Six hundred truckloads on a barge on this river in the midst of some difficulty could, in fact, in my opinion, be very devastating to the river. Charles Carter III is a fourth-generation owner of Shirley Plantation. He has a contract with Waste Management to develop the port on his property, and he views Waldrop as an alarmist. Well, in this branch of the James River, you'll find that there are six million tons of cargo a year. There's two million barrels of phenol that move into this area.
Phenol is highly toxic and highly combustible.
So there's much more dangerous cargoes that move on the river. The parishioners of Mt. Olive Baptist Church in King and Queen County say a landfill run by Brown Berris Industries next door to them causes constant problems. Reverend Keith Parham is president of Residents Involved in Saving the Environment, or RISE, a group trying to get rid of the landfill. We are used to smelling grass in the morning and pine trees, and now we have to smell garbage. We used to see eagles flying in this area.