Friday, September 4, 2015

What do you do?


What do you say to a Board of Supervisors who, except for one (Thank you Supervisor John Beard for being open-minded and educating yourself about our lack of real local decision-making power), will not even consider a fresh approach to local law-making? Frac sand mining is being forced on us. As are CAFOs.

The overwhelming majority of citizens are saying "We don't want this here! Here's why and here's how we might be able to keep it out." The response from Supervisors Thompson, Logsdon, Ashbacher, Kuhn: "Our hands are tied. There's nothing we can do about it. Sorry. Try contacting your state representative."

Other elected officials have taken a deeper look at our fixed regulatory system and decided there IS something we can do. Pittsburg PA and Mendocino County CA have successfully banned unwanted hazardous industry, along with nearly 200 other communities across the nation.

Threats are high, but actual legal challenges by industry and state are well under 10% of all adopted rights-based ordinances. Why so low? Because it's a hard argument to sell in America... that community majorities do not have a right to decide their fate or that of the natural systems they depend on.

So what do you say? What do you do? It's clearly time to elect some folks who are willing to step outside of the box-of-allowable-harm and stand up to this madness.

No comments:

Post a Comment