In the spirit of full disclosure, it should be admitted that we are the Newcastle Farm owners, a mother and son, part of whose land was seized by eminent domain for construction of the proposed Pamunkey discharge. As such, we do have at stake a property interest that should be acknowledged.
Here is that acknowledgement: In total, we may recover just under two acres of land if efforts to promote regional alternatives to the discharge succeed.
This is not inconsiderable, especially in light of the intrinsic value of Newcastle Farm. My father, who died in 1976, was a fifth generation farmer there, and the land has been in my family for more than 150 uninterrupted years. Given that Pocahontas is my ten greats grandmother (via Rolfe-Bolling-Randolph-Meade-Ruffin-Broaddus), the same land was under the care of my distant relations for thousands of years prior to colonial times. It is precious soil to us.
Nonetheless, the land is not what we are fighting most vigorously for. In fact, during the five years devoted to this effort thus far, we have overspent on legal expenses alone all the money we made on the entirety of Newcastle Farm during the same five year period. If our only concern were property interests, we would have focused our efforts on getting as much compensation as possible, not stopping the project. We also would have considered an offer made by Hanover County to locate the discharge on an extremity of the property (as compared to the current site, which bisects the farm) in exchange for our acquiescence.
The above is not offered as an attempt to be self-congratulatory, but as a preemptive response to the occasional--though regular--charges of being NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) environmentalists. We have no problem being labeled NIMBY, as long as everyone understands that we consider our backyard to be the the Pamunkey River itself, which is of course public property. We encourage others to think of it as their backyard too, because it is.
--Henry Ruffin Broaddus (catching a fish in 1978) & Frances Broaddus-Crutchfield (foot)
"The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." --MLK, Jr.
