The following is a letter that appeared in the Richmond Times Dispatch on May 30, 2004. What follows is a response written by me. Editor, Times Dispatch: I am currently in the seventh grade at Manchester Middle School. My science teacher who always keeps us up to date on what's going on in the world of science told us about a bill that Governer Warner recently signed. This bill is going to allow other states to bring more than 100,000 tons of their waste to Virginia each day! And to top that off Virginia is being paid very little for each ton! This waste isn't normal paper bags and plastic bottles - although those are bad enough for the environment. This waste could include harmful materials such as mercury! In other places in the world that are exposed to harmful materials such as these, the people eventually become much less intelligent and many become or are born mentally retarded. I hope these materials aren't in Virginia long enough for us to stop realizing that we don't want them here - Alex Corvin. midlothian. Editor, Times Dispatch: Seventh-grader Alex Corvin is worried that out-of-state trash will affect our health and hurt the environment. I don’t blame him for his ignorance – I blame his teacher and the other problems with our education system. Unfortunately, his teacher has subscribed to the leftist dogma that Man is destroying the environment by disposing of waste products, while the facts show that the air and water have become much cleaner over the last three decades. I am not sure what studies Mr. Corvin’s teacher has used to convince him that people are becoming retarded from mercury in vague “other places in the world”, but Corvin can rest assured that mercury levels in America’s air and food (such as fish) are far below EPA maximums. Mr. Corvin and his teacher are worried about possible environmental damage from trash imports, but I welcome the imports – they bring a stream of income that will help offset the economic damage that will be caused by the General Assembly’s recent tax and spending scheme. In addition, Virginia is offering a value to other states that engage in trash outsourcing: Virginia is using its surplus of modern landfill space to offset the deficit of space in cities such as New York, which has admitted that recycling programs lose money, and so it chooses to export its trash. I am lucky that when I was in the seventh grade, my teachers spent time discussing reality-based facts like mathematics instead of indoctrinating me into the leftist collective using junk science. -Bob Murphy. Richmond