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Concerned about air pollutants in light of new law
To the Editor:
While a new law goes into effect Oct. 1 that limits toxins at elementary schools – concerning school bus emissions, bug spraying and paint fumes – it, in my opinion, doesn’t go far enough to include bans or notifications of other pollutants.
Specifically, my concern is the toxins in the air that come from a downtown crematorium, where acids and mercury from lead-based fillings drift towards children at Scotts Creek Elementary and the county residents. What kind of notification procedures are in place for these pollutants?
I never saw any kind of hearing available for the public who are downwind of this crematorium.
There are other pollutants that either need to be eliminated or restricted. I am referring to chemical trails being sprayed by airplanes that occasionally cover all of Jackson and surrounding communities. Never mind the aluminum particles and barium filling the air that we breathe – or adverse radio waves travelling through the atmosphere.
Which brings another pollutant to mind – electrical pollution. Has anyone performed a study on how cell phone antenna radiation is contributing to sickness and disease in Jackson County?
So there are lots of pollutants that need to be regulated or eliminated, not only for our children but for all of us, and it will take North Carolina legislators to stand up against big business and money contributors to make laws that not only restrict pollutants but initiate discovery – and demand evidence that emissions or toxins are not harmful to the health of its state’s citizens.
Kenneth Lee
Sylva
Reader urges support for Democratic candidates
To the Editor:
It obviously is not enough that President Bush and his administration continue to “stay the course” in a no-plan, senseless war in Iraq. American’s are labeled “unpatriotic” if they question the war and the deaths and injuries of thousands of American soldiers. He sarcastically calls the FDR and Truman Democrats today’s “cut and run” Democrats.
As a citizen, it is my privilege to question and my obligation to stand up. Reasoning, intelligent Americans know this country is in deep trouble.
It is time to cut the stupidity and run to the voting booth.
I urge citizens to support Democratic candidates on Nov. 7.
Mary Jo Cobb
Tuckasegee
Wondering about airport’s future
To the Editor:
What’s going to happen to the Jackson County Airport? Is it going to float along as is, is it going to be sold off, or is it going to realize its full potential at last? All citizens of Jackson County should understand its history and potential.
More than 30 years ago county commissioners perceived the benefits of having an airport. The Federal Aviation Administration offered to provide 80 percent of the funds required, provided it was built on Berry Ridge where fog is less likely. Over the years, the county has invested about $400,000 to get an asset worth more than $4 million.
The airport was built despite vociferous protest by some citizens. It is identified as “two-four-alpha” (24A). During excavation, conditions are created that could trigger landslides. An extremely heavy rain occurs. A landslide occurs, taking a portion of the runway with it, but no further slide has occurred in that spot.
An investigation clarifies the need for drainage improvements in two other locations to preclude another landslide. These drains get little maintenance and became ineffective, and another washout occurs.
For 20 years the airport is treated like an orphan, run by a fixed-base operator who is given neither motivation, adequate funds nor leadership to make 24A a success.
Finally, another county commission has the wisdom to create the Jackson County Airport Authority made up of pilots and community members, who, with meager financial support, are challenged to make something of it.
Working without pay, clerical support, or thanks, they work with North Carolina’s Aviation Division to start significant improvements. The runway is resurfaced.
Prior to the Authority’s formation, the very adequate terminal building deteriorated because of a leak in the roof that was neglected. Efforts were started to repair the building. Before it could be repaired, another blowing rain came and dealt the death knell to the building.
Not to be defeated, Airport Authority members, volunteers all, labored on; begging, wheedling – and sometimes using their own money – to improve conditions at 24A, hoping to make it the proud asset it should be. Plans are developed that, if implemented carefully, held promise of not only making 24A self supporting but to generate a profit from which other improvements could be financed, including a park area for the public.
Suddenly the county commission decided to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of local tax money to Macon County so 24A can be closed. They ask the local state legislators to enable a Macon-Jackson Regional Airport Authority to be created, not a favorite airport of many pilots. The legislators, apparently without asking serious questions, promptly obliged the county commission, using seriously outdated and erroneous information. Then they introduce legislation to freeze all monies flowing to 24A. As a result, nearly a year of progress on improvements and $400,000 are lost.
