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Rutland Herald Letter to the Editor

Garage is Omya's cat's paw in Danby

May 9, 2006

When I first heard about it, I knew immediately what it was all about. Danby town government wants to build a new town garage. The claim was made that they need a new place to store salt and sand; six miles away from the town center, up in the mountains, not on the way to anywhere, totally unsecure from vandals, uphill from rare protected wetlands, in an area where everyone relies on groundwater with no public water supply — this is the chosen location? Why?

First of all, trucking all that material up into the mountains and then trucking it out again would greatly increase truck traffic, but maybe that is the point. And what turns salt storage into a whole new town garage? Certainly not need. There is no need for a new salt storage shed, and there is no need for a new town garage — all so-called reasons so far presented do not even make it to the level of specious. Perhaps building a new town garage would be more fun than cleaning up their present site. Solving the safety problems with the transfer station does not require a new town garage.

So what is this all about? It's all about Omya.

First thing to understand about Danby is that it is divided into two parts, them and us. Us ("those people up in the valley") is the residents of the valley, Danby Four Corners to Tinmouth, and them is the town government, openly hostile to us ("you people…"). So putting a town garage and salt storage up here would be a thumb in the eye to us, and that is one reason that makes sense. Danby's town budget has doubled in recent years, out of proportion to other towns in the area, so it is obvious that they like to spend money and here is the potential for a half-million-dollar (at least) project to be paid for by Danby's 885 taxpayers.

They have been trying to inflict Omya's new strip mine on us for over 10 years. The recently elected selectman promised to make the new town garage plaything his top priority and has already hired an engineer to plan it. No public process, no citizen input. At the May 4 Select Board meeting, he said that "there is a lot of work to do on this and most can be done off the agenda." Thirteen years ago, when he was road commissioner, he started widening and rebuilding a road that Omya wanted to use for heavy hauling when they opened their new strip mine in Danby; no matter that this road is residential, with houses a mere 20 feet from the road, it was all about what Omya wanted.

The land for this new town garage? Adjacent to Omya's planned mine, donated by Omya with deed restriction limiting its use to town garage only. The new selectman? Works for the marble quarry in Danby which is owned by Omya. Any conflict of interest there?

So what's the plan? You only have to look back four years to the pump test done by Omya that caused wells and springs to go dry for a mile around.

Omya claimed no responsibility for this, making the claim "it was the drought." No matter that damaged residents spent more than $6,000 and endured incredible hardship because of the loss of water.

This, then, is the true purpose of a new town garage, to prepare and industrialize the area so that Omya can come back and claim that since the area is already degraded, their mine can go in and hardly be noticed with its further degradation.

WILLIAM ROSS
Danby