WV-DEP is Becoming an Instrument of Industry

New DEP is using W. Va. as industry dumping ground
 
Letter to the Editor, Charleston Gazette-Mail, March 19, 2017
 
The article by Ken Ward, Jr., titled “DEP eliminates protections for noise, light from natural gas facilities” shows how much the government of W.Va. has its middle finger up to the state’s citizens.
 
It has been pointed out many times that Lincoln’s phrase “government of the people, by the people and for the people” has in practice become “government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations.”
 
West Virginia’s fate since the Civil War has been to be an internal resource colony for the American economic engine.  Our difficult topography has been an excuse for lack of other development than the extraction of salt and hydrocarbons and production of chemicals. Generation after generation has been kept relatively ignorant and worked literally to death – particularly before the mine wars.
 
There have been a few bright spots around Morgantown, Huntington and our other college towns. But, traditionally they have been more like routes out of state.
 
Protections against industry have been hard won, the result of a great deal of labor, and widely appreciated among the electorate.  What does the new DEP have in mind?  Using the environment and the people who live there as a dumping ground for industry to avoid the legitimate cost of their initiatives?
 
If the government officials want to show good faith, they might want to make a point of living downstream of this new heavy industry before their pollution is spread all over the countryside. 
 
Mr. Austin Caperton, the solution to pollution is not dilution!  Particularly when it is the bodies of West Virginia citizens that have to absorb it!
 
S. Thomas Bond, Retired Professor (Chemistry) and Resident Farmer, Lewis County

Tagged as: air pollution, industrial disturbances, night light, noise, public health, WV-DEP