Group ponders future after winning 20-year fight
There were no parties, no balloons and no cheering - just questions as a rural Jasper County citizens group talked about what to do after winning a 20-year fight against the construction of a landfill northwest of Carthage on Baseline Road.
The Citizens for Environmental Safety met on Monday at the New Providence Baptist Church, about two miles west of the 640-acre block of land that was the subject of 20 years of debate.
While members of the group seemed relieved that Republic Financial Corp, a Denver-based company, had decided to abandon plans to build a landfill, they remained skeptical and suspicious.
The company announced on Feb. 14 that it planned to sell the land and attach a covenant to the deed that it could never be used as a landfill.
"While there definitely is quite a bit of relief, but we'll be much happier once the property sells and the fact that there shall never be a landfill ever is in the deed as a restriction," said Charimonde Heger, a resident of the area and one of the founders of the group. "We thought we had that landfill stopped three or four times, we've just known we had it stopped, so once stung, you're a little leery."
The meeting lasted about an hour with the committee voting to donate the information, maps and testing it had conducted and gathered to the library at Missouri Southern State University where it could be archived, protected and available for public use.
They also discussed rumors that they had heard regarding the land and the company's decision.
Charimonde Hager told the group she had heard that the company ran into water problems after the heavy rains last year that were too serious to fix.
One of the reasons the group said it opposed the landfill was because the land was the headwaters to Slater Branch, a creek that ran directly into the North Fork of the Spring River, then into the Spring River itself.
They feared pollution from the landfill could spread into Spring River.
The group also talked about what kind of use they would like to see come to the land now that a landfill likely won't happen.
One member talked about a rumor that someone was interested in buying the land to build some kind of operation involving cows, either a feedlot or a sale barn.
