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Biomass- A Reason to be Cheerful |
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Written by Geoff Brown
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Wednesday, 10 June 2009 |
Due to child-related activities, I recently found myself with an hour and a half of free time in Amherst and went to the UMass Library. Searching the catalog for titles with some bearing on Greenfield’s biomass controversy, I came across this one:
SITE FIGHTS: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West by Daniel P. Aldrich.
Here are a couple of quotes describing the book from the Cornell University Press website:
Policymakers must decide not only where to locate often unwanted projects but also what methods to use when interacting with opposition groups. In Site Fights, Daniel P. Aldrich gathers quantitative evidence from close to five hundred municipalities across Japan to show that planners deliberately seek out acquiescent and unorganized communities for such facilities in order to minimize conflict.
Through fieldwork and interviews with bureaucrats and activists, Aldrich illustrates these dynamics with case studies from Japan, France, and the United States.
The incidents highlighted in Site Fights stress the importance of developing engaged civil society even in the absence of crisis, thereby making communities both less attractive to planners of controversial projects and more effective at resisting future threats.
When I tried to apply some of what I read to our experience in Greenfield, I started feeling that Greenfield was being challenged to define itself as a community that was not “acquiescent and unorganized” but rather informed, able to communicate with itself and able to assert local values.
As I have watched the local dialog develop regarding the proposed plant, I must say that I have seen positive growing evidence of an “engaged civil society” here in Greenfield and in the surrounding communities potentially affected by the proposed plant.
The called-off ZBA meeting at the Middle School was quite different from published reports; the room was filled with interested and articulate citizens who spoke eloquently about their homes and the science involved.
Following a more recent event in Turners where the developer and residents engaged in a lively dialog, a local business owner, clearly moved by the event, told me that a strong spirit of love for the local landscape and community was expressed at the meeting.
If you would like to see if you can pick up on the same thing we are feeling, or would like to join in, please come to the Zoning Board of Appeals Public Hearing on Monday, June 15th at the Middle School cafeteria, 195 Federal Street.
Geoff Brown is a registered nurse at the Franklin Medical Center and a frequent contributor to the www.greenfieldbiomass.info website. |
