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The Jax Files is an interactive, quick-hitting blog devoted to any and all things Pasco, whether whole-heartedly, tangentially or merely psychologically.

Tom Jackson:

Tom Jackson is in a 12-step program for recovering sports writers; as part of his rehabilitation, he writes a column centered on the people, politics, passions and peculiarities of Pasco County. Email

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The Jax Files: With Tom Jackson in Pasco

Pasco County News | Breaking News

Regarding Landfill, Consider The Source

Posted Feb 9, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Feb 9, 2009 at 03:12 PM

The recent crescendo of howling directed against the bioreactor landfill proposed by Angelo’s Recycled Materials for the rolling wilderness between Zephyrhills and Dade City can be traced to a single source: project opponents displaying an alarming predisposition to accept the oldest trick in the tort lawyer’s book.

Of course, it’s only a trick when the other side employs it.

We refer here to the consultants’ report recently made public and exhaustively cited by landfill opponents as the final word on the subject. Alas, these opponents acknowledge only in passing – if they acknowledge it at all – how the report came about.

This much becomes apparent: You wouldn’t want any of these people sitting on a jury, as we shall see in a moment.

Complaints against the proposed bioreactor (designed to capture, from decomposing garbage, methane for the production of electricity) the skeptic who wanted these words – “Important If True” – carved on all the churches of England.

But lately, the forecasts of dire consequence if the landfill is allowed emanate almost exclusively from one corner – a corner, instructively, funded by neighboring ranchers with underground water to peddle, water that becomes less attractive to bottling giants the moment the Angelo’s project is approved. Not as a result of any pertinent facts – we’ll know the design, engineering and track record are sound if the project becomes certified – but because of lightly informed, easily roused and generally superstitious public perception.

In the courtroom, professional witnesses are allowed to lay out the entirety of their curriculum vitae, the better to demonstrate the expertise to which they will testify. To level the playing field, opposing counsel will require them to disclose how much they’ve been paid for that expertise, and also how often they have testified under similar circumstances. Such explanations reveal just who and what the gunslingers are, providing insight into how much weight to grant the hired opinion once deliberations begin.

In this case, how much Bill Blanchard and Robert Thomas paid to get the reports they wanted is not part of the record … although it almost certainly will be when the consultants wind up in the witness box, as seems inevitable, however the Florida Department of Environmental Protection rules.

Until those facts are known, and have been applied as a balance against the opposing viewpoint, it is either foolhardy or self-serving, or both, to embrace as gospel the say-so of any opinion-for-hire. To do otherwise demonstrates an egregious eagerness to perform philosophical alchemy: elevating mere assertions into hard facts.

So far, however, only the contrary findings of Angelo’s equally well-credentialled engineers are dismissed as compromised by association.

Astonishingly, the one voice of reason – OK, the other voice of reason – comes from a surprising source: FCAN, the left-leaning Florida Consumer Action Network, asks only for “a fair hearing.” As emotions become more frantic and the rhetoric glows white-hot, FCAN’s suggestion is refreshingly calm, cool, balanced and thoughtful.

What a concept!