Tamaqua bans corporate waste dumping

A people's revolution that some liken to the effort to end U.S. slavery is taking place just down the hill from Hometown.

The Tamaqua Borough Council last night voted 4-3 to approve a new ordinance banning corporate waste-dumping, the Pottsville Republican-Herald reports. Mayor Christian Morrison, a Hometown native who cast the tie-breaking vote on the proposal, said he doesn't expect the controversy over the ban to end any time soon, however:

"I know we'll be challenged on this. And we welcome that," Morrison said. "It's a hard vote when you know you're going to be challenged, and you possibly could go to court and be sued over this, but when you say you're going to do everything you can to protect your community, that means everything you can."

Supporting the ordinance were Cathy Miorelli, Stephen Tertel and Mahlon Kachelries. Opposing it were Council President John "Sonny" Trudich and council members James Knowles and Micah Gursky, who called it "illegal."

Living in an old coal-mining community where enormous abandoned mine pits have been filled with toxic coal-combustion waste and river dredge over their objections, Tamaqua residents in recent years have begun fighting back against polluters with the help of the local Army for a Clean Environment and the Chambersburg, Pa.-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Last year the borough banned corporations from dumping sewage sludge and also became the first municipality in the United States to recognize the rights of nature.

"Abolitionists struggled over decades to undo constitutional law which had long defined slaves as 'property' and to transform this nation's 'property and commerce' constitution into a 'rights and liberty' constitution," CELDF Historian Richard Grossman said at the time. "Tamaqua has now challenged today's constitutional injustices -- against Nature and against the self-governing 'We the People.'"