A couple of days before Christmas, one of the Facebook pages devoted to issues of community concern in the county reproduced a letter to the editor of the Tryon Daily Bulletin warning us all to “speak out and take Polk County off the list of potential locations for a nuclear waste disposal facility.”
Not too surprisingly, the post drew dozens of comments, mostly from those who were angry to learn that Polk County was being considered as a possible home for the country’s high-level radioactive waste. So problematic was the post — and the letter that started it all — that County Manager Marche Pittman felt compelled to weigh in and point out that Polk County is on no such list.
Because Marche Pittman usually has better things to do than police misinformed Facebook posts, I asked him to talk about the bigger picture of misinformation in a time when more people get their news from social media than old-fashioned news outlets, and whether the county has any role in doing anything about the problem. We talked in the Womack Building on January 9.
Further reading:Pacific Northwest National LaboratoryPolk County government website
