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(Correction posted 10/15/07:The Virginian Leader newspaper has printed multiple news stories about a proposed fly ash dump in Giles County and all of the letters it has received in opposition.  This guest commentary incorrectly claims the paper had refused to run such pieces.)

The plan to build a fly ash dump alongside the New River in Narrows doesn't pass the smell test. My brain and my gut combine to tell me when something just isn't right. Why don't you take the smell test, also?

The first part of the test involves the selection of the site for the Cumberland Park Structural Fill Project -- the fly ash dump. They plan to put it right smack in the middle of a flood plain alongside the banks of the New, the area's biggest asset for tourism and recreation.

Adjacent to the site is a popular campground filled with year-round campers. Do you mean to tell me that in all of Giles County, this was the best site for a fly ash dump?

Sniff real hard. Can you smell anything?

Howard Spencer, the executive director of the Giles County Partnership for Excellence, which is behind this project, denies that there was any skullduggery in getting this project through. When asked at a board of supervisors meeting in August why the citizens of Giles County hadn't heard about this project until recently, he responded, "We didn't know we had a project until about 30 days ago."

Let's look at this. American Electric Power has been working on this since 2005, funding various engineering tests that allegedly indicate this project is perfectly safe. According to the group Concerned Citizens of Giles County, the partnership bought this property after AEP had performed the tests.

Spencer is the town manager of Glen Lyn, where AEP is located. We are supposed to believe he didn't know about the project until this past July?

Reportedly, if AEP bought the property and simply wanted a place to stash their fly ash, many different regulations would come into play but if someone else owned the property and intended to build something on top of the completed "structural fill," other regulations apply. Why didn't AEP just buy the property themselves?

Follow the money and benefits. Something really smells now.

Spencer said he could not hold a public meeting 18 months ago without the approval of his partnership. Why wasn't that approval obtained? After all, he is the executive director.

Are you gasping for air yet?

Usually, when someone, a politician especially, does something completely innocent and aboveboard for the public good, it is shouted from the hilltops. Newspaper articles are written, television interviews are arranged, and there is glad-handing all around. Why wasn't that the case with this project? Why did the newspaper articles and television interviews only appear when a public outcry became apparent? Does it sound more like damage control?

You should be gagging by now.

Again, Spencer is town manager of Glen Lyn, the executive director of the partnership and a member of the board of supervisors. The local newspaper, which had refused to run any more anti-fly ash articles, reportedly has connections to the partnership.

It's time for a respirator.

Spencer states that his partnership has "spent hundreds of thousands of dollars training young people to work." Wouldn't it be ironic if some of these same people who received training by virtue of the fly ash have to come back years from now to clean up the toxic sludge from a collapse of or leakage from this dump -- sorry, fill?

If you still believe that the unlined fill or sediment ponds will not leak into local water sources, that the unlined berms will hold and not collapse or leak during a flood or rainstorm, and that fly ash is not toxic and will not harm us, then you cannot deny the results of the smell test.

The very idea of placing this project next to the New River has a stench of its own. All it takes is a little common scents and one realizes that it fails the smell test. It stinks.

Mike Kirkpatrick has lived in Pearisburg for five years.