Schutze hijacked by trucking interests

It was interesting to read Dallas Observer columnist George Schutze’s article about Flow Control, which is nothing more than the ridiculous rehashing of the off-the-subject rantings espoused by the commercial garbage haulers who, for their own selfish reasons, naturally oppose the plan.

I, for one, can’t understand why anyone would be opposed to converting this into this, which, in short, is exactly what the result of Flow Control will be. When City Councilman Tennell Atkins recently visited such a recyling facility already up and operating in northern California a couple of weeks ago he returned extremely impressed by the possibilities. And Mayor Mike Rawlings is sold completely on the benefits Flow Control will bring to South Dallas. But Schutze seems to be against plans that will provide low cost energy to power thousands of homes and enough fuel to drive the City of Dallas’ entire sanitation fleet.

And I really can’t be believe Schutze couldn’t read between the lines of Mike Sorrell’s recent op-ed piece in the Dallas Morning News. He called it “very persuasive.” The only person I’ve heard it persuaded was Schutze. All that op-ed piece was about was positioning Sorrell as some self-appointed savior for South Dallas.

He also needs to talk to City Council member Carolyn Davis. She, too, was worried about the effect Flow Control would have on the landfill’s residential neighbors. So she took a trip to the landfill and discovered what eveyone else who has actually been to the place already knows — the landfill doesn’t have any residential neighbors.

Schutze wrote Flow control “does not include a single element of community consciousness.” I guess his complete ignorance of the situation may be forgivable here because it is obvious he only considered one side of this argument and relied completely on the city’s briefing materials for the other side. That means he is completely unaware of the entire Flow Control proposal which includes a lot of benefits to a wider area including new academic programs and incentives for Paul Quinn College, of which the aforementioned Sorrell is the president. Which makes Sorrell's actions doubly painful. Here is a school that has lost a lot of its accreditation, but is Sorrell interested in promoting the academic interests at his school? Obviously not. He is only interested in promoting himself and it’s a shame Schutze and others can’t see through this charade. The details of this “community consciousness” will be revealed during upcoming council briefings, but would have been available to Schutze before he wrote his piece had he only had the journalistic ethic to ask instead of being hijacked by the truckers.