"Special interests and huge amounts of money make good people do bad things."
--Senator John McCain, NPR, "Talk of the Nation", Oct 21, 2002
"The waste-disposal industry is a cut-throat industry. They're in business to make a profit and a huge profit." --- Greensboro NC Councilman Robbie Perkins, 6/24/2001
"Those who naively trust local governments to make wise decisions clearly haven't been paying attention." -- Molly Ivens, Political Columnist, Greensboro N&R, July 2, 2005
Politics associated with high dollar schemes like landfills provide vast opportunities for abuse. Officials often just want to have their way with minimal public interferance but when ANY kind of landfill is in a residential area, ALL problems and dangers are magnified many fold. Conditions that might be acceptable in a more remote area are dangerously forced into people's lives.
On Aug 1, 2007 over 137,200 visitors had seen the truth about Kersey Valley on thedumpsite.
You are visitor number to this page.
"SCREENING"...WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
High Point officials said that things going into the unlined C&D landfill wouldbe monitored and bad things removed.
The same officials who said their own material recovery recycling facility was too expensive and shut it down.
The ones who abandoned a cleaner Kersey Valley garbage baling facility in favor of cheaper open dumping.
The same ones whose record brings you BUZZARD, COVER, RATS, DUST pages (click link to see)
and the ones who allow us to show you the items below spilled from trucks before they got to Kersey Valley.
The BOTTOM LINE FROM thedumpsite ----
Either kind of dump has many similar effects on a neighborhood! All landfills should be located in areas of suitable isolation where these known conditions EXPECTED and ACCEPTED as ROUTINE are NO PUBLIC THREAT!
"The truth is, we will not know whether the precautions these landfills take, such as ground liners and so forth, are effective until many years after they close. In the meantime, we should be taking the precautions necessary to ensure the health and safety of surrounding residents especially children in case it turns out contamination is taking place." --- HARRISBURG, Aug. 14, 2001 Penn. State Rep. James E. Casorio Jr., D-Westmoreland,
ASSOCIATION? = Griffin Const. Co., a business associate of MRR, LLC operated Wiley Davis C&D landfill.
It was shut down in November 1999 after being cited by the state more than 30 times. CLICK HERE for story
Kersey Valley landfill has never received a citation from he state in spite of what you see on thedumpsite.
What's been going on at Kersey Valley? And is it still going on at other landfills... like Piedmont Landfill?
"Tom Brown, the mayor of Oak Ridge, has said the local and state regulatory agencies responsible for monitoring the landfill merely act as cheerleaders for Waste Management." --Rhinoceros Times, Nov 6, 2003, "County May Despite Facts"
Around 500 BC, the first municipal dump in the western world was organized at Athens Greece.
"Regulations required waste to be dumped at least a mile from the city limits." --"The History of Waste," Roberta Crowell Barbalace
High Point officials don't seem to have learned much from over 2500 years of landfill history.
their ultimate quote:"What do you expect? It's a landfill!" --- High Point Mayor Rebecca Smothers, City Council Meeting
This last official sure makes it all sound routine, doesn't she? Like something she EXPECTS to find around ANY landfill.
"Politics asks the question, 'Is it expedient?'.... Conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' "--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
KIDS -- THE ULTIMATE SIMILARITY! =
Politicians and others have seized a handy slogan recently for whatever they're talking about, "It's for the children!"
Children of LANDFILL COUNTRY grow up in the shadow of a dump and are affected no matter what kind of dump it is. See the KIDS page HERE
TRAFFIC WEIGHT= Increased volume is not soccer moms going to a grocery store but are 20,000-40,000 lb plus vehicles capable of destroying a road quickly. See TRUCK GALLERY
ROAD DAMAGE=Increased volume + increased weight = torn up public roads.
State taxes subsidize this road destruction, NOT the landfill operators.
ROAD SAFETY= So-called "inert" dry wall jarred from an overloaded truck is hazardous hitting a windshield-- deadly hitting a child. Many trucks have signs "CAUTION STAY BACK 200 FEET" or "NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WINDSHIELDS" Everyone knows this is to try to avoid liability and CYA for what haulers KNOW will happen. There is no control over hundreds of individual haulers' behavior off these sites.
ROAD MUD= 100s of trucks per day on mud slick roads + soccer moms' cars = disaster! It is so bad thatthedumpsitehas 3 web pages covering various aspects of roads around Kersey Valley, HEREHERE and HERE
FACILITY NOISE= MRR officials say they made sound intensity measurements and control site noise. MRR noise often extends 1/2 mile from the site. On the other hand, Kersey Valley noise has been observed over a mile from the facility. We can't demonstrate sound levels but the 4th photo down of Widow Nell raking leaves in her yard speaks loudly about Kersey Valley.
