Think before selling our water
Attention, Nelson County officialdom, Army Corps of Engineers and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality,
Given the media reporting that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline builders are bargaining to buy Nelson County water to the tune of 10,000 gallons per day for their construction needs, I respectfully request that you take your eyes off the short-term dollar signs (county leaders and servants) and focus on your legal responsibilities for waters protections (DEQ and Army Corps and county officials). Please think for a moment instead of the contamination damage that will occur if the ACP builders are sold all that water and thus compelled to get rid of that same water once they have used and contaminated it in the course of pipeline construction. Can any of you seriously believe it will not wind up in either the Rockfish River and thence the James or, conversely, in the Shenandoah and thence the Potomac?
Can any of you find the moral and ethical courage to prevent such contamination of our natural heritage as Virginians or at least to force the ACP to clean up their mess before it reaches our rivers and the Chesapeake, whatever the costs? The existing dollar limit on ACP restoration and mitigation costs is a cruel joke on nature-loving Virginians and a clear demonstration of the corruption and kowtowing that dominates our state and local officialdom in its dealings with Big Energy!
We deserve better, please.
HOWARD ELLIS
Nellysford
Soccer, Dominion and Gaza
First thing this week is my congratulations to the Nelson County boys varsity soccer team for its great record in district this year. The team with coaches Silas Turner and Pete Farley, both of whom I had the privilege to watch play for Nelson a few short years ago, did a magnificent job of upholding Nelson’s tradition of excellence in “the beautiful game.” I salute you all.
Dominion Energy stockholders should recognize that the market is trying to tell you the company is heading in the wrong direction. Since my last mention of this, the stock has hit a new four-year low while the overall market remains very high. This is not good. If the company abandoned its plans to invest billions in failing fossil fuel infrastructure, like the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and embraced renewable energy sources and battery storage, it would be one of the best buys on Wall Street. Not now though.
Finally, I have thought a lot these past few weeks what it must be like to be a Palestinian in Gaza. Talk about a bad day! I was disgusted as the United States government sided with the most apartheid-minded of the Israeli government and praised the new embassy in Jerusalem even while the most sadistic members of the Israeli Army were using peaceful protesters as target practice at the Gaza fence. I wonder if the oldest citizens of Israel might remember stories like that coming out of the German concentration camps. Did the most sadistic German guards use their Jewish prisoners as target practice? It is up to every citizen of the world to protest this inhumanity. If the U.S. and Israeli governments want to be seen as leading members of the world community, start acting like it. Now you are both an embarrassment to any thinking, feeling member of the human species.
MIKE TABONY
Gladstone
The problem is in the home
Since 2010, the United States has suffered 157 school shootings, of which 15 appear to fall in a “random target” category such as the shootings in Florida and Texas. Between 1970 and May 2018, there have been 367 school shootings, of which 47 would fall in the “random” or “mass killing” category. In comparison, between 1900 and 1969 there were 122 school shootings of which only one falls in the “random” category. In most “random” cases, the deaths and injuries are small in number, but the intent of the killer was to kill, not to locate and kill an individual. Almost all of the killers were boys and men.
The availability of weapons under the provisions of the Second Amendment is a farcical discussion. The concern regarding mental health has been substantiated several times. An interesting fact is that it appears that once a school and the parents have undergone the trauma, it does not reoccur at that school. Guns are still available and kids still have mental health problems. Are these schools now “Alcatraz” prisons to protect their students?
When the trend lines from about 1970 to today are viewed, one must observe the similarity in trend in out-of-wedlock births, divorces, abortions and random-target school shootings. Like our failure as a people to accept the responsibility to govern placed upon us by our Founders, we as a society are failing in our parental responsibility to instill the values of our heritage in our children.
I submit that the reason politicians do not wish to address parental responsibility is that it might cost them votes. We have a societal problem not solvable in the halls of Congress. These are issues solved in the home by parental guidance and unfettered loving care of our children.
BOB DEWEY
Wintergreen