Victims of the Biomass Plant

Vic­tims of the Bio­mass Plant 

- by Judy Hooker

The city of Gainesville gov­ern­ment isn’t the intel­li­gent, for­ward think­ing group I would have imag­ined. Is it some­how cool to vic­tim­ize an oth­er­wise beau­ti­ful com­mu­ni­ty for finan­cial gain? Peo­ple and wildlife alike will pay a huge price for your cal­lous actions.

I am speak­ing of the Turkey Creek area that was select­ed for extinc­tion by way of a bio­mass wood-burn­ing plant. This plant sounds like a jet plane and looks like my idea of hell. But I don’t think noise is the worst of many unwel­come gifts from this plant. As I sat on my porch recent­ly, I was assault­ed by a smell in the air. As I approached the front gate in my car lat­er, I smelled the same odor again. Who is plan­ning to mon­i­tor this monstrosity? 

Most of the res­i­dents of Turkey Creek are seniors. I sus­pect that is why this par­tic­u­lar site was cho­sen to erect some­thing so con­tro­ver­sial. Some­one under­stood we came here to retire and enjoy nature and golf. They fig­ured we would­n’t be inclined to fight for what was already promised us. We worked hard to earn the right to retire in a spe­cial place. We cer­tain­ly would­n’t have cho­sen to live close to a bio­mass plant.

I chal­lenge any of you who had any input in this project to put your life sav­ings into a dream home in Turkey Creek, close to the noise and smoke you sanc­tion for oth­ers. Of course that will not hap­pen. You will choose to be far from what you would have us con­tend with. You have robbed us all of much of our enjoy­ment of retire­ment, appar­ent­ly with­out con­science — and yes, we have been robbed!

Burn­ing coal or wood is a mat­ter to take seri­ous­ly when there are con­cen­tra­tions of peo­ple as exists here. I grew up in south­west Vir­ginia where coal min­ing was the only occu­pa­tion and coal the source of heat until around 1960. My father worked around the mines in the capac­i­ty of elec­tri­cal engi­neer. When he became aware of the dan­gers of burn­ing coal, he switched over to elec­tric heat.

We need to have emis­sions test­ing out here. There are chil­dren here and lit­tle bod­ies are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to poi­son. I have long wor­ried about the big Gainesville Region­al Util­i­ties coal-burn­ing plant not three miles from us. Until recent­ly, many of the women and men here were out two times a week or more play­ing golf under those smoke­stacks. If the truth were known, I believe it could be a fac­tor in the high num­bers of chron­ic lung prob­lems and can­cers here. For exam­ple, my hus­band and I qualify.

From the incep­tion of the bio­mass plant, there was a group of informed res­i­dents fight­ing to save the integri­ty of this com­mu­ni­ty. We are not the only com­mu­ni­ty affect­ed by the prob­lems that have already occurred. How­ev­er, we do pay an inor­di­nate­ly high tax for the priv­i­lege of liv­ing where it is no longer a great priv­i­lege. Our voic­es should be heard.

The plant is sim­ply a mis­take of enor­mous pro­por­tions. You have proven you can get what you want. Close it. Bypass the cleanup.

Judy Hook­er lives in the Turkey Creek neighborhood.