
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 20, 1990                   TAG: 9005200088
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: ABINGDON                                LENGTH: Medium

BOUCHER GETS RE-ELECTION NOD, PREDICTS BOOM

Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, predicted unparalleled expansion for Southwest Virginia's economy in the 1990s as he accepted the 9th District Democratic convention's candidacy Saturday to seek a fifth term in Congress.

He said industrial marketing organizations and industrial parks now gearing up will assure more jobs, federal clean air legislation will boost the region's low-sulphur coal adding perhaps 8,000 mining and support jobs and growing tobacco quotas will add to its annual $40 million crop.

In her keynote address, Virginia Attorney General Mary Sue Terry said she had been stymied by state and federal laws in trying to cope with problems in Alleghany County involving the private Kim-Stan landfill, which had become "a repository for months for waste from all over the Northeastern United States."

A circuit judge ordered the landfill, which had been taking out-of-state wastes since September 1988, closed Thursday until it can comply with state landfill laws.

Terry said Virginia has changed its laws to address problems such as Kim-Stan, and that Boucher is working on changes at the federal level "with my full support and my admiration" to protect localities like Selma from having unwanted outside wastes buried within its borders.

Wastes must be disposed of, she said, "but the solution, ladies and gentlemen, is not to fill every hollow in Southwest Virginia with garbage."

Boucher was nominated by Pulaski Mayor Gary Hancock, with seconds coming from Grayson County Treasurer Fields R. Young Jr., former Boucher staffer Becky Coleman and Del. Jack Kennedy, D-Norton.

Ninth District Republicans, scheduled to meet next month in Wytheville, have not decided whether to field a candidate. So far only one person, preacher and farmer Charles D. Counts of Chilhowie, has publicly expressed interest in the GOP candidacy.

Boucher told reporters after the convention that he would be surprised if he remained unchallenged, and is preparing for a race which requires $700,000 to $800,000 these days, he said. He now has about a quarter of that amount, he said.

He listed several projects he hoped to see completed in the 1990s with federal funds: a dam at Haysi; flood protection facilities in Buchanan County; a traditional music center at Fisher Peak near Galax; and a "smart road" from Interstate 81 to Blacksburg.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB