Sierra Club slows museum project

A Kentucky chapter of the environmental group The Sierra Club has called for a public hearing over the State of Kentucky’s announcement that it is approving the permit application by Answers in Genesis to build a wastewater treatment facility for its future Creation Museum and headquarters complex west of the Cincinnati Airport. As a result, the hearing (scheduled for September) will delay the progress of the museum project for many months; significant construction will now have to wait until 2002 rather than this fall.

The request for a hearing happens to come on the heels of a poorly researched article that appeared in The Kentucky Post newspaper by a reporter who had already determined in her mind—before she ever talked to AiG—that our wastewater treatment plant might pollute a nearby creek.

In its request letter to the Kentucky Division of Water, the Sierra Club stated that it is “concerned about proposing a new discharge into a low-flow stream that will pollute Garrison Creek”—without conducting a social and economic needs analysis. A family in the area that had earlier opposed a rezoning of the museum property has also requested a public hearing.

AiG’s team of professional engineers and architects, however, has met or exceeded every requirement set by the governing authorities of the county and state. Our treated water will not affect the high quality of the downstream tributary. The state has held AiG’s proposed system to the highest standards that can be applied to a private treatment facility, and has already issued a draft of a permit approval for the system, but is obligated to hold a public hearing if requested.

The new requirements of the approved system will be very costly to install (about $200,000 more than the initial treatment system), but AiG is pleased to know that the planned system brings many ecological benefits. Furthermore, the system will be operated and maintained by the professional staff of the local Sanitation District. (For a detailed rebuttal of the highly biased Post article, including a further description of the treatment plant and its environmental safeguards, go to “Is Kentucky Sewage Leaking from the Kentucky Post?”.)

It is hoped that the Sierra Club is only expressing legitimate environmental concerns and is simply misinformed about the AiG project, and that its opposition is not a reflection of an anti-Bible bias. In its statement of beliefs posted on its Web site, the Sierra Club declares that “humans have evolved as an interdependent part of nature,” and “genetic diversity is the product of evolution acting on wildness, and is important because it is biological capital for future evolution.”

As a result of the Club’s action to question the state’s approval of our application, officials in Boone County cannot issue the final construction permit until it receives the official wastewater permit approval from the state. This means that AiG cannot start any construction whatsoever until the draft approval is finalized. All that can be done for the moment on the 47-acre property would be to finish the grading and partial excavating.

Please pray about this September public hearing (date to be announced). To keep up-to-date on AiG’s Biblical “walk-through-history” museum, and also to read about the prior opposition to the project by humanists and others in the area, go to our museum news page or call our museum hotline at ext. 360 (859) 727-2222.