Walker County Council Meeting: May 1st

After the point-man for the Brownfield Grant

unearthed for us just how sick the soil

at Chickamauga’s shuttered Crystal Springs

Mill, which is itself an Eden still

compared to the old steel plant in Rossville

down the road, the County Development

Committee still had the nerve to request

that the rest of the 80-acre tract out back

of Lafayette’s Noble district be rezoned

as industrial turf—more jobs was the blurb.

In the 10 minutes cleared for neighbors

to defend what pasture they’ve made

of their lives, Bobby Baker bleated

concerns about his 300-foot well as well

as his children, and Nina Gilstrap asked

where, with predominantly South-facing

wind, all that pollution was certain to blow.

But then the poison is slow, and more

information must surely be gathered

to adequately cloud our vision

before we make so rash a thing as

an obvious decision, so why not

take a beat and reconvene at next month’s

meeting, everyone oil their part

of the machine so that at least

we can sleep through its coming?

L.R. Harvey Poetry