Easy call: no.

There's a scheme to build five humongous garbage dumps in Camden, Hyde, Brunswick, Columbus and Richmond counties. The largest, the Black Bear site near the Virginia line, would take 3 million tons of garbage a year, much of it from New York and New Jersey.

Has Eastern North Carolina become such a dead zone that there's nothing better to do with it than cover it with other people's garbage?

You think I'm exaggerating? The Black Bear dump will not be able to bury garbage because the water table is too high. So the operators will have to create a mountain of garbage 270 feet high covering almost 500 acres.

But why stop there? Forget storing radioactive waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Just truck it on down to North Carolina's Yuck Mountain. Need to dispose of hurricane debris from Katrina? Navassa in Brunswick County is calling you.

Many of us have roots sunk deep into the rich soil of Eastern North Carolina. We've watched as the rest of the state got the good jobs, pretty buildings and rich people while we got the short end of the stick.

Our folks have nothing left but their heritage. Now the fields, swamps, rivers and pine forests that make Eastern North Carolina so beautiful are to be sacrificed for bad jobs and cheap franchise fees?

Sure, the $4 million a year Camden County could collect in fees each year is important. So are the jobs at the dumps. But they're a pittance compared to the potential for damage to the area's environment and image.

Things are tough in Eastern North Carolina, but allowing the poorest part of our state to become home to gigantic garbage dumps to service the entire East Coast is an embarrassing outrage. Or should be.

I called Gov. Mike Easley's office about this, and got referred to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the agency that decides whether the dumps get permits to operate. The department's spokesman, Don Reuter, had this to say:

"The governor has been kept informed about the landfills currently being proposed for Eastern North Carolina. He expects DENR and its Division of Waste Management to conduct the permit review ... in a thorough, comprehensive and exhaustive manner for each of the proposed landfills."

Meanwhile, officials in southside Virginia are hopping mad. They're threatening everything, including making garbage trucks pay to cross the state line as a way to keep a mountain of garbage away from their area.

If you think it's hard to bring industry to Eastern North Carolina now, imagine how difficult it will be if we become famous for our garbage dumps. I daresay few corporate execs are going to want to move to Dump Land, U.S.A.

Even the booming coastal areas with their million-dollar homes will take a hit if society swells have to dodge fleets of garbage trucks as they motor past a pile of garbage the size of a 20-story building to get there.

Poor folks have always taken out the rich folks' trash. Looks like now they may have to take it home with them.

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