Record Breaking Day

As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.

Proverbs 25:25

Thanks to an excellent letter to the editor by Mr. Frank Martin of Evington published in today’s (Aug. 19) Lynchburg News & Advance this site has experienced a record shattering number of views today! A LOT of people read that paper. Our email inbox at faces@post.com is also filling up. Look at the existing location, do you want this? A picture is worth a thousand words so for the most part we let the photos and video do the talking, but we do want to say thank you to Mr. Martin. His letter states:

Quarry matters
On July 28, the Campbell County planning commission held an open meeting on heavy industrial zoning request for a tract on Virginia 24.

Many people spoke against it, and all except two planning commission members voted against it. Two of the people who spoke in opposition were from Fieldale. One handed cards with a Web site listed, http://fieldale.wordpress.com.

I would suggest all interested persons check this site. I would hope all of our supervisors would see this before their next meeting. It shows many things presented by the company asking for the rezoning are not true.

It may even make the two planning commissioners who voted for it feel a little guilty. Of course, we all know, if it were within a few miles of them, their votes would probably have been different.
FRANK MARTIN
Evington

We replied in the paper’s comments section:

Evington is such a beautiful community it would be a shame to see it raped like Fieldale has been and still nobody does anything. Once it is there you are stuck for generations and “grandfather clauses” are never ending. I encourage the people there to remember it is not done yet, stay united and keep fighting.

We are far from done, things are in the works and with careful planning will soon bear fruit. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” The harvest is coming.

“He raiseth up the poor out of the dust” Psalm 113:7

Oops They Did It Again

Same Stuff, Different Day. More of the same from the neighbor nobody wants. Here is a quick clip of more dust you should not breathe being spewed into the air all over the highway on Carver Road.  On youtube there is a link to watch in higher quality. This is what it will be like day-in, and day-out if you fall for the con & let them in.

Boxley DEFEATED In Evington - It Can Be Done

“be sure your sin will find you out.” Numbers 32:23

http://tinyurl.com/6eexny

http://www.wset.com/news/stories/0708/539473.html

Billy Squier sang “Everybody Wants You” but he apparently was not talking about a Boxley quarry. Why wouldn’t everybody want one?? As reported in the article below, over 200 well-informed citizens of the Evington, VA area packed a public hearing on a proposed new quarry in their community on Monday night. It appeared that even more people had shown up, but the room was already filled to capacity.

First of all, we congratulate the people of Evington on their marvelous victory!! The organizers there did a brilliant job of organizing their pro-community effort. This is an inspiration to our people that it can be done. Goliath can be defeated. This was a major moment in the history of FACES and moved the execution of our plan forward another step.

Three members of FACES attended the meeting and two of them spoke to the packed auditorium about the situation here in Fieldale. We were also seen briefly on WSET news. We passed out over 150 business cards that include our website and email address, however the word was already out. We are happy to say that in some small way FACES was able to help the people of Evington by providing them with photos, videos, documents, and information including some from this website . During the weeks leading up to Monday night’s hearing this website hit new highs for viewership and a lot of those hits came from people in the Evington area looking at the documentation shown here so they could go into the meeting informed and prepared. Judging from the number of hits today those business cards worked really well. As the X-Files said, “the truth is out there”. The “good neighbor” con doesn’t seem to sell these days. Could it be that seeing video, photos, and documents concerning an existing location speaks louder than an expensive corporate con-job? How you treat the community where you already are will tell the facts. So go ahead & throw some more donations around & print a little newsletter to tell everyone how great you are - blah-blah- “neighbor”-blah-blah. If you are so good for a community why does nobody want you??

“People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbours.” ~ Edgar Watson Howe

You didn’t fool Evington & you aren’t fooling us.

Warning Avoid Breathing Dust From This Product

According to the back of receipts issued by our “good neighbor” and “environmental steward” Boxley you should “avoid breathing dust from this product”. Easier said than done. “Like a good neighbor” Boxley shares their dust with the community as you can see from the video filmed from the community ball field where children are supposed to play, to the back of the field is a church and you can see homes in the video - sorry it’s a little shaky but having this in your residential community will do that to you. We’d hate to live near a bad neighbor or a poor steward of the environment. Don’t you wish you had it so good? Whatever happened to “love thy neighbor”?? Check out the link on the youtube page to view in higher quality. Maybe Boxley can Huddle with Sarah for some more PR soon. It is easier to see through their PR than it is to see through their dust.

