
Out of our measly $11.3M in real estate taxes, we are going to pay down the debt for the landfill ($13M) and the new schools, and the new county office building, and whatever else is coming. So if there are more expenses every year for the landfill, as it continues to lose money, all that money comes directly from our pockets. That's money that doesn't go for good things and things that we want.
I'm just saying, regardless of the past of the landfill, it still loses money. Why can't it just shut down, go away, and send our trash to Culpepper?
Alice
During the time that DEQ shut down our local landfill, the trash was being hauled to another area.
This Friday on the Speak Out Program with J.D. Cave and Jim Turner, please ask the questions you stated above.
Why can't it just shut down, go away, and send our trash to Culpeper?
In fact, please pose these questions to each of the Supervisor candidates that appear on the radio in the next few weeks.
Thanks.
I will ask that question of all the Supervisors.
On the Speak Out Blog, someone posted this link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski150.html
This is the Karen Kwiatkowski article about Battlecreek Landfill. When people first see it, they are shocked. It's been up for quite a while, and even tourists who are looking for rental cabins get it on the list when they look for Page County.
Between that and the Ed Kieloch books, tourists who find these things wonder what is going on here.
What I know about it is this: the landfill did have a contract which would have given the "first" $34million IN PROFIT to the owners. The idea of that was that the landfill would make a profit. At 1500 tons a day, it would have. But DEQ didn't approve 1500 tons a day, and the mountainous roads over 211 couldn't deal with it. Trucks coming from out of state over that road were a hazard, and that hazard resulted in an accident which killed a Page County man.
The key word in that contract was "profit." What harm would it have been to Page County to pay the "profit", if there had been even more profit to come, which would have then gone to the residents of Page County, and which would have prevented us from having our property taxes raised?
So the Supervisors at the time (which included Allen Cubbage as Chair) were trying to make a deal that would provide revenue to the county, and help to lower property taxes. It didn't work out, because the truck traffic, and the DEQ regulations, couldn't bear it.
As I understand it, the contract was NOT illegal. It has been alleged to be illegal, and perhaps it LOOKED unethical. But it was a legal contract, and was formed in the way that many small county landfill contracts are formed. One can argue what one thinks of such things, but apparently this was a legal contract, and yes, the company did have Marvin Bush involved.
So the Supervisors AT THE TIME thought they were trying to do a good thing -- get a company to run the landfill, make a profit, and share the profit with the county, after the first 34M. They did not see the name "Marvin Bush" as the name of a criminal. They actually thought they were being responsible caretakers of the county's tax money.
But after the DEQ shut the place down, and after the truck accident, and after the books were written, and after much citizen protest, in 2005, the NEW Board of Supervisors voted to BUY BACK the contract, and take it away from the company that was going to share the profit.
The cost to buy it back was about $8M, and the costs to get it fixed up to operate in accordance with DEQ and whatever, caused the county to spend a total of $13M, which is now currently on the books of Page County under the category Long Term Debt. Recently there was another million or two added to that, I haven't figured out what for. And every year, the landfill COSTS money to operate, instead of making a profit.
It has a useful life that is shorter than the life of the debt.
On top of that, the number of tons of trash it requires to break even, is higher than the number of tons of trash we can attract to come to it. As in, no other county wants to bring their trash here now.
So instead of a contract which would have eventually allowed us to share in the profit, we have a landfill which costs us money every year, serious money, with like six zeroes behind the number, and no state or federal grant will help us pay for that, so it comes straight out of our real estate taxes.
Jim, you mentioned that you could not find the numbers about the landfill. I figured that would happen. I looked for those numbers, too. I have part of them, in the audited financial statements of the county over the last ten years. It's on my To Do list to ask C R Suddith to help me understand what I'm reading.
We have a county budget that sat around $35M for years. In the last four years it has ballooned to about $56M. That's not because of the landfill. But what is it because of? There are landfill costs in there somewhere, and they are not profits, they are losses. What more do we have now than we had four years ago? It is next to impossible to understand the budget from publicly available documents. I tried to explain this to the Supervisors in a public hearing before the budget was passed, that no one can understand what they are passing, but their response was condescending, and in some cases, defensive.
I'm not finished with finding out what that budget means yet. It might take me another year, but I will keep on it. At least, I'll know before the NEXT Supervisor's elections.
So, yes, there is still a problem with the landfill. The problem is that it is now a net cash eater, when the Marvin Bush contract was intended to make it a net cash generator. Given, it was a bad idea all around. It doesn't work. Trucks on 211 is bad news, especially large, interstate trucks.
Hope none of those have to come barrelling into the new Salyards place.
This is a lot to digest. It touches on why we don't have more business here (the roads prevent it). It hits both the last Board and the present Board. And it is a very complex and complicated issue. But it is one we have to get to the bottom of and solve before peace returns to the valley.
The taxpayers of Page only pay $11.3M in real estate tax, even after the big increase. We can't ADD to that a new jail, new county office building, new schools, and a yearly loss on the landfill, without turning Page into Rappahannock and making it a place where only people with money can live here.
Alice
Yes, Alice, this is a lot to digest! One of the most important things you said is that it was a bad idea all around. It doesn't work. Trucks of this magnitude on 211 is bad news, especially large, interstate trucks, due to our mountains. Well, when Allen Cubbage was negotiating this under-the-counter deal, the MOUNTAINS WERE STILL THERE!!!!!!!! Anyone, with common sense, knows you can't increase truck traffic to that level. And no profit, of any size, is worth having a life taken in such a way as our local resident, Dwight Sour's life was taken. He died under a truck load of trash. Wake-up Alice. And why are you defending Allen Cubbage so much?
Anon, thank you for telling me the name of the man who was killed. You are right. There is no amount of money or potential money that would ever have been worth taking the life of Dwight, and dealing such a shattering blow to his family.
My husband thinks the TV news is anti-George W Bush, and I think the TV news is pro-George W Bush. When we hear things, we all tend to over-hear things that are "against" our side, and tend to believe that we are hearing MORE of the things we disagree with.
I'm trying to present balance in the picture, and approach the Blog with both sides presented, to the best of my ability. If the Blog JUST posts one side, the people on the other side will say, "Oh, that Blog is PRO-the other side, and I'm not going to participate." So if there are a lot of ANTI postings, I'm tring to throw in a PRO posting, to keep from losing readers. Also, because I don't want the Blog to be a source of rumor, I want it to be a source of Information.
Also, I think Allen Cubbage didn't go on the Board until 1995, and the contract was in place in 1988.
So I want to be sure that rumor and innuendo are not the only thing that is out there for citizens to know. Rumor can be false, mistaken, and distorted. Rumor usually is based on a grain of truth, but then that truth gets distorted, like in the game of "telephone" and it turns into things that are not true at all.
While I as a person will vote and make my selections, this Blog and Page County Watch are attempting to be neutral and fair to both sides.
Chris says Thanks alice for not crucifying Allen like so many mistaken people have some people just need to go by the facts not rumors.There's alot that can be learned by the facts.
Post a Comment