Hits & Misses

Thumbs up for Valley residents showing up.

Several Mon Valley residents expressed their frustrations and strongly opposed a permit request by the Westmoreland Sanitary Landfill during a Department of Environmental Protection hearing Thursday night. More than 50 people attended the hearing, and 20 residents and representatives of environmental organizations spoke against the permit during the hearing.

The landfill, owned by Noble Environmental, has applied for a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit with the state DEP for discharging treated leachate into the Speers Run tributaries and the Monongahela River near the Belle Vernon bridge.

Too often we see people taking their concerns and rants to social media, and very rarely ever actually showing up to public meetings to voice their opinions to the people who can actually do something about it.

While the decision is now in the hands of the DEP, Valley residents can take pride they spoke up and showed they care.

It’s exciting to hear our area’s beloved amusement park, Kennywood, will soon be operating under new ownership whose other holdings include Dollywood and the Harlem Globetrotters.

Atlanta-based Herschend will acquire Palace Entertainment’s U.S. attractions, which includes the iconic West Mifflin amusement park as well as Sandcastle in West Homestead and Idlewild & SoakZone in the Laurel Highlands.

It also owns the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters.

While it’s good news Herschend officials said there are no immediate changes planned for daily operations at Kennywood or the other parks, we hope the new owners can help bring Kennywood back to being more community oriented by making it feasible for local towns to once against host annual Community Days at Kennywood Park, a beloved tradition that has gone to the wayside due to increased costs at the park and ticket-selling requirements.

We hope the new owners value our Kennywood traditions as much as we do, and bring back some old ones, too.

Speaking of roller coasters, we welcomed spring on Thursday. While we had a short burst of summer-like weather last week, winter isn’t quite done with us yet, as we’re back to warm coats and turning up the thermostat.

What will Mother Nature bring us next week? Who knows, it’s anyone’s guess at this point.