June 11, 2008 Boxley Blast

Watch as the dust spewing from the quarry in our residential neighborhood obscures the area. Click the view in high quality link on the youtube page to get a better view. More is coming soon including some surprises.

FACES Now On Youtube

FACES members have been working on converting our video into a format that can be viewed online in decent quality. Hopefully you will be able to view the attached test video. If this test is successful we will be posting a lot more video in the very near future. If the video is slow you can pause it until it fully loads or you can replay it and it will not skip on the second playing. Email us if you experience any problems viewing the video. Thanks for all of your messages of support.

The Emperor’s Same Old Clothes

“Ye shall know them by their fruits.” Matthew 7:16

Of Words and Deeds

FACES recently reported that Boxley’s Fieldale plant had received the “Bronze Award for Environmental Excellence” from the National Stone Sand and Gravel Association - see our article “All That Glitters Is Not Gold” found on this site for more information and analysis

As reported in the Martinsville Bulletin on Sunday March 16th 2008, Page 3-C: “Corporate stewardship is the cornerstone of our business philosophy at Boxley,” said Ab Boxley, president and CEO. “We are citizens of each of the communities we serve and our employees take pride in enhancing quality of life through community service and environmental stewardship as well as providing the region with quality aggregate.”

From reading Mr. Boxley’s comments we thought we’d do some further investigation into environmental stewardship. Scripture tells us “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” so one way to see how valued environmental stewardship really is would be to follow the money.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics at www.opensecrets.org, a search of Abney S. Boxley’s name appears to reveal 9 donations made between 1999 and 2008 to Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA-6th District) amounting to around $5,000 total by our calculations. Certainly Mr. Boxley has every right to donate to whomever he chooses. There is nothing wrong with that. Also, one would suppose that a man of his earnings and family wealth probably does many good things. Our analysis here is of a specific nature. Does Mr. Goodlatte who gets annual donations including $1,000 per year in 2005, 2006, and 2007 along with another $500 thus far in 2008 represent Boxley’s stated cornerstone which includes “environmental stewardship”? What about Representative Don Young of Alaska who seems to be a favorite of a few Boxley executives? More about him and maybe some others will be in a future article. For now let’s focus just on Mr. Goodlatte here in Virginia.

According to the League of Conservation Voters website located at http://capwiz.com/lcv_stage/bio/keyvotes/?id=604&congress=1102&lvl=C Mr. Goodlatte has a ranking of 0% on environmental issues for the 110th Congress. Maybe that was a bad year, how about the 109th Congress in 2005- 2006. Nope, 0% again for Mr. Goodlatte. Although to his credit he got a whopping 3% for the 108th Congress in 2003-2004. You can click on the individual items of legislation at the link to learn more. References will also be provided at the end of this article.

Maybe this rating is from some “tree-hugging” or “anti-business” group. To be balanced let’s check with Republicans for Environmental Protection and see how Mr. Goodlatte rates with a group that is obviously not some bunch of hippies. According to this group’s website found at http://www.rep.org/scorecard.html:

Mr. Goodlatte rated a zero in 2007 and an average of 5 from 2005-2007. No other Virginia congressman who was rated received below a 13 average. This means that even Republican environmentalists rate Mr. Goodlatte lowest in the state on environmental issues by a fairly wide margin.

Mr. Goodlatte also appears to have opposed worker protections from combustible dust. See here for details http://unionreview.com/house-passes-combustible-dust-protections.

Mr. Boxley also donates to the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association and their Rockpac which we will possibly look at in a future article as we search for more environmental stewardship. Mr. Boxley gave them $1,000 per year in 2006 and 2007 according to opensecrets.org. Hey, that name sounds familiar. Didn’t the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association give Mr. Boxley that environmental award? Now, isn’t that interesting? Coincidence? We won’t say. You decide.

