Recall Brian Bock

Disaster Politics

During his January 1985 State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress, and an international television audience, US President Ronald Reagan announced a new educational initiative: He would appoint a school teacher to join a shuttle crew on a flight into space.

Someone in the Reagan White House had the bright idea that the president’s 1986 State of the Union Address coincide with the successful return landing of the Challenger, with teacher Christa McAuliffe on board.
That’s when a tragic series of mistakes began to unfold.

The first glitch was when NASA scuttled the original launch date of the Challenger. The launch pad conditions did not meet the minimum safety conditions required for launch.

The next suitable launch date was scuttled by the White House, with the following instructions: Since you failed to comply with our request to launch for a return landing on the day of the president’s State of the Union, you will scrub subsequent launch dates and reschedule the launch on the day of the SOTU address. Any proposal to scrub a launch on this date will require proof of the unfeasibility of this launch.

That’s when political expediency trumped safety, and set the stage for tragedy. NASA was not able to prove that the below normal temperatures the morning of the rescheduled launch constituted scientific proof that the launch should be scrubbed.
We know the result. Jarvis, Onizuka, Resnick, McNair, Scobee and Smith, along with educator Christa McAuliffe, were sent to their doom.

The paradigm had shifted.
NASA lost control of its long standing safety protocols to the short term goals of political expediency.

A similar scenario is playing out in Chatham County. The new county commission has demanded from opponents of gas fracking, absolute proof that this process will poison our supply of fresh water. Absent such proof, the commissioners voted recently to approve fracking in Chatham.

I am not ascribing bad motives to the Chatham Commissioners, any more than I would do so to the Reagan White House. They may believe that they are acting in the best interests of our community, the nation , and the world. In my imagination, I can hear them telling future generations of Chathamites that there was only a nominal, and unproven chance that fracking would poison our water.

This is exactly the thinking that led to the Challenger disaster, and we must not let that paradigm threaten our water supply.

Brian Bock, the current chairman of the Chatham County Commission, was elected to a term of 4 years. But that is not a sentence for us Chathamites to suffer decisions that , however well intentioned, put our community at grave risks.

As citizens, we have both the responsibility to protect our environment, and recourse to protect our community from commissioners who practice the failed paradigm of Disaster Politics.

We need to mount a recall effort of Mr. Bock, now. His policies endanger us all, and the generations we hope will follow.

John Heuer