Anyone can do a countdown of the year’s biggest stories. Only SouthsideCentral can get away with counting down the year’s biggest horsecrap stories. We went from #6 to #4 in Part One, so let’s find out Who’s #1!
And now, on with the countdown…
#3: Selling Danville Utilities – This one is going to drag into 2015 as the consultant study won’t be ready until the 1st quarter. The Utilities Steering Committee continues to meet and learn more about what Danville Utilities is all about. By the way, we’ll have the next committee meeting LIVE! on Monday. Anyway… let’s talk about it. Danville Utilities contributes $9,000,000+ to the city’s general fund every year. Danville needs that income stream to avoid a massive increase in property taxes. If you assume a 3% annual rate of interest income, that means Danville would have to get $300,000,000 in a proposed sale. (There would be cost savings if the utility and the employees were sold off to whoever buys it, but let’s keep it simple). The book value of Danville Utilities is less than $200 million. Investor-owned utilities like AEP & Dominion aren’t going to pay $100,000,000+ over the book value of what Danville’s got to sell. These Utilities Steering Committee meetings have been great for people to learn the inside workings of Danville Utilities, but the end result is already written. The consultant’s report will say “You’ve got nothing to sell worth $300,000,000”. The idea of selling Danville Utilities sounds great, but it’s horsecrap.
#2: The “Purge” Rumors – “We can never be too careful.” Yes, you can. You have to think rationally and realize that George Washington High School will never become an apocalyptic battleground that resembles a bad movie.
“But it could happen!” A meteor could smash into GWHS but we haven’t built Giant Force Shields to deflect one yet.
“I got a recorded phone call from the GWHS principal saying that a gun was found on campus!” No, you didn’t. You’re lying.
“Somebody told me that they heard that somebody said that somebody saw…” Oh for the love of God. Stop spreading rumors.
Yep. the terrorists won that round. School was completely disrupted that day because a few bad students figured out a way to play on the hysteria of stupid people who spread rumors. If you haven’t figured it out by now, absolutely nothing bad happened. “The Purge” was total horsecrap.
All righty… we’ve made our way to the Number One Horsecrap Story Of The Year. Drumroll, please.
#1: The Coal Ash Spill – The Coal Ash Spill was an environmental disaster with millions of tons of coal ash leaked into the Dan River. Duke Energy blew it, and they’re paying the price to clean it up and make amends. But let’s be real here. None of the doom and gloom scenarios painted by environmental groups ever came anywhere close to being true. Danville’s water supply remained perfectly safe thanks to the processes that were already in place for situations like this. Remember the claims of mass turtle kills along the Dan River? Not true. Remember the reports of dead mollusks? That turned out to be a annual happening of Asian clams over-reproducing and was perfectly normal. Remember the predictions that the Dan River would be unsafe to swim in (like anybody was swimming in it before)? False. Swim away, people. Remember the arsenic blisters that people were getting after exposure to the water? Totally false. That’s why all of those environmental groups got really quiet and moved on to their next crisis. That’s so they could scare the hell out of other people.
The short-term environmental effects of the coal ash spill turned out to be diddlysquat. The medium-term effects are beginning to come in and they are showing no damage. I’m not stupid. We still have to monitor the river’s health and that’s being done continuously. But all of the horror-filled predictions of how the Dan River and Danville would be irreparably harmed? They turned out to be horsecrap.
And there you have it. Six giant piles of 2014 horsecrap. Will we learn anything from these lessons? Of course not. I’m pretty sure that SouthsideCentral will have another edition of this in December 2015.
it was pathetic that people believed in the purge rumors – you did a great service fighting them.
While you joke and downplay purge, there are unreported incidents at gwhs. Similar incidents at other local schools made the news. Things are not as they seem at gwhs.
The mystery is how police are involved in incidents at GW and they do not become public.
Quite simply kids at gwhs are learning they do not have to be disciplined, but are being rewarded for bad behavior.
Here’s a story that got very little play…….didn’t the IDA loan some money to the Attic Hound? Maybe my memory’s not clear, but I seem to recall that. Isn’t the Attic Hound no longer in Downtown? Say….what happened?
Joan Daniel is making repayments and is current on her agreement. Search the site for Joan Daniel and you’ll see what I wrote on it. I seem to remember I wrote how much she had repaid already.
Thanks.
I wonder why a polluted river is acceptable.Danville better hope the water treatment plant never shuts down for any reason for more than 2 days.Call me an inviro-what ever but the fact that 39K tons of coal ash was spilt in the river and Dukes CEO stated “the accident did not happen the way they thought it would” seems pretty insane to just say its horse crap.I bet if anyone who believes this was not something to be concerned about and they lived on a well they would not be happy if it was dumped in their well.To call a major dump of coal ash into a river horse crap seems to be something Leonard would say based on lack of knowledge or concern for the water we should be cleaning up not crapping in.
I never said a polluted river is acceptable. The Dan River is polluted, but only to the extent that it was before the coal ash spill.
The “dumping it down somebody’s well” would be one hell of a malicious attack and quite unlikely. The river’s the same condition that it was before the coal ash spill, but where are the environmental activist groups now?
The river is more polluted than before the spill its just that Duke has done a good job of acting like it is acceptable and it is as long as the people are willing to accept THEIR statements and studies,This is not their first time and I am sure not their last time telling their reasons on why it is OK.You are a smart man Bruce but you really can not believe that the river is no more polluted today than it was before the spill.We keep letting big business do things that are not in anyones best interest but their own and we keep accepting their excuses.Duke knew there was going to be a problem and chose not to be responsible enough to fix it because of what it would cost.Now they can not hide from it.They have had studies done that say its all fine now and people say well OK if you say so.There is no way 39K tons of toxic ash can be dumped into the river and it all is gone when they only cleaned up on the top side of the dam.You can not really believe that.We can go round and round about this. You clearly believe Duke has your best interest in mind and would never try to make this a harmless mistake when they knew it was coming and should not be held accountable.
I haven’t said that it’s all gone. I have said that it’s been diluted by over 6,000,000,000,000 gallons of water until there is nothing meaningful left.
Here’s what I wrote before…
If “the river was more polluted than before the spill”, why have all of the environmental activist groups gone quiet?
If the coal ash becomes diluted and the river is safe they should dump all they have into the river. No harm no foul.
They have lots more of coal ash to dispose of.
And the baby goes out with the bathwater, too.
With that logic the river should not be populated at all then.