OLD KING COAL
better procedures for issuing them
— and stiffer environmental oversight — could be established.
The state legislature similarly
voted to approve a two-year moratorium last May.
To local critics of the waste
trade, these moves could not have
come too soon, and in 2010, The
Mobile Press-Register hinted at
why: The state was importing
some 19 million tons of trash —
or roughly 7.5 percent of the total national volume. This while
the state itself represents under
2 percent of the nation’s population, and generates just 1.6 percent of the nation’s garbage.
“Alabama is gaining a reputation as one of the best places in
the nation to dump garbage,” the
newspaper declared.
Part of the reason is that local county commissions in the
state have enjoyed almost absolute power in approving landfill
projects. A developer keen on
establishing a landfill has traditionally only needed to convince a
majority of local county commissioners — often a part-time job in
Alabama — to get behind a landfill proposal. From there, a permit
from the Alabama Department of
Environmental Management is
generally smooth sailing.
In more than one instance, developers have been caught greas-
HUFFINGTON
06.17.12
ing the palms of local commissioners to gain their support, but
in many impoverished counties,
the mere promise of economic
activity — any economic activity
— is enough.
The Arrowhead landfill in Perry
County sits at the western end
of a statewide, crescent-shaped
region known as the Black Belt
— so-named for its rich, dark
soils. Rolling prairie, farmland,
and dense stands of loblolly and
shortleaf pine define the landscape, but Uniontown and its surroundings are unmistakably poor.
A smattering of light industry
buoys the local economy, including a cheese plant, a fish processor,
catfish ponds of varying size, and
small-scale agriculture and livestock sales. A full 22 percent of the
population is unemployed, and 40
percent live below the poverty line,
according to federal statistics.
Roughly 90 percent of the population in this part of the county —
about 20 miles southwest of the
county seat in Marion — is black.
In the census block areas that directly border the landfill, the population ranges anywhere from 87
to 100 percent African-American.
Talk of bringing a landfill to the
area dates at least as far back as
the early 1990s, when longtime
county commissioner Johnny
Flowers, who is black, was work-