Dear Editor:

As a physician and a resident of Troup County, I am solidly opposed to the Turkey Run solid waste landfill. There is voluminous scientific evidence from unbiased and highly qualified sources showing that it would not be a good thing for the health of this community.

Waste happens. But the way we deal with it reflects our character and affects our health. A trash-ridden neighborhood is a sure sign of hopelessness and lack of self respect. Similarly, a poorly planned solid waste dump implies lack of foresight and lack of respect for future inhabitants of the area.

Landfills are unfortunate but necessary. They contain all the stuff we didn’t reuse, recycle or compost. By their very nature, they are undesirable and can be dangerous to people and wildlife that live around them. Building one requires a permit from the state, ostensibly to address the need for it and to document the conditions under which it must be built and operated, all of this for the protection of the surrounding environment.

Why am I concerned? Won’t the Federal government protect us? Don’t count on it. Yes, there are Federal laws, Sec. 4001 Subtitle D of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976. But the EPA (the Federal agency) relies on states to enforce these laws. And the state Environmental Protection Division, which was already struggling, had its budget cut by 1/3 in the last year! According to Lon Revall, a manager at the EPD, “When there are cuts … we’re not out there to make sure it’s being done right.”

It is highly likely that if Turkey Run Landfill is completed there will be inadequate monitoring of operations and any permit violations will be have to be discovered by vigilant local citizens. There is precedent for this: significant permit violations have occurred in Hawaii, Virginia and Maryland. In each case local citizens, not state officials, discovered and documented the violations and fought for enforcement of the law. In each case it took years of local activism to get the attention of authorities.

In August 2008, in response to local opposition to Turkey Run Landfill, our LaGrange and Troup County leaders conducted a brief review of the GA EPD’s permitting process. They came back with important unanswered questions: 1) Are the State of GA standards for the siting of landfills and setting of operating conditions adequate for this day and age? 2) Does the GA EPD have the staff capacity to adequately monitor construction and operations of the landfill? 3) What is the plan for the leachate? They were told that the leachate processing component of the project did not even have to be defined in the permit application. To my knowledge, these questions were never satisfactorily answered and yet the Turkey Run Landfill project moves forward.

I can only presume that Turkey Run is a triumph of politics and power over science and reason. It is not even needed, as there is already enough space for years to come in local landfills. Its location is famously ill-advised: the watershed of a tributary of West Point Lake. It is a certainty that the landfill liner will eventually leak and spill leachate into surrounding soil and water. And it’s a known fact that the government agency charged with monitoring GA landfills is understaffed and underfunded.

Two final questions: Why would we even take a chance of harming our local populace and environment? Are local leaders acting in our best interest by not fighting this project? For the health of our community and in the name of common sense, this landfill should not happen.

Margaret D. Schaufler, M.D.

LaGrange