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To the Editor:

I moved to Cumberland six-and-a-half years ago.

I lived in Powhatan for 30-plus years and watched it become an extension of Chesterfield, the place where I grew up, in a sleepy rural village called Midlothian.

Progress brings change, not all good and not all bad. Powhatan repeatedly uses the term of rural character. There are very few working farms left in Powhatan, and personally, a couple of pleasure horses in a pasture isn’t exactly a booming farm to me. Maybe the last board in Cumberland made a mistake in some people’s opinion of first approving the initial proposal of the mega landfill, but then again, maybe they didn’t.

Amelia’s landfill has a railroad siding. There aren’t a great deal of other businesses that use that railroad line from Richmond to Burkeville. Eventually it could be abandoned like the line through Farmville, but they don’t all become a linear park supported by our tax dollars.

Personally, I don’t think localities can afford to run a landfill on their own because of all the studies, permits and government hoops they have to jump through. No, they have transfer stations and ship their trash to somebody else.

The City of Virginia Beach has Mount Trashmore, the first one a very popular public park. They are building a second. Just saying, maybe the mega landfill in Cumberland isn’t as bad as some make it out to be.

William M. Frame

Cumberland