It’s ludicrous to suggest that we can get several new employers into Curwensville which will expel 0 particles of pollutants. The “Citizens for a Clean Curwensville” group is pitching this. A few are advocating this extreme environmentalist position by misusing scary sounding quantities of nasty sounding words like “dioxins” and “heavy metals” to create fear in our hearts.
If a new industrial plant emits 5 parts/million of a particular pollutant and the acceptable and safe level of this pollutant is determined by environmental agencies to be 25 parts/million, then it doesn’t appear that this increase in emissions is that horrible. It certainly wouldn’t justify demonizing a modern state-of-the-art ethanol plant to keep it out of our town.
Many of us think that it is reasonable to accept more emissions than we have right now because 5 major industries/employers have disappeared from our town during the past 20+ years. The emissions that will be produced by Sunnyside’s operations have been determined to be well within safe levels by the governing agencies that specialize in these things, so what’s the problem?
We certainly can use jobs; we also could use the tax base of a new $300 million facility. Do you want to shell out more $ in RE taxes in order to bail our town out of debt, and to replace our 50+ year old school facilities?
Sure, we should be making continuing efforts to secure low pollution employers, but ask yourself – while in competition with every other town in PA – what is the possibility of our community securing 6 new businesses within a few years, with each one constructing a $50 million facility (with no pollution) to make up for the tax base that we would be losing? A wonderful notion – unfortunately, an idealistic and irresponsible pipedream.
John Wright
Curwensville
