http://www.nonewarkpowerplant.org
They have quite a bit of info and even video up on their site.
www.delawareonline.com has the article up about that evening meeting. There's pic at
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/03/28/data-centers-counter-facts-got-closed-ears/7030375/
I think in the first pic, I'm sitting in pretty much a sea of 'green' (union people, some who were bused in). I'm in the patterned red fleece at the center bottom of the pic. My daughter is in the same row with the red hoodie. Couldn't find a seat down front with the red dressed supporters of Amy Roe and the NRAPP. I wish I could have slapped both chairman Jeff Bergstrom and Curt Bedford. Bergstrom really liked to use 'weasel words'. Wonder if the chairman is a repub. He seems to think if you repeat something enough, it'll be correct.
Bedford is the principal of Newark High. Maybe someone so confused shouldn't have such a demanding job. I'm sure it calls for more brain power than the appeal hearing did. I've never seen people so confused as Bergstrom and Bedford. Kinda scary that they couldn't understand simple English. Bergstrom was the one that kept saying that nobody could tell him where the pollution would land or if it would land in concentric circles, so he'd have to side with the TDC. I liked my daughter's comment to that. She said "If I fart in a room sitting next to you, will it impact your immediate environment or two rooms down?" UGH!!! So what does a one unanimous, one 3-1 (favor of TDC) and two 2-2 split votes get us? Wouldn't surprise me if they hadn't made a prearranged good cop/bad cop deal where there wouldn't be anything less than a 2-2 split, nothing denouncing the plan.
I've never been to one of the other 'hearings' because we're usually in another meeting, so I don't know if they both act the part of idiots all the time, or only for this one.
The union guys who were sitting in front of me were from PA. One asked the other one what this was all about. The other one said "just watch. I was just told by my rep to show up." I noticed toward the back they also sat mostly every other seat taking up room. They could have admitted the remainder of the line outside if they had filled every seat OR if they only admitted people into the auditorium who actually lived/work in Newark, they could have seated other people in the auditoriums w/ audio/video set up and had room for everyone.
I used to have respect for Bedford (principal of Newark High), but he just said "I'll go with what Jeff said." or "I agree with Jeff". When most of what Jeff said was whining "I don't understand" or "There is no evidence of where the pollution is going to fall, or that it's going to fall in a certain radius of the plant. Nobody can tell me where the pollution will fall, so I can't vote against this" or "There's millions or billions of dollars involved. We'd better get this right." The stupid ass person from the TDC kept whining "It's just not fair."
Both of them (Bergstrom and the principal of Newark High because they were lockstep that night) being confused by Webster's definitions of neighborhood, customary, subordinate, and incidental was a total joke. The lawyer that the NRAPP had (Mr. Krystl) was awesome. Look at his presentation if you get a chance. He had a really good graphic of how the power plant was worse than the old Chrysler plant. Apparently the TDC cherry picked what chemicals it was going to quote to make it look like the power plant was a favorable entity and cleaner than what had previously been there. They didn't present all the chemicals in their report, and when you look at the hazards of all of them, the TDC came out much worse than Chrysler. I worked in Ag (Townsend) Hall 30 years ago. We had DNREC's phone numbers pasted on our telephones in order to call in a report if the paint fumes were to overpowering in our offices. Then I used to live in New Castle, now I live within those concentric circles (I'm in between the 1/2 mile/2000 ft radius). And get this, for the TDCs proposal purpose they don't consider the definition of "neighborhood" to be anything outside of the TDCs area of the Star Campus -- not the schools that back up to the tracks, not the the properties even within the closest concentric circles. Also, Newark government has a longstanding rule that when there is a zoning change/appeal, etc. the five nearest properties have to be notified since they will be affected most. Apparently the way they're considering the TDC property, that rule doesn't need to be held to.
Nobody mentioned the schools or care facilities in the area that night, or the fact that they're talking about a 12" natural gas line coming into the plant. That would create quite a bang if it went up, and take a 100car trainload of crude oil or other hazardous materials with it from the train yard. My brother works for the freight rail down there and he said we don't know half of the hazardous stuff that's shipped through there. It changed greatly after Chrysler closed down. Now they even side the cars for short periods down there.
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