I stumbled on a copy of Nuclear Power and Its Critics: The Cayuga Lake Controversy last week, and grabbed it. I still remember Joyce Gerbasi explaining to a very surprised and younger me that NYSEG had wanted to put a nuclear plant, Bell Station, next to the coal-fired Milliken Station/AES Cayuga (that's now in bankruptcy).
I'll write a lot more about parallels (and differences) between that 1968-1971 battle and the current conversation about hydrofracking. The opening of the story, though, feels very similar. As Alfred Eipper, one of the opponents of the plant, put it in a 1971 article:
"By March 1968 increasing numbers of us were articulating our unanswered questions about the power plant's effects on the lake in the form of letters to local editors and legislators, the utility was preparing to break ground for Bell Station (as planned), and it appeared unmistakably clear that a unilateral industrial decision about use of a needed resource was beginning to be implemented."
I was pleased to see that the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network gave the Citizens Committee to Save Cayuga Lake an award last year remembering the work they'd done 40 years ago.
Posted by simon at January 13, 2012 12:50 PM in energy