By Art Perkins It's another year and another anniversary is past - the 15th anniversary of the opening of the 304th Street landfill. The dump is still open and accepting garbage five years after its "promised" closure, but then nobody involved in its opposition believed at the time that the county fathers would actually keep that "promise." Their assessment of the collective character of those who profess to serve the public was all too accurate. Trucks still enter and leave the landfill in droves, but now they're more brazen in their driving habits, as if they owned the county. Perhaps they do. Homes and pastures still occupy the surrounding area, but now for the most part they've fallen into disuse or disrepair, their owners long since having given up their pride of ownership. Rarely is the roadway clear of the mud and dripping leachate that they leave behind. The southbound driver who tops the crest of Graham Hill can no longer avoid the sight of the anticipated Mount LeMay, and when it rains, the enormous black tarp glistens like a polished mirror. When the sun shines, it stands out even brighter, threatening to dominate with in-your-face ugliness the once-beautiful valley in which it stands. The driver who must drive past the dump itself is assaulted with the stench of death as the reeking process of decomposition proceeds without end, day and night, year in and year out. Most of us who dwell in the area have learned to live with the mess that the county has forced upon us against our collective will. We turn our heads in the other direction as we drive by, and automatically limit our intake of air to shallow breaths. We think of better things than the certainty that the irretrievable pollution of the groundwater in the area is only getting worse and more extensive with each passing day. Are we sad about the situation the betrayal that created it? Of course. Having lost the 15-year battle that preceded the opening of the dump, are we losers? Absolutely not. We who participated in the fight can hold our heads high, knowing that wer focused outside ourselvds in a cause that was right, because it was in opposition to the evils of greed and destruction. In that sense, the fight itself, regardless of its outcome, inevitably directed our characters toward the selfless nobility so intimately connected with the godly natures of our country's founding fathers. For that we should be thankful. Perhaps we have sorrow over the outcome, but our sadness is nothing compared to the misfortune of those who controlled the outcome and thought that they had won. It is they who are to be pitied. They must contend daily with the knowledge that their characters were not developed, but terribly and irrevocably stunted by what they did and didn't do regarding the dump. One wonders how the members of the County Council can live with themselves. What did their money buy them, other than greedy children who are clamoring for more? They may vacation on lush and beautiful tropical islands, but as they look out on breathtaking scenery, they also struggle against the gray and bleak knowledge that their lives are ultimately worthless, that when they die they leave the earth as parasites as memorable as simple bacteria, their god of self-meaningless in the hereafter. This same pity must be extended to those who, in their failure to engage in the fight as they were called upon to do, also betrayed the public trust - the feckless officials of the county health department, the various state and federal environmental protection agencies, the one-sided media, even the judges who rolled over and played dead when confronted with evil people intent on appeasing self. We should weep for them all. Is is they who, by losing their souls, truly lost far more than we who fought.
Art Perkins is an Eatonville resident.
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