Two developers were recently appointed to Buncombe County’s Environmental Advisory Board. The press sees this as “controversial.†One, Robert Jolly was involved in the building of Asheville’s Super Wal-Mart. The article addressing the controversy talks about groundwater contamination and other environmental concerns during the Wal-Mart construction process. Wal-Mart purchased a site with perchloroethylene plumes (of debated toxicity) in the ground, left by the former owner of the site, Sayles Bleachery. Wal-Mart paid to clean up the mess rather than applying for state or federal funding. Certain anti-Wal-Mart people only publish that the site was toxic, falsely incriminating Wal-Mart. After no endangered species could be found to stop construction, and an environmentalist drove a bulldozer into the construction, Wal-Mart ended up dedicating a park with a walkway around the site. At one point, consideration was given to an affordable housing requirement for the retail development.
The other appointee is Mike Summey. Summey is a very wealthy real estate investor.
Evidently, one learns more in the absence of challenges to preconceived notions. Diversity is good and so is democracy, but only when they stack the deck with more of our kind of people.
