Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 19:40:02 -0500
From: judyhogan
Subject: Why I do not plan to vote for Mike Cross
Why I don’t any longer support Mike Cross
I’ve read Larry Hick’s post. I speak here as an individual only. I worked hard to elect Mike Cross in 2004, and I worked again for him in 2008 and 2012. I didn’t always agreed with Cross, but I did respect his responsiveness to voters, his serving on many boards, and until the coal ash problem raised its head, he was good on the environment. In our part of Southeast Chatham, he did work to stop three landfills, to do away with terrible air pollution. All the BoC members did vote to have a moratorium against fracking, unanimously, and they did vote not to have coal ash unanimously. My quarrel with Mike Cross and Jim Crawford is taking the Duke money and believing they could not stop the coal ash from coming. Duke was delighted to give money in exchange for their not being able to sue Duke.
Mike did believe that the old Cape Fear Plant’s five coal ash ponds, which are leaking into the Cape Fear River, would have priority in Duke’s clean-up plans, but that is not yet settled. The state sets the priorities. Right now the Cape Fear ponds are at an intermediate level, not high risk, which they should be. There will be a hearing on this classification of the Cape Fear ponds on March 10 at the CCCC Multi-purpose room. My belief is that it would have been better if the BoC did nothing, and then took Duke and/or Charah to court. Those pits they’re even now filling with coal ash, bringing it in both by train and truck, will leak, and they will contaminate the Cape Fear River and all the communities downstream, starting with Sanford. The only question is how soon. Furthermore, the leachate water coming off the coal ash dumps is going to the Sanford Waste Water treatment plant, where the toxic minerals (lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, selenium, and others) will not be taken out of the water but flow into the Cape Fear, above where Sanford gets its water. Also the sludge from that treatment plant normally goes onto Chatham County fields, and the density of the toxic minerals will be greater there. So it will harm crops and get into ground water and streams all over Chatham.
In my opinion, it would have been better for the BoC to have joined the fight the citizens of southeast Chatham are putting up. They are challenging the Dept of Environmental Quality’s permits in court, which were wrongly given. The present NC state administration, Governor, Legislature, and DEQ is forcing coal ash on us. I believe we can change this picture even now. We don’t want coal ash in our air, in our water, from the site, from the roads the trucks travel, from the train lines which go through the heart of Moncure. I have believed in Mike Cross and trusted him. I no longer do. Too many people here are already suffering harm, and there is little the BoC can do to help us now. I am grateful for the moral support here from Karen Howard and Diana Hales. It is good that Chatham County is doing air-monitoring and will check for water problems, but once the poisons are in the air and in the water, it’s a little late. True, the BoC is determined to spend the coal ash money to help us in Moncure, but every time they spend $1 million, it means we’ve had more coal ash dumped here. You must vote as you see fit, but I will vote for Mike Cross’s opponent, Mike Dasher. I will keep trying to stop the coal ash here. I believe we can do it. 12 million tons is a lot of toxic material to bring into a largely low-income community where people have already suffered from earlier pollutants. I also worked to stop those others. I could not stand by and let this happen to me or to my chosen community without trying to stop it. Judy Hogan