Dear Listener Audience and other interested parties,

It would seem far easier, rather than to speculate on emissions from a facility that does not yet exist, where only estimations, and in some cases, wild conjecture is employed, as is self evident in some of the assertions made in Mr. Lut'z letter, we should examine results of air quality and the quality of life in and around similar or identical facilities already in production for years.

Have 4,000,000 children per year been poisoned by emissions from, for example, the Byhalia, MS, Rockwool facility? Has even one child been poisoned by emissions from the Byhalia facility? No, of course not.

""The new research", quoted below, indicates an environmental disaster pending by 2100 A D." Really?
It has been asserted countless times - hundreds of times - by the doomsday-anti-business-not-in-my-backyard-horse-and-buggy acolytes since the 1960's, that environmental doom is "just 12 years away!" "It's just around the corner!" "By 2020!" "By 2050!" "By 2100!"
Has anyone noted that not a single one - not ONE - of the prognostications of environmental disaster has come true in the last 50 YEARS?
I don't know about you, but batting 0.00 on predictions of global catastrophe of every shape and kind doesn't make me stand up and take notice of yet another empty prognostication of global catastrophe.
This is just the same old scare tactics that made Al Gore (who, of course, invented the internet) a far more wealthy man than he already was.

And what is this "new research" being cited here? Who commissioned it? Who performed it? Who provided the grant money for it and why?

The ideas that regional pollination will be negatively affected, can contribute to cardio-pulmonary disorders, can reduce outputs of crops, and so forth, as cited in Mr. Lutz's misguided tome, is simply more hyperbole and a reprise of the aforementioned unfounded scare tactics.

Have these affects been demonstrated in and around other similar or identical facilities in operation for years under the same or similar strict environmental laws we have in the U.S. and West Virginia?

The pertinent question here simply is: Have these things already occurred around existing Rockwool facilities that have been in production for years? And if so would not these facilities have already been shut down for all the damage and environmental destruction they have caused?

Mr. Lutz's request for reopening the permitting process, not "hastily pencil whipped", through the bureaucratic process, but the law followed meticulously every step of the way, should be denied. It is without foundation and based on fear, fear-mongering and completely lacks any standing by employing practical examples of the results, both positive or negative, from real world examples of Rockwool facilities already operating in North America for extended periods.

And like all the other prognostication of impending global environmental disasters predicted over the last 5 decades, this one, too, has not now, nor will it ever, come to fruition.

Let's bring business and industry to Jefferson County and the Eastern Panhandle to make our region a place, like much of our surrounding region - a place where we can both live AND work.


Your Not-So-Obedient-Servant,

Edward C. Compton
Summit Point, West Virginia