From Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party, Americans are fed up with the “system.” We’re tired of the big government bureaucracy that doesn’t deliver the services we expect; we’re tired of powerful insiders getting the big piece of pie while the rest of us get the crumbs. These sentiments run the gamut of the political spectrum. Be ye liberal or conservative, it seems now is the time of our discontent.
In working with other members of the Georgia Water Coalition to develop our first-ever Dirty Dozen—a list of the most egregious offenses to our state’s water (http://www.garivers.org/gawater/dirtydozen.htm), I was struck by the number on this list that serve as perfect illustrations of our current national discontent:
Rayonier's 50 million gallon a day discharge to the Altamaha turns the river chocolate colored.
In South Georgia, a pulp mill operated by Rayonier has been fouling the Altamaha River for more than a half a century, destroying fisheries and dramatically changing the character of the river. Meanwhile, the government bureaucracy charged with protecting us and our rivers makes feeble attempts to correct the problem.
Thus far in 2011, Rayonier reports net profits of $220 million. But, the angler who lands a bass from the Altamaha can’t eat it because its flesh reeks of the paper mill.
The proposed Shoal Creek Reservoir project in the Upper Etowah River Basin is promoted by the local Etowah Water and Sewer Authority in partnership with the water utility giant, American Water. The company had revenue of $2.7 billion in 2010. Undoubtedly, Shoal Creek would be another revenue stream for the company, but at the expense of endangered fish and river flows for downstream communities.
Plant Hammond uses 590 million gallons a day from the Coosa River.
On the Coosa, Georgia Power has harnessed the river at Plant Hammond since 1954 to generate electricity, but to the detriment of water quality. It still uses the same out-dated, water-hogging cooling system from the 1950s. In 2010, the company enjoyed earnings of $950 million.
Is it any wonder folks are mad? Why is it OK for citizens to get dirty water when companies responsible for the dirty water make billions?
CRBI’s ongoing battle over a proposed 60-acre shopping center on environmentally-sensitive, citizen-owned land in Rome (http://www.coosa.org/issues-actions/hot-button-issues/romes-central-park) serves as yet another indictment of the “system.”
Here, a federal agency inexplicably issued a permit for the project without a public notice or a public comment period. The system worked great for a private developer, but ordinary citizens got the shaft.
Making money is a good thing; at CRBI we celebrate every successful fundraiser. But making money at the expense of the very resources and the communities that provide that income? That’s wrong. We need to right these wrongs and that starts with some well-placed anger.
