Chapter: Rolling Bluegrass

Last night hundreds of residents came out to Scott County High School, filling up one side of the gym. Residents came to speak about proposed changes to the Scott County Waste Management Plan. The residents in Scott County have been fighting an expansion of the landfill, and the Scott County Fiscal Court is now considering changes to the plan to reduce future waste stored there.

Resident after resident mentioned the impact the existing landfill has had on day-to-day lives – air quality concerns, breathing concerns, dangerous traffic conditions, and repeated offenses by the landfill regarding environmental violations. As the county continues to grow, and waste from other communities is shipped in, the current situation cannot remain the same.

For more than a year, KFTC has worked with allies to protect the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission’s (ORSANCO) mission to clean and protect the Ohio River through monitoring and enforcement. This commission, made up of representatives of the federal government and 8 members states (New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois) of ORSANCO maintains pollution control standards that are higher than the EPA or state enforcement agencies.

While these standards have not solved the Ohio River’s pollution issues, it has made considerable progress since the founding in 1948. Yet some political appointees in ORSANCO want to make these essential standards optional for states to enforce, giving states the ability to ignore damage to our water systems that disproportionately impacts lower income people and people of color across the region.