CATCHING UP from Murph

Several posts back, I wrote a piece about the battles we are fighting in this community with the county commission over ground water quality and septic systems. This is an update for community action people that have issues with the bigshots trying to ram policies down people’s throats.

I left off in that post with the second of the 3 public meetings with the commissioners. We packed the house again for the third meeting. The people that did not have a chance to make presentations at the last meeting got their chance this time around. It was very much the same. Retired professional people in all kinds of related disciplines to the issue put up data and research showing that the commission and its staff were wrong. We also had a lot more of non professional citizens get up and present also, all of them thoughtful and articulate. Three hours of this. The commissioner that had insisted that we could never get the community together on this was dumfounded and snuck out after the meeting, not talking to anyone. The commissioners even had a police escort home after the first meeting because they were afraid of someone getting violent. Three meetings and not one word of encouragement or agreement with the county. Score one for our side.

During these three weeks of meetings we had representatives from our community action committee attend every single other meeting the commissioners held and all the other agency meetings pertaining to this issue. At one of them, they approached some of our people attending and asked if they had come to beat up on the commission again. They were told that they hadn’t seen anything yet.

In the 1 1/2 months since the last public meeting, we have learned a whole lot of additional information that indicates they have even more plans for our area that is not to our liking at all. So, our community action committee has reorganized. We are now a county action committee to cover more issues than septic and ground water issues, and are covering the whole county. Our emphasis and focus is currently on the septic/ground water issue until it is resolved, but there is so much more to deal with also. Two of the commissioners are up for reelection next year. They are showing a great deal of nervousness. They have been informed that recall may be on our next agenda.

We have gotten registered with the IRS so we can collect donations legally. We have officers and the whole kit and caboodle needed for this kind of action. We have put on retainer an attorney that will take on legal issues for us. We are appealing to other legal professionals to work pro bono. Believe me, there is all kinds of irregularities we have dug up that this group has been indulging in. They did not count on such heavy opposition and they have now got a big can of worms to deal with. It promises to get a bit messy at this point.

We had a Saturday meeting with the Republican Representative to the State. He expressed that he really didn’t want the state to get involved in this issue since they had enough problems to deal with. We informed him that if this commission didn’t back off, the state would get involved. We informed him that he better put out the word that we were dead serious and going to fight this all the way. We found out that he promptly had a meeting with the commissioners and the DEQ (which had done the original data collection on wells) and so far, the commissioners have delayed voting on this ground water issue. They originally were supposed to vote the end of March, it was put off to the end of April and now it is on indefinite hold, presumably until they finish getting the rest of the study data in and to regroup. Meanwhile, the county action committee is gaining members, getting some money in and we had a county wide meeting on the 15^th of this month sponsored by the citizens’ action committee to decide how we want to proceed. We had about 300 people in attendance.

Now here is a kicker for you to consider. All of the people that started this whole citizen’s action are women. They are the ones putting in 15 hour days and attending every single meeting that affects us at the county level. Since the very beginning, this group has held the high ground and they are adamant that we continue to do so. They have made no mistakes, they ask for advice and information, and these women have my full and unqualified support, plus, they are really nice people. The rest of the men in the organization feel the same way. These women have been elected by unanimous decision to the offices of the group. They have formed a relationship with the state DEQ personnel and it appears that they are on our side. As we gain strength and support of more elements of the county, we are to be a force to be reckoned with. Our aim is to enforce transparency and honesty in the politics of the county. No more of this ‘good old boy’ crap and special interest power bases.

In the meantime, one of our members and researchers has turned up that this whole thing was started in Washington. It appears that a lobby group for the big corporations dealing with septic systems wanted a national standard for individual systems; there are millions at stake here. Congress approved a national study on this issue, wherein our area was one of three. This area was picked because the ground water is of such high quality and, incidentally, was also the poorest of the three locations. Of the total of $10 million allocated for the study, $5 million was for this area. Where we were under the impression that the beginning of this was local politics, but, we find out that the local politicos were only taking advantage of the situation. It appears now, that the whole agenda, locally, revolved around tax revenues. If they could get this part of the county to develop into vacation destinations for the wealthy, the tax revenues for the county would increase dramatically. It appears that driving out the lower income and retired people with this septic issue was one way to accomplish this.

Meanwhile, yours truly and many others are researching alternatives to the local rule proposals that the county tried to ram down our throats (alternative methods of removing contaminants, they do exist), other sources for nitrate appearing in the ground water, the community affects of this proposal (there is a moral issue at this time), the lack of political transparency, lack of public notification on the issue in the past and getting together a group of qualified people to review every single part of the data and science that prompted the county proposal.

So far the community has truly rallied around this issue. It is one of the most interesting community actions I and Freeacre have ever witnessed and we have been involved in these kinds of actions for a great deal of our lives.

I am writing this post about how this action committee is doing because, I want to emphasize that if there is sufficient interest at a local level, you can do something about bureaucrats running roughshod over the citizenry. I say, give the women a chance (except for Hillary) at a local level and you might get a real pleasant shock.