If you used the now-closed downtown Vicksburg Post Office for your postal services, you have first-hand knowledge of the effect on your (or your business’s) finances, on your time, and on the additional pollution of the environment caused by the necessary use of a vehicle to travel to the Pemberton PO. This is not merely a Vicksburg/Warren County phenomenon, however. Similar closures are occurring nationwide as the USPS attempts to cope with reduced need for its services, and competition from other reliable and efficient delivery services. Locally, many neighborhood drop boxes have been removed, so that most city and county residents and businesses who must use the services of the local PO now have no choice but to take the time to drive to the Pemberton location, fight the traffic on Pemberton Boulevard, wait in line until a clerk is free, then return to home or work.
Thousands if not millions of trips via vehicles to centralized post offices are required every day all across the country. The amounts of fuel burned, and the tons of carbon dioxide and sulphur and nitrogen compounds emitted from exhausts, are enormous. Indirectly, perhaps, the USPS is one of the nation’s largest polluters, and a significant contributor to waste and inefficiency.
Your comments and suggestions are welcome.
VICKSBURG SPEAKS 
Growing up as a letter carrier’s daughter, you learn to have a lot of respect for the USPS. Although a government program, the USPS recieves no funding from the government, no money from taxes, no grants, nothing. Every dollar used to fuel the mail trucks, every penny of every salary paid, every Light bill, repair bill, and water bill paid by the USPS comes from revenue recieved from mailing letters. Everytime you buy a stamp, you are supporting a letter carrier’s family. So for less than .50 you can send something from Vicksburg, MS and it will arrive in the northern or southernmost tip of the US within 2 days. These people work through any and all weather conditions. When it’s pouring rain outside, you still get your mail. Tornadoes, mail is there. Sleet & hail, don’t worry, your mail will still be waiting, and the price doesn’t go up just because my daddy had to walk miles in the 100 degree humid Vicksburg summers or 33 degree rain in the winter. I commend the USPS for being able to provide these services, all on a few stamps. I do agree it would be wonderful if the government could help out with some more fuel efficient vehicles, but for now, I’ll gladly drive a couple of extra miles and spend a few more minutes, so the USPS can cut back on extras to keep citizens of Vicksburg employed in a self-sufficient organization.