If their intent was to sell 24A, it raises lots of questions. Who stands to benefit from such a sale? What need exists for the proceeds from such a sale?
Shouldn’t there be public hearings about the airport’s future?
If we need money that bad, why not sell our county parks? How much might they provide in the short run?
If in the future an airport is needed, and if a suitable site were found, it could cost five or more times the current investment and more than it could be sold for now.
A major factor in obtaining industry that provides jobs is adequate transportation. High tech industries need fast transportation. The airport is the only transportation advantage Jackson County has. 24A can have major economic benefits for this county ... if it is managed properly.
Decisions made about 24A should be made for the long-term future of Jackson County by competent people.
Furthermore, forget about reduced taxes. Do you really think the state would reduce taxes if they weren’t sending some of it back to Jackson County? The fact is we have gotten a great deal from having the Airport ... we have received about $9 for every $1 we have spent on the airport. That’s a great return on any investment.
Forget about the past. Today is a new day. The only thing that matters today is what the benefits are likely to be versus the cost of getting there. Be sure you vote and vote for people who can get those benefits for all of us.
Fran Webster
Sylva
Webster School touched many lives
To the Editor:
The first Webster School reunion, a gathering of students, faculty, staff, parents and friends of the school – my school – began at 4 p.m. Sept. 23. But long before that, on a day that began overcast and rainy, the traffic into the school grounds was heavy. And then the sun came out, the dense fog that had covered the mountains lifted, and more than 400 of us were there again.
For years we had come from the head of Pumpkintown, Locust Creek, Greens Creek, East Fork, Little Savannah, Gay, Ashe Settlement and Webster, to this place where our lives really began. And now, with addresses like Rhode Island, Washington state, Charlotte and Raleigh, we came back to pledge allegiance to each other and to the place that sent us out into a bigger world than we had ever imagined – a world that was so foreign then to us, but a world that those years at that school equipped us to meet head on.
And we did meet it head on. Webster students went into World War I and to positions of leadership in America’s armed forces, and they went to World War II – that small school sent 146 servicemen, and 11 never came back to the mountains. Some of us would stay near home to farm, work, teach and preach, while others went to Raleigh as governor, to Washington, to Vienna, to Georgetown, Ky., but wherever we went we knew that Webster School – its teachers, its principals and our families – were what had really gotten us wherever we were.
The county consolidated the school with others in 1960 and 1973, but children still run in and out of its doors and play on its ball field because it is now a children’s preschool.
None of us on Saturday was really young, since the last students left 36 years ago. Edna Lewis is 103, and Ila Bumgarner is 102, Major Allison and Bill Collins are 92, and so on, but the day was a reunion, and more of a family reunion than a school reunion. We had grown up together; our parents and grandparents had gone to that school. We knew everyone and were related to most. I graduated with seven cousins in a class of 38; Mrs. Davis taught my father in 1927 and then was my English teacher for all four years of high school.
Saturday was not an all-day, or all-weekend affair – we simply met for a few hours, talked, remembered, wandered the school halls, shared pictures and mementoes. We honored our fellow students, teachers and families, and of course we ate. We honored fellow students, we grasped hands and sang “Till We Meet Again,” and our school song.
Webster School has always been a work of love, and this reunion, too, was a work of love, put together by a group of students, who knew that that love needed to be continued.
When my mother, Kate Moore, left Ellijay in Macon County in a wagon in 1925 to go to the station in Franklin to take the train to Florida, to enroll at Stetson University to study Latin, her father said, “Kate, if you can’t stand on my shoulders and see farther than I have, then I have failed.”
Thirty-one years later she would leave me at the doors of Pfeiffer College. When she drove away she said, “Joe Parker, if you can’t stand on my shoulders and see farther than I have, then I have failed.”
We who reunited at Webster School Sept. 23 have stood on the shoulders of many parents, friends and teachers, and we have seen far. The subtitle for the book on the history of the school is “The Story with No End.” And the story of Webster School will never end as long as there are children who have shoulders to stand on, and their children, and their children, and their children.
The sun slipped below Kings Mountain, and the cars turned on their headlights as they began their trips home from a place that an early principal had referred to as a “light on a hill.”
By 10 p.m. it was pitch dark. The clouds were again low, and it had started to rain.
Joe Rhinehart
Webster
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