ORION Magazine carries a lovely section called The Place Where You Live. Readers are invited to submit a contribution telling about the place where they live. This following piece was printed in the July/August 2012 issue of ORION. You should be able to access it on line when the September/October issue is in print.
Meanwhile, here is Gary Pace's beautifully spoken homage of gratitude to those who stood up to a nuclear site even after construction had begun and halted it - for good:
"Bodega Head, California. I come to the Bodega Headlands often to make offerings and prayers. Offerings to the land - the wild northern California coast - and prayers of gratitude to people who, fifty years ago, had the vision to block construction of a nuclear plant on this spot straddling the San Andreas Fault. During the 1906 earthquake, this coastline moved 15 feet.
Tucked behind dramatic cliffs, and close enough to the ocean for me to hear sea lions and glimpse migrating whales, is a small pond called "Hole in the Head." This crater is the site initially excavated for the plant's foundation; now it only hints at the disaster that could have unfolded. The largest nuclear reactor of its era would have been built on the edge of the fault.
What outrageous hope gave people the courage to believe they could halt construction of a nuclear site even after construction had begun? Who could have predicted their unlikely success, outlined in this understated park sign?
'Proximity of the San Andreas Fault would have significantly increased risks to marine, tidal, and atmospheric environments. Citizens and scientists collected signatures, filed lawsuits, wrote letters, and appeared at hearings ranging from Sonoma County to Washington, D.C. The project was finally abandoned in 1964 after 8 years of controversy and citizen action.'
If it had opened as planned, the reactor would have outlived its utility by now. I would be standing here before the shuttered structures of cooling towers, looking out over the yard littered with barrels of spent fuel rods, a lonely witness to the radioactivity that would persist for scores of human lifetimes. The electricity produced would have long since passed through local residents' light bulbs and dishwashers, and we'd be tapping new sources of power for our contemporary needs.
My thoughts drift to those folks who worked for such a reasonable outcome. As the sea breeze blows across my face, I arrange flowers in honor of the legacy these activists left behind, an ephemeral monument to something that never came to pass."
Recent Comments