Cdliorial

Cdliorial

An imperfect world

The landfill site selection committee is right: There is no perfect site for solid waste disposal in Rappahannock County.

There’s a built-in drawback to every location - it’s going to be next door to somebody.

But we live in an imperfect world. In landfills as with everything else in life, we have to make the best of what we’ve got. And the best of what we’ve got, after a search from one end of the county to the other, is the Stover tract.

So maybe we should follow Joseph Addison’s advice and “dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections.”

The Stover tract is 90 percent wooded. A landfill located on either of its broad ridge tops would be invisible.

The site has good access. It’s just a half mile from Route 211 — a dual-laned highway designed and intended for heavy traffic, trucks and otherwise - on state-maintained Route 639. Obviously, this graveled secondary road will require improvements but the Virginia Department of Transportation may pay for half the cost of the upgrade.

Preliminary soil tests conducted by committee members on the ridge tops found clay and no rock, good omens for a positive evaluation from the experts who will examine the site in detail.

Opponents say a landfill shouldn’t be located in the Amissville area because Jackson District is seeing more residential development than the rest of the county’s magisterial districts. Put the dump where there are fewer people, they maintain. But it’s people who produce trash. An argument could be made that the disposal site should be in the same place as the trash producers.

But there are better reasons for choosing a site in this general area. i _n __ _ u u „ ^ _v_%. Rappahannock’s best chance at a regeneration faciHtyir<

There’s general agreement that the county should get out of the trash burying business at the first opportunity. Turning trash to energy is an attractive solution to two problems: what to do with garbage and how to lessen dependency on foreign oil and non-renewable domestic energy sources. But it’s an expensive proposition and will take a tremendous capital investment, a huge trash stream and a buyer for the energy generated.

We have none of those three components. The only possibility for little rural counties with big trash problems is to participate in somebody else’s trash-to-energy program.

We look in any direction and the closest we see such a facility is Prince William CAunty. The project is only in the early planning stages but it has the necessary elements.

It’s Rappahannock’s best hope for an alternative to landfilling. Should such a plant come on line, trash would have to be collected and sorted for hauling and the sterile ash leftover after burning would have to be brought back and buried. A landfill in Jackson District just off Route 211 would give us the shortest and easiest trip.