ROAD NOISE= There is no control over what muffler and other maintenance hundreds of individual haulers do away from their site. At Kersey Valley, irresponsible drivers have been videoed purposely "gearing down" their trucks to make them backfire or make the engine rev loudly and.purposely clanging heavy tail gates to jar materals out. This can apply to any landfill.
MORE on ROAD SAFETY= Family cars or school busses that are in this residential neighborhood are no match for 40,000+ pound garbage and other landfill trucks.
DYNAMIC TRIO NUMBER TWO..
UNSIGHTLINESS= High Point officials clear cut trees at Kersey Valley up to our lot line Nothing was left to shield us from a close up view of their dump in three directions from our home.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE AND TRAUMA=The degradation, humiliation, uncertainty of personal and familial safety, stress, noise, and other factors from living in the home at right is clear. The FBI and military routinely use them as tactics to unnerve criminals and terrorists because their effects on mental health can be devastating.
PROPERTY DEPRECIATION= A corallary of UNSIGHTLINESS and the rest.
"There is nothing more detrimental to a piece of property than a landfill."
-Wake Co. (NC) Commissioner Stewart Adcock, Raleigh N&O 5/2001
McCracken and Associates, one of the most prestigious property appraisal firm in North Carolina, did a site specific study of properties around Kersey Valley. They found landfills depreciate nearby properties by 30%-40% and had detrimental effects on property values a mile or more away.
This was in total disagreement with a Greensboro real estate agent hired by MRR who claimed property values actually INCREASED around landfills.
Neither this lady nor any MRR, LLC or High Point official gave any indication they were rushing to move beside a landfill to take advantage of this.
ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE=
Many things can go wrong at a landfill.
~~ Spilled materials, whatever they might be, are washed by surface runoff from site and approach roads. There are no lagoon traps to prevent spread of this environmental pollution.
~~Test wells don't measure surface runoff so they don't tell what or how much reaches the nearest stream. Here, it ALL flows into Randleman Lake.
~~ Test wells merely detect a cancer that has already spread. If a problem is found, then ground water is contaminated. Test wells show the Riverdale dump it and Seaboard are leaking contaminants into ground water and into Deep River. In 1999 an NC Solid Waste report said it will "take over a century" to clean up Riverdale and Seaboard. High Point's Jackson Lake unlined dump has no test wells. Officials have no idea what it's leaking. It wasn't mentioned.
RATIONALIZATION ="the overall risk to public health posed by the two sites is relatively small as long as people do not drink the contaminated ground water and as long as they stay away from the two sites." --1999 State report about public safety during the 100 year cleanup of High Point's Riverdale dump and Seaboard Chemical superfund sites.
How much did the government pay someone for that piece of brain power?
We can safely add Chernobyl and Love Canal to that list without the expense of a "study."
We wrote and told them so. It deserves one of Senator Proxmire's old "Golden Fleece Awards."
How do we stay away when we live here and High Point officials keep bringing more of it?
"As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns.
That is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know. "
--US Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
C&D and MSWF LANDFILL SIMILARITIES
C&D = Construction and Demolition MSWF = Municipal Solid Waste Facility or ordinary garbage landfill
C&D landfills differ in a few specific ways from MSWF landfills but
otherwise pose similar environmental, economic, and sociological impacts.
Would you want your child getting off the school bus to have the opportuity to pick up any of these items?
Kersey Valley screening missed them, what'll C&D screening miss?
MAKE MONEY=THE PRIME DIRECTIVE! Applies to ALL landfills.
Landfill Operators are not generous philanthropists.
"The waste-disposal industry is a cut-throat industry.
They're in business to make a profit and a huge profit."
--- Greensboro NC Councilman Robbie Perkins, Greensboro News & Record June 24, 2001 "Council Studies Landfill Options"
UNREGULATED, INDEPENDENT HAULERS= Landfill business is from different sources. Some controlled, but most is unregulated, independent haulers who answer to no one offsite about their vehicles or loads except the already overworked State Highway Patrol and DMV. See TRUCK GALLERY
FACILITY DUST="Kersey Valley will be developed as a state of the art facility.."
--Perry Kairis, High Point Public Services Director, High Point Zoning Commission transcript It was claimed twice more in this one transcript.
Even if MRR, LLC landfill quality equaled High Point, it doesn't mean much.
The DUST and DUST GALLERY pages illustrate High Point officials' measure of quality.
ROAD DUST=MRR will have no control over, and will deny responsibility for the actions and standards of hundreds of individual haulers away from their site. See "HAULERS" above.
