Vulcanus_Ferguson_Merriwood_MeetingatMyHouse.mp3

Merriwood Ferguson [] And that was one of those cases where, that's where I really got involved in legislation, policy, decision-making process.

Merriwood Ferguson [] There was a company that had proposed to incinerate very highly toxic waste on a ship out in the Gulf of Mexico.

Merriwood Ferguson [] And someone that I barely knew in this community grabbed me by the arm at another function here in town and said, "We're having a meeting at my house tonight, can you come?"

Merriwood Ferguson [] And then I spent the next 10 years fighting ocean incineration and reading through mountains of regulations and writing letters to our congresspeople and researching alternatives and fighting big business, toxic waste and the trash hauling businesses, that wanted to incinerate these chemicals out in our gulf.

Merriwood Ferguson [] It was a large company called Waste Management that had this ship, and apparently they had burned, done some experimental burns. I think the actual burning that had taken place may have been done by our own government in some test and trial runs.

Merriwood Ferguson [] And then the idea of, I mean we all know, with SuperFund and all the toxic waste, that they had to find ways to get rid of it so that it wasn't just poured into our ground or our landfills and where eventually housing developments went up and people became sick.

Merriwood Ferguson [] And so, I think it was one of the ideas that was dreamed up. Well, if we take it off into the ocean and burn it, incinerate it on a ship, then nobody will ever raise an eyebrow about it.

Merriwood Ferguson [] But, you know, our major, biggest concern about that was what happened if the ship leaked. What happened if there was a disaster at sea?

Merriwood Ferguson [] I mean, we know what it's like when we have oil leaks, and how hard those are to clean up, so...

Merriwood Ferguson [] And I think that was an issue that brought a lot of different people. Not only did we have environmentalists, we had the shrimping community that makes their livelihood out in the Gulf of Mexico. We had the Chambers of Commerce in the Valley opposing it.

Merriwood Ferguson [] So we had a lot of support that helped defeat that... They ran into their most fiercest opposition when they tried to move forward with that plan because we weren't going to let it happen. And we had a lot of people come out and oppose it.