We've got a classic battle going on here in Oxford-- long and contentious
public hearings, lots of letters to the editor in the local paper and
informal gatherings of citizens. The same fight, with different players,
is taking place in other Connecticut towns, too, but the media's focus on
sex, violence and profits means that these controversies, which have
significant implications for the future, aren't covered except in isolated
local stories.
Arena Capital from Westport wants to build an enormous industrial
generating facility in our town in order to turn natural gas into
electricity, with the help of two large turbines and a secondary steam
system.
So far, the town's administration has bent over backwards to accommodate
this 500 megawatt project. Land was re-zoned from residential to
industrial. The allowed uses of industrial park land were changed to
include gas-fired power plants. Now the applicant is asking for
significant special exceptions. Arena wants to build structures which are
two and three times the current height limit, to excavate enormous amounts
of earth in order to turn Oxford's highest point into a flattened base for
large equipment, to fill wetlands and to operate its power plant.
The citizen opposition to the plant is varied, vocal and very creative.
Mothers, ecologists, engineers, authors, teachers, nurses and lots of just
plain folks have expressed a variety of concerns which include large-scale
use of potable water, very tall, fat smokestacks emitting noxious
pollutants, the hum of large turbines running 24 hours a day,
electromagnetic radiation and the enormous quantities of waste heat which
will be dumped into the environment. These dedicated citizens also worry
about global warming, about large trucks carrying toxic chemicals and
backup fuel oil over narrow country roads, the potential for disaster with
an airport so close, and about the power plant's effects on property
values. It's easy to sympathize with residents who're just built their
dream homes in a rural area and are suddenly confronted with this
industrial dinosaur in their backyards.
It doesn't help the applicant's appeal that its giant development partner,
General Electric, is listed as the nation's top superfund polluter. This
mega-corporation will supply the equipment, as well as build, operate and
maintain the power plant. With the fish in the Housatonic River on the
other side of town declared inedible because of PCBs that GE leaked
upstream years ago, many residents find it hard to believe that this
corporation will be a good neighbor.
To their credit, the developers at Arena Capital have responded to some of
the citizens' concerns, changing to a cooling system that uses less water,
and removing fencing from around a created wetland, for examples. This
plant is said to be cleaner and somewhat more efficient. Proponents for
the plant argue that older, more polluting power plants will be retired,
once these newer ones are brought on line, but that depends on the future
of the deregulated electricity market. Unfortunately, this scenario leaves
behind vacant, contaminated brownfields in urban areas while it despoils a
beautiful drumlin in Oxford.
There are far fewer vocal supporters of the project in town. Several men
who work in power plants and the doctor who plans to build a large
residential/golf community here (who also received zoning variances for his
project) spoke in favor.
However, the nature of the permitting process and the economic interests of
the applicant keep the really important questions from being asked. What
is the energy going to be used for- running more school soda machines,
electric clothes dryers on sunny days and cooling buildings where the
windows don't open, or powering a heart-lung machine? Why don't we use
solar energy and conservation first before we consider building this
wasteful plant?
Those questions aren't being asked because the answers would turn us away
from centralized, wasteful, fossil-fuel power systems controlled by a few
large corporations and lead us towards diverse, locally-controlled,
non-polluting, solar-energy use.
How long can we keep providing tax benefits to large corporations,
despoiling the Earth and adding heat, carbon dioxide and other pollutants
to the biosphere in order to obtain services that the sun can provide for
free?
This is Bill Duesing, Living on the Earth
(C)1999, Bill Duesing, Solar Farm Education, Box 135, Stevenson, CT 06491
Bill and Suzanne Duesing operate the Old Solar Farm (raising NOFA/CT
certified organic vegetables) and Solar Farm Education (working on urban
agriculture projects in southern Connecticut and producing "Living on the
Earth" radio programs). Their collection of essays Living on the Earth:
Eclectic Essays for a Sustainable and Joyful Future is available from Bill
Duesing, Box 135, Stevenson, CT 06491 for $14 postpaid. These essays first
appeared on WSHU, public radio from Fairfield, CT. New essays are posted
weekly at http://www.wshu.org/duesing and those since November 1995 are
available there.
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail