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Pasco Letters to the Editor

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 18, 2008

Let's Combat Bullying

As we prepare for our seventh The America Dream Congress (TAD) today, I wanted to report our exciting progress to our Pasco community residents.

Over past years TAD, or the TAD model as we have come to call it, has offered our community an enormously stimulating learning experience as well as a replicable model for addressing poverty at the local level. We have successfully created a network of public and private relationships that attempt to meet the basic needs of children living in poverty.

Our goal is to "level the playing field" for our county's at-risk children.

This year's congress will focus on the problem of bullying. We hope to raise awareness and take a total community approach to addressing and preventing this alarming and, sadly, escalating trend.

Bullying, an old problem, has now intensified in the 21st century. Our children are now utilizing the Internet to fire off threatening messages to one another. And unfortunately, our girls have increased their participation in this problem. It's time that we, as a community, join with the school system to address this situation.

Our TAD Congress will not be a gripe session. It will offer a communitywide view of the problem, rich with solution-oriented implications.

Of course, the main goal of our congress has always intended to bring child care practitioners, parents and concerned citizens together to meet, share skills and network. However, we sincerely hope that many of our Pasco friends, students and neighbors will also consider attending this important and timely community event.

The congress, free of charge and open to community, takes place today at the Center for the Arts at Wesley Chapel High School on Wells Road.

This year our main theme, as I mentioned, is "Bullying: Beyond the Schoolyard." Topics will include an in-depth look at bullying prevention in the schools, links between childhood bullying and domestic violence, legal issues, legislative updates, the role of faith-based community initiatives and, most importantly, action planning.

You can register beginning at 8 a.m. at the Center for the Arts. The congress is scheduled to end at 4 p.m.

We wish to thank the Pasco County school system for the use of the center, Wachovia for sponsoring lunch and Projects of Pasco Inc. for hosting the event.

BOB LORING

Zephyrhills

Landfill A Risk

Regarding "Lunch Menu: Unappetizing Art Of Politics," Tom Jackson, June 12:

Regarding Sen. Victor Crist's "preternatural" disposition against building a traditional solid waste landfill near the environmentally sensitive Green Swamp, we could not agree more with his position.

Having a state legislator who is concerned about the "sanctity of our pristine water supplies" (Tampa Bay Water and the cities of Tampa, Dade City and Zephyrhills) adjacent to this proposed dump is exactly the type of elected official we need looking out for our state's future health and economic growth.

Allowing an inexperienced private company to build such a facility in sinkhole-prone east Pasco County would be irresponsible, to say the least. Surveys by companies in the waste industry show over 80 percent of landfills leak leachate, causing contamination, and even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that the newest liner technology will eventually leak.

A study in Indiana indicated 90 percent of its landfills had leaks contaminating or adversely affecting groundwater supplies, and the only way to clean them up was to not have polluted them in the first place. This landfill is not a risk citizens should accept!

And regarding Jackson's outlandish estimate of the dump's ability to "capture gas to keep the lights on east of Curley Road," we have some antidote for the Kool-Aid he's been drinking if he would just ask: There has been no formal proposal to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for any such power generation capability by the applicant, and I doubt there ever will be!

CARL ROTH

Flooding Prevention

I have compassion for anyone who has been wiped out or hurt by a catastrophe, but when someone lives along a river that floods from time to time, they should have known better than to build a house or live there.

Just like the people of New Orleans who knowingly lived 20 feet below sea level and the folks who live on the Gulf or Atlantic coasts, right on the water, they should have to be on their own for being stupid. And these same people blame the government for not bailing them out, so to speak.

JOHN LALLEMAND

Dade City

The writer is lead organizer of East Pasco Toys for Tots and the founder of The American Dream Congress.

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