When this information about Mr. Goodlatte is combined with the other pictures and information found on this site do you feel that this represents the espoused environmental stewardship? Or do actions speak louder than words? That is for you the reader to reach your own conclusion.

We leave you with this quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln:

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong it’s reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

Lincoln is believed to have said this in 1864, are the emperor’s clothes really new or are they still the same old thing?

We Get Email… And Make One Correction

The following email has arrived in our mailbox at faces@post.com. We will edit out the sender’s name and email address for our reply, the rest is word-for-word.

From:
To: <faces@post.com>
CC:
Subject: facts not right
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 19:52:47 -0400

---

99% not right , one picture of uncovered truck ,the truck is covered . This sight is a joke , the rocks in the road are washing off road side . I don’t know how long you have lived there but you should know that on that hill. I have never seen rocks blown off a truck before either . GET A JOB AND QIUT BEING SO BITTER . putting someones picture on here is against the law you are slandering those company’s you should be careful setting up on your hill . I care too , but get it right. Sounds personal . must have couldn’t done your job some where.

End email.

Our reply:

First of all we will stand corrected in that the one truck passing Skip’s Restaurant is apparently covered. We acknowledge this error and apologize for it. When we are incorrect we will admit it. The photo in question was immediately removed. Thanks for pointing that out.

As to the rocks washing off the hill, we must disagree. The rocks shown are in the road just past the white line at the end of Carver Road and the others are along the sidewalk curb on the Patrick Avenue side of the same area. These are clearly gray gravel and are not washing off Carver Road into the roadway, also there are no such rocks along the curbside. There were two huge, deep rock spills from trucks in recent months as mentioned in the article. One was right near Skip’s at between 7:30 and 8:00 on a weekday If we can get decent video captures off the tape we will post them.

As for a job, all of our members already have jobs and we aren’t bitter. It is not against the law to take photos of traffic in the public highway. We honestly thought that one truck photographed was uncovered and have acknowledged the mistake. We have nothing personal against any of the company’s and none of us have any connection to them past or present.

They Will Rock You

A few weeks ago FACES received several reports that the Virginia State Police had received at least 4 complaints about rocks in the road causing problems for motorists around the area of the Boxley quarry including cracked windshields. This is nothing new in the area. There is a large number of uncovered trucks leaving the quarry uncovered and spilling gravel into the roadway, especially when making turns from stop signs or going around curves. Last winter FACES communicated with state Senator Roscoe Reynolds about the piles of gravel that had laid in the intersection of Carver Road and Patrick Avenue just above Skip’s Restaurant for months. We are told that VDOT is responsible for cleaning this up - at taxpayer expense we might add- but Lisa Price Hughes of VDOT was shall we say “less than helpful” in our opinion when contacted and said they could not be bothered to clean up “every 3 or 4 days”. So if someone has an accident or gets their vehicle damaged perhaps you can thank Ms. Hughes for her lack of concern. If a rock flies up and hits your windshield is that just your hard luck when all these trucks are spilling rock? What defines a “public nuisance”?

Thanks to help from Senator Reynolds VDOT finally got the mess cleaned up last winter after much effort to push them to do so. Senator Reynolds also helped to arrange a meeting between FACES and the Virginia State Police, however the problem with uncovered trucks is continuing mostly unabated. In the last few months there have been two very large gravel spills- one near Skip’s Restaurant and one in the curve at the underpass on Carver Road. These large spills did get cleaned up rather quickly, probably at taxpayer expense.

FACES has decided to start taking photographs of uncovered trucks and publishing some of them. Today we feature 3 trucks who drove uncovered through the intersection of Carver Road and Patrick Avenue during a period of approximately 45 minutes on Friday afternoon May 23. There were some others but unfortunately those photos did not turn out. Hazelwood Trucking of Stuart has the distinction of having 2 of the first 3 published uncovered trucks. Does Hazelwood cover any of their trucks? At this time we will not publish any photos showing license tag numbers, but if the problem persists we might in the future. FACES members will continue to photograph and videotape these trucks as we see them.

Update: An email has pointed out that we were in error concerning the truck picture passing Skip’s restaurant and that the cover was apparently in place. The photo in question has been removed from this posting. This was an honest mistake which we  apologize for.

