On Sunday, March 16 The Martinsville Bulletin published an article entitled “Boxley Gets Two Awards.” This little apparent attempt at a public relations piece touted their receiving the impressive sounding “Gold Award for Excellence in Community Relations” as well as the “Bronze Award for Environmental Excellence.” No doubt this was intended to plant the idea that this company is doing a wonderful job with the environment as well as having good relations with the community. In the opinion of many of us who live in the surrounding neighborhood, neither is the case.
Our first question was who is the National Stone, Sand, and Gravel Association that presented these awards, and what are their objectives? It turns out that they are basically little more than an industry lobbying group that Boxley is a member of. A quick perusal of their web site (http://www.nssga.org/) was very enlightening. For example their Legislative Action Center link off the home page urges members to oppose H.R. 2421 the “Clean Water Authority Restoration Act of 2007.” One wonders how an organization handing out awards for “Environmental Excellence” could do such a thing.
Their article went on to state “This action potentially would bring all wet areas at aggregate operations under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and EPA, including active silt ponds and waters created incidental to mining.” This begs the question if they are doing such a wonderful job with the environment why are they worried that the EPA may have some jurisdiction? Wouldn’t the EPA give them an award also since these companies are doing such a wonderful job?
Further along in this article at the Legislative Action Center link, it stated, “The line of reasoning used by Reps. Oberstar, John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Vern Ehlers (R-Mich.) in support of the legislation is the need to reestablish the original intent of Congress to ‘restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters.’” Maybe I missed something because I would think maintaining the integrity of our waters was a good thing. Apparently the NSSGA does not think so since it seems to oppose that legislation, yet they hand out environmental awards to Boxley.
This is in our opinion little more than the neighborhood fox getting an award from other foxes for guarding the henhouse and trying to impress people with it.
