Sunday, March 22, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: NIMBY label used as a cop-out
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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@roanoke.com
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Dan Casey
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Let's establish something right now. The opponents of the proposed asphalt plant in the Glenvar area of western Roanoke County are no NIMBYs.
The acronym stands for Not in My Back Yard and is frequently used by speakers and writers to describe those poor, dumb, reactive souls who shout loudly at change that is coming.
Such people are easy to dismiss when you stamp them with a funny-sounding name. It's like calling a woman with blond hair a "Barbie." With those two syllables, she's suddenly irrelevant. End of discussion.
In view of that, I thought the term's origins were interesting, even if they're not exactly clear.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of New Words, NIMBY arrived in the English lexicon in 1980. It was coined by an engineer who worked for the American Nuclear Society. Other sources peg it to an article in the Christian Science Monitor, or to an English politician.
Whoever invented it, the term has been used with increasing effectiveness to marginalize anybody who objects to anything proposed near their house.
You don't want a coal-fired power plant built next door to you on land that's zoned for a school?
Don't you realize our community needs that electricity? You're a NIMBY and a fool. You should take that hit. Just shut up, will you?
It's time to redefine the word, just slightly, via an outlandish example.
Let's say you buy some land and build a house next to empty acres zoned for a nuclear waste dump. Some time passes and then Acme Nuclear Waste Co. announces it will create a dozen or 100 dozen jobs by building a dump there.
If you scream and holler about it, you're a NIMBY. Either you knew about the zoning, gambled, and lost, or you should have known about it. Either way you get no sympathy here.
But let's say most of your net worth is tied up in a house next to Green Hill Park in Roanoke County, and you're raising your kids there. And Acme wants to buy that park, provided it can get it rezoned, to put the dump there.
The company will trot out hired experts to say nuclear waste is safer than grass clippings, and nobody will ever know that dump is there, and they'll bring out neighbors from other Acme dumps to say they love living next door, their health is great, and everyone in the neighborhood lives past 100.
If you fight this proposal and reject these arguments, you are no NIMBY. You had legitimate expectations about the rules for use of the neighboring land. And now, somebody's trying to change them.
So let's not use the word NIMBY to attack the scores of Glenvar residents who attended an anti-asphalt plant meeting Thursday night at Glenvar Middle School.
We all have an investment in their concerns about traffic, noise, dust, air pollution and the possibility of future heavy industry rezonings on a side of West Main Street where Roanoke County has never allowed it before. All of us live in neighborhoods we wouldn't want to see spoiled.
To get back to the outlandish example:
Keep in mind that Acme has not bought that parkland yet. They will buy it only if they can get the elected government to rezone it. In other words, Acme wants a guarantee they can put the dump there, in advance.
They're no fools.
It would be nice if homeowners could expect the same kind of guarantee from their government when they make a decision to invest their money in a neighborhood and raise their kids there.
Unfortunately, they can't.
Dan Casey's column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
