A North Georgia club is about to lose it's flying site to golf course development. The landowner is extending the club's tenure as long as possible to allow them to conduct a long-standing annual event, but the site will be gone by early Summer.

The club had at one time maintained a flying site on a county landfill, but had to move when the landfill was retrofitted with methane extraction and monitoring systems to be in compliance with current EPA regs.

When the landfill came into compliance the county hired a contractor to operate the monitoring systems and to advise the county on landfill matters. This contractor is advising the county that EPA prohibits using the closed landfill for any activity other than parklands, and that flying model airplanes from the landfill is a definite no-no.

When I met with the club's officers they were not aware of the recently-negotiated partnering agreement between AMA and EPA regarding use of Super Fund sites as model aircraft flying sites. The club was simply out of date on that point, and were convinced that they'd had their last day in court to no avail - they were considering disbanding the club.

I didn't do anything but put the club in contact with Joe Beshar who is the Eastern region flying site assistance guy in Muncie. Erin Dobbs in Muncie also sent the club (and me) a copy of the current list of AMA clubs operating flying sites on landfills.

As a result, this local club now has two "silver bullets" in their pocket and have scheduled another meeting with the county commissioners. I'm betting they get their landfill flying site back.

I didn't do anything special or out of the ordinary - I just passed on a tidbit of information I had.

Of course, that's my job, y'see . . .

I'm a fully qualified BOF, and being an AMA District V Associate Vice President undoubtedly makes me some sort of low-life politician in some quarters.

Alas, I'm no longer young enough to know everything . . .