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Volume CXXXII, Number 5 |
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Voting locally gives you a voice
AIMEE TOW
COLUMNIST
As November 5 rapidly approaches, the question of voting in Maine or in your home state arises. Many students, especially first years, still feel attached to and know what is going on politically in their home states. Using an absentee ballot is an easy way to vote, just don't miss the deadline to mail it before Election Day.
However, by voting locally, groups of people can easily assemble and create coalitions of citizens or students to vote a particular way on an issue and have more say about things in the community that affect them. There are many issues in Brunswick that affect us as students including pressing environmental issues right in our backyard.
The Toxic Action Center has identified over 50 areas of concern in Brunswick alone. These include two active landfills, five confirmed hazardous waste sites, one national Superfund site, two other potential Superfund sites, and 29 hazardous waste handlers. In 1997, Brunswick released 102,947 pounds of toxins into the environment.
Brunswick is also concerned with the spraying of pesticides and herbicides and is working to pass an ordinance prohibiting all spraying. Studies proving the negative health effects of pesticides have brought much attention to this concern. Toxic sludge is also another big environmental issue in Maine. Sludge is the by-product of wastewater treatment facilities. It is a semi-solid "junk" that is left over after wastewater has been filtered and treated. It can contain all of the industry wastes (dioxin, PCBs, heavy metals, mercury, and more) in a very concentrated form. The sludge is diluted with woodchips and dirt and then sold or given away to farmers to spread on farms as fertilizer without the farmer knowing that it may contain industrial waste. This is much cheaper for the facility to give the waste away instead of having to handle it as a toxic substance and dispose of it accordingly.
The advantage of voting in your college town is that you can do things about environmental issues or other issues that affect the local community and your own personal health. Issues like these affect us as students while we are living here in Brunswick and we have a right to have a say about them. By turning out to vote in large numbers, we are telling local politicians that we care about this area and what is happening to the environment in which we are living.
Historically, politicians have ignored students because it is shown that young people don't vote. Why should they waste their time on people who don't vote? Tell all your friends to go to the polls on November 5 and vote so politicians will listen to us when we support issues that concern us. Visit Envirocitizen, http://www.envirocitizen.org to learn more about environmental issues and read about success stories of other college students who have mobilized to vote.