Openness is AWOL in Town of Appomattox

The News & Advance
Published: September 4, 2008

Transparency and openness in government are two concepts that seem foreign to some current and former members of the Appomattox Town Council.

One of the most contentious issues on the plate of town leaders is the proposed waterline from Campbell County through the Concord area with a termination point in the town. Appomattox County officials are on record with their strong support of the project, offering to pay 100 percent of the costs, including that for the cost of the lines in the town. They see it not only as an economic development issue along the U.S. 460 corridor leading into the town, but also as a permanent solution to the town’s precarious water situation.

State officials have put the town’s water system under a microscope in recent years for a number of issues on a number of occasions. There’ve been high levels of metals in water released from the town’s treatment plant. In the severe drought earlier this decade, several wells were taken off line as water dropped below safe pumping levels. The distribution system is aging and is in need of repairs. The state health department has even ordered the town to submit a long-term water plan to Richmond.

That’s exactly how precarious the town’s long-term water situation is. Yes, a recent engineering study said the wells should be producing water at least until 2050, but engineers made no claims about the quality of that water.

A vocal segment of the town residents don’t see that there is a long-term problem and are having nothing to do with any water line. They don’t see the need to do anything about their aging water system, dependent on a series of wells throughout the area.

In addition to bringing hookup and ongoing fees, a public water line could accelerate growth in the town, or as former Mayor John Wilson put it, “cancerous” growth.

Months ago, the Town Council publicly committed to talk with the county Board of Supervisors about the water line. Or so they said.

The reality of the matter is something completely different.

Earlier this week, News & Advance reporter Sarah Watson, in the “Beyond the Tap” series on water issues in Central Virginia, wrote that Wilson and three council members — all vehement foes of a water line — were talking in cyberspace to thwart any progress on the issue and essentially sabotage any talks with the county.

Wilson sent a series of e-mails to council members Steven Lawson, Jennifer Jamerson-Scruggs and John T. “Plicky” Williams counseling them how to overturn decisions to meet with county officials and to lift a moratorium on adding out-of-town customers to the town’s water system.

Wilson also was advising the trio to skip meetings and scheduled workshops in order to slow or halt any progress and even suggesting wording for motions to that affect.

And it was all done surreptitiously, secretly, out of the public’s view.

This sort of behavior is why “politician” has become the latest four-letter word.

Technically, the meetings via e-mail don’t violate the letter of Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, but they violate the spirit of the law. Open government is the foundation of a democratic republic, but that’s evidently a civics lessons these so-called public servants failed to learn.