Editorial from November 29 edition of Monroe Journal

Committee decision to support landfill was wrong

Last week a committee appointed by the Conecuh County Commission recommended that the construction of a controversial landfill in the county would be safe. This recommendation is wrong. It has been proven by studies that landfills will eventually leak.

If not for the promised windfall for Conecuh County from the proposed landfill, the landfill would not stand a chance of ever being approved by the Conecuh County Commission.

When considering whether to allow this landfill to come to this region we hope the Conecuh County Commissioners will consider that enough damage has been done to our environment through other venues over many, many years.

Recent evidence that global warming is actually a major problem and could threaten our very existence if it goes unchecked has many people eager to do what they can to put the brakes on this runaway train.

We agree that Conecuh County is an economically stressed county as is most all the counties in southwest Alabama, but indications are that this could change soon.

The world’s largest steel mill will be constructed over the next two years in north Mobile County and other industries are starting to look south of Montgomery for sites.

Instead of choosing to allow Conecuh County to become well known as the county with one of the world’s largest landfills, we’d like to see the Conecuh County Commission do the right thing and reject the landfill development.

It’s time for the Conecuh County Commissioners to do what they were elected to do – serve the people by doing what is best for the people and the county they live in.
Conecuh’s commissioners should forget the landfill and place more emphasis on a more worthwhile project – the development of a recreational reservoir. They should exhaust every avenue possible to secure the funds to conduct the environmental survey that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently approved.

This lake/reservoir could be the economic salvation that Conecuh County’s leaders are looking for so it should be priority No. 1 – not whether or not to allow the nation’s largest landfill to be constructed.

Conecuh County has survived many years of hard economic times without a multi-million dollar landfill and the people of Conecuh County will continue to find other ways to beat the economic woes.