Protect what we have – Reject the gaslighting! – The Coalition to Protect Prince William County

Stop the railroading of this community to develop the rural crescent.

The only “truth” to the farcical process currently underway is the level of gaslighting itself.

For the record: in county survey after county survey – by overwhelming numbers – the community identifies protecting the rural crescent and our natural and historical resources as top of the list. For six years the community participated in the Rural Preservation Study process, and consistently, by a 10 to 1 margin, with thousands of comments, the county community rejected ideas to develop the rural crescent.

It is also on the record that our own PWC Watershed Management Department rejects the industrial corridor being proposed along Pageland, along with the State Forestry Department and the PWC Historical Commission.

“…the county’s own environmental staff raised objections to the plan, citing “major impacts … includ[ing the] loss of extensive tracts of forest land, dramatic increases in impervious area, impact to numerous intermittent and perennial streams, steep slopes with highly erodible soils, wildlife habitat (including habitat for rare, threatened and endangered species) and potential impacts to wetlands,” according to Benjamin Eib, assistant chief of the county’s watershed management branch.”

By comparison – who are the only advocates that show up to keep pushing the infrastructure quagmire and environmental mess? The landowners who will directly profit.

The opposition is growing. In spite of certain Supervisors trying to convince us that destroying our rural areas and our key clean water asset, the Occoquan Watershed, is a good idea – we are all not so easily duped.

The Chair of our county supervisors is warning everyone, in each of her newsletters, of the rising infection rates and of hospital beds filling. And yet, she literally pushes a meeting, with only 9 days advance notice, in the height of this outbreak – and believes that she looks like a credible leader?

Her vote yesterday to force these meetings to still be held this week and next week was political cynicism at its worst. The people of this county understand that showing up is the only way we can defeat this.

Here is the press release from Jeanine Lawson’s failed directive to delay the public outreach meetings just until the current COVID spike is behind us. Jeanine Lawson Press Release.

“Despite an emergency declaration from the former Governor and a warning from our local health district regarding the current explosion of Covid cases in the county, this board is using the pandemic to suppress public comment on the expansion of data and heavy industrial in the rural area by insisting on holding meetings at the very peak of Omicron variant.”

“This is just more evidence that Chair Wheeler and Supervisors Angry, Bailey and Franklin want to railroad the destruction of the Rural Crescent,” Supervisor Lawson said.

The Pageland Profiteers keep weaving the false promises of the Golden Goose. The ONLY disinfectant is the truth.

Don’t fall for the propaganda. East to West – we’re all in this together.