Wilson: Most landfill opponents are not from Minden area

In an interview with the Pittsburg Morning Sun, Barton County Commissioner Dennis Wilson says the proposed Mindenmines area landfill, in which he is an investor, is mostly opposed by people from outside the immediate area, including interlopers from Joplin:

Wilson: "Not really, I guess, because we had all the stuff there to answer them. Those who were really hot weren't asking questions. They were just making remarks. Which is different. I tried to get them to look at the information. That was disheartening there in that a lot of them didn't wish to look at it. If they asked a question, we had an answer there. They didn't want an answer. Jim Coleman, one of the city councilmen is 70-years old and he was born and raised in Minden. And when it was over, he said, 'I do not know 80 percent of those people.'"

Flaherty: "Why do you think that was?"

Wilson: "Some of them, I understand were from Joplin (Mo.), but I don't know. I don't have any idea."

In another section of the interview, Wilson grows extremely irritated with the reporter:

Wilson: "Let's go into the interview. We're doing this over the phone, and you're coming at me with this. Now why would I want to go into this phase when I've got 12 years of answering questions, and five or six people got really hot, two of them really loud and would not look at the information of the studies? All they wanted to do was yell. Most of those guys have moved into the area the last four or five years or less. Now this has been going on for 12 years. I've met with the city periodically, it's been in the papers. I've got articles here that go back to, well, the big one was in 1996. Now you're bringing this up. I don't understand why. Are you trying to incite a riot? Am I going to go out there and find stuff destroyed on my paper? You're trying to bait a crowd is what it sounds like ... You're trying to bait a crowd. Don't bait me, I've got 12 years of study into this. This is not a fly-by-night deal. I'm not just making this up. This is an investment based on federal and state regulations. These state regulations are three or four times tighter than the state of Kansas. We're talking about Missouri. I could probably put a landfill in Kansas up in a matter of years. But I want to you realize that."