Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Unhealthy air from planes, trains, buses: Killing Fayette’s sacred cows

Recently Peachtree City was included in a survey of the most livable cities in the United States. Positive characteristics mentioned were decent schools, affordable housing, a low crime rate and access to various cultural attractions.

The most egregious deficiency noted was the quality of the air in the city and the county of Fayette. One might think the air quality in Fayette County would be no worst than the air north of Atlanta. Yet the survey indicated otherwise. Something is causing the degradation of the air we breathe.

Fayette County is a bedroom community that is home to many families with young children as well as middle aged and older adults. On a typical day one may find many people outside walking and running along the various trails, playing soccer and baseball as well as working in yards or playing a game of golf. These are all healthy activities taking place in an environment of unhealthy air.

Fayette is not the home of heavy smokestack industry, significant manufacturing facilities or other pollution producing enterprises. So whence comes this gathering gloom that we breath so deeply? Perhaps the various sources are just up and around the bend.

Fayette County is the home of many employees working for various companies related to Hartsfield Airport. One of the major flight paths coming from Hartsfield goes directly over Fayette. Airport employees may see dollar signs when they look above and see the source of their livelihood roaring in the blue skies. But in reality, each year, decade after decade, thousands of aircraft spew noxious vapors upon the unsuspecting idyllic communities below.

Puncturing the sound of roaring jets aloft is the deep rumbling of the CSX’s behemoth diesel engines huffing and puffing along ribbons of steel. The romantics among us may perceive the lonesome whistle and the clickity-clack of steel on steel as a pleasing interlude to a promising evening of memories yet conceived but there is nothing romantic about the invisible menace spewing from these engines.

Ah, but these diesel engines are just part of the story. Surely you have noticed the trailers stacked upon the railroad cars as you patiently wait for the train to pass. Eventually these trailers will be dismounted and attached to engines morphing into those ubiquitous 18-wheelers barreling down the interstate highways.

The utilization of both trucks and trains in transportation parlance is called intermodal. The confluence of these modal units occurs at the CSX Intermodal facility located in Fairburn, just a bit northeast of Fayette County.

Most, if not all of Fayette County’s school buses burn diesel fuel. Each day thousand of our children inhale the noxious pollutants from these buses. A Yale University study found children on diesel-powered buses might be breathing 5 to 15 times more particulate matter than children not on buses.

The people of Fayette should demand that these entities responsible for polluting the air take steps to reduce toxic emissions.

The airlines, trucking and railroad industries should voluntarily convert their engines to utilize clearer burning, less polluting fuels. The airline fight patterns should be altered to utilize space over less populated areas during the critical low altitude take-off period.

The Fayette County Board of Education should replace diesel-burning buses with cleaner burning natural gas buses.

The rest of us should cease making unnecessary trips with our cars and SUVs.

Fayette is a pretty nice place. Let’s make it even better by demanding those responsible for the degradation of our air to take steps to reduce toxic emissions.

Fayette citizens should contact their county commissioners informing them of our opposition to the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. This tax would be used to encourage the use of more pollution producing automobiles and trucks. The commissioners should instead ask the citizens of the county to support additional taxes to replace the diesel-powered school buses and to lobby the trucking, railroad and airline industries to clean up the filth they are pumping into our air.

It is true that airlines, SUVs and so forth are “sacred cows” in Fayette County, but the time has come for a few of these cows to be slaughtered. Come November, we the people should walk to the polls and vote down SPLOST and vote yes for a more livable environment for our children and ourselves.

r. j. desprez

Tyrone, Ga.