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Healthy trend
AT A TIME when everything seems so vast and inhuman—from governmental functions to skyscraper designs—it is understandable if individual citizens sometimes conclude that a single voice will never be heard, much less make any difference.
Dcn’t you believe it, and the hearings being held this week in Warrenton and Washington illustrate , the point. Who would have ever believed, not so long ago, that a giant utility like Vepco would ever be called to task on an “environmental” issue, and made to explain itself to a protesting public. Until recently, especially in Virginia, such corporations seldom had to explain themselves to anybody, and rarely got any flap from governmental agencies about anything they wanted to do—from raising rates to bulldozing ugly new powerline corridors across unspoiled countryside. 5 But no more. And as one environmentalist recently noted, neither can governments assume that their actions are not answerable to the public, especially actions that have a radical effect on the landscape.
ROAD ENGINEERS CAN NO longer plan to sla^h straight through between two points, and the devil take the hindmost. No longer can engineers dam up streams just because they want to see what happens (which seems to be the motivatioii in too many instances), and no longer can airports or other vast projects be plopped down in disregard of the public’s desires.
Citizens should by all means speak up when such issues are raised, and it is perhaps most important that they speak up when the prospects seem the bleakest. As we said, who would have thought that Vepco would ever have had to explain itself.?
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