An Open Letter To DEQ Concerning Water Withdrawal

Editor’s Note: Amounts from documentation obtained from the Department of Environmental Quality under the Freedom of Information Act appear to indicate that Boxley Materials withdrew a certain amount of water from Jordan Creek between 2000 and 2006. FACES made numerous attempts via both phone and email to substantiate the accuracy and interpretation of what is shown in the DEQ files with 4 DEQ personnel. Planned articles for this website have been delayed while attempting verification. Finally upon one DEQ manager’s declining to answer in writing and answering, “I would assume so” by telephone, we decided to write this open letter to DEQ. This letter is requesting verification of information in a government entity’s files and makes no statement or claim that the amounts questioned are correct until officially verified.

Original email of April 17^th to DEQ:

Dear Ms. Stephenson:

I am trying to correctly interpret the information that was sent to me via email in spreadsheet format by Wanda Bowman from your office on December 11, 2007. In viewing this data it appears that for the year 2005 that Boxley withdrew 27.47 million gallons of water from Jordan Creek and their sand plant withdrew another 7.12 million gallons during the same year. By these calculations that would mean that a total of 44.6 million gallons of water was withdrawn by the combined operations of Boxley and their sand plant in 2005. (Editor’s Note: This amount was a typographical error it should read 34.59 million gallons, we left it unchanged to keep the original email as is) Is this correct? It was my understanding from speaking with DEQ employees during a FOIA visit to your offices that this water was withdrawn from the creek with no requirement that Boxley have a permit to do so. Is this understanding correct? It is my assumption that once the water is withdrawn it is used by the company and therefore no water would be left over to be put back into the creek. Is this understanding correct? If any remainder of the water is somehow put back into the creek I would have other questions concerning this process, but at present I assume all water withdrawn is used unless notified otherwise. Please respond via email, we want to have verification of a correct understanding of this procedure and need an official comment from the DEQ.

Thank You,

Fieldale And Carver Environmental Society

The Open Letter:

April 30, 2008

An Open Letter to:

Department of Environmental Quality

3019 Peters Creek Road

Roanoke, VA 24019

Dear Sirs:

I represent Fieldale And Carver Environmental Society. One of our goals is to provide the residents of our community with accurate information about issues of concern to many residents. For the past few weeks we have made numerous attempts by both phone and email to substantiate, fact check, and ensure the accuracy and interpretation of what is reported in some documentation that we obtained from your department. We would like to publish educational articles and fact sheets that provide accurate information to our community. It is our understanding that the DEQ is the Commonwealth’s regulatory authority and source of record of these matters. In a previous request emailed to Mr. Joseph Hassell requesting a written comment he declined to respond in written form. We have previously corresponded with Mr. Hassell and 3 other DEQ employees in attempting to get verification of the correctness of our interpretation of the data we received from DEQ. Therefore we ask that someone from DEQ please read the following statements and advise us in writing via mail within a reasonable time period as to any inaccuracy in the following statements:

We reviewed a water withdrawal record for Jordan Creek covering the years 2000 through 2006. The records indicated that a “sand plant” started being reported in 2003. This plant’s addition apparently increased Boxley’s water withdrawal from an already interesting quantity of 12.12 million gallons in 2002 to 19.2 million gallons in 2003 and 17.03 million gallons in 2004. In 2005 the amount increased to 34.59 million gallons for that year. The numbers reported for 2006, the last year available at the time of our visit, returned to 17.4 million gallons. It appears that beginning in 2003 consumption had increased by an additional 5 million or more gallons per year above and beyond the 2002 reported consumption. The records appear to show that the total amount of water that Boxley consumed from Jordan Creek during the years 2000 through 2006 was 124.46 million gallons of water. It is our further understanding that due to “grandfathering” Boxley is exempt from the regulation found in chapter 210 of the Virginia Administrative Code and therefore this water is withdrawn without a permit. We have not been advised that this withdrawal of water from Jordan Creek is subject to any regulatory oversight. We also understand that these reports consist of amounts that are reported by the company themselves without any independent regulatory verification.

Thank You,