Dayton Daily News
July 20, 2003

COMMENTARY

Neighbors battling VX plan

By Mary McCarty
Dayton Daily News

What could the U.S. Army have been thinking?

When it came to disposing of a byproduct of VX nerve agent near rural Newport, Ind., the Army conducted two exhaustive environmental impact studies whose combined heft would give Crime and Punishment some competition.

But when it came to shipping the neutralized nerve agent to Jefferson Twp.? Nada. Not a single page.

No homes are within 2 miles of the Indiana plant that has been storing the nerve agent for the past decade.

People live across the street from the Perma-Fix plant in the Jefferson Twp. community of Drexel, where the Army has proposed shipping the nerve agent.

"What are we, chopped liver?" asked Ellis Jacobs, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society of Dayton and the lead attorney in the lawsuit filed Thursday against the Army in U.S. District Court. "They examine Indiana in great depth and they don't even mention this community. Do they think, 'We'll just skip it, and maybe nobody will notice?' "

But people did notice, and they have put together a remarkable grass-roots coalition that just might succeed in blocking the move.

Environmental racism has become a hot-button issue in recent years, making it all the more surprising that the U.S. Army would exhibit such a flagrant double standard.

"It is devastating," said angry Jefferson Twp. resident Mary Johnson. "There is a trend all over the United States for a lot of these sites to be located in low-income or minority areas."

Although clearly passionate about the issue, Jacobs has become circumspect in his words since filing the lawsuit. But he will lay out the numbers:

Newport, the town closest to the Indiana facility, has a population of 578 people - 2.6 miles away. Drexel has 2,057 people, some living yards away.

Ninety-eight percent of the population in Newport is white; it has no blacks. Thirty-five percent of Drexel's population is black.

Nine percent of Newport's population live in poverty, compared with 33 percent in Drexel.

If the Army figured that poverty equals passiveness, they figured wrong. Residents have galvanized legislators and community leaders from all over the region and every political persuasion.

Rep. Mike Turner has pressed the Army for answers about its definition of "community acceptance." State Sen. Tom Roberts and state Reps. Arlene Setzer, Fred Strahorn and Dixie Allen have lobbied against the proposal. Eighteen governmental bodies have passed formal resolutions opposing the plan.

Only Centerville, Englewood, Kettering and Oakwood haven't weighed in. "We're trying to take a very objective look at this," said Centerville Mayor Sally Beals.

It's hard to imagine the Army trying to sneak something like this past any of these communities. But if it were their neighborhood, how strenuously would they need to study the matter?

"They thought this would be a snap," Johnson said, "but they got the pit bull by the tail."

In other words, never underestimate the power of community.

And don't be too complacent about where you will find it.