CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE

December 15, 1977

Page 39314 

A CHRISTMAS GHOST: PUMPED STORAGE CHAMPIONED BY ENVIRONMENTALISTS

Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the many twisted arguments against the Dickey-Lincoln hydroelectric power project on the St. John River in my State are sometimes amusing, sometimes saddening and occasionally so outrageous that I am forced to speak against them.

One such argument has surfaced in the form of pumped storage, touted recently as an environmentally sound alternative by the Boston region of the EPA. EPA should know better. I hope it does. If it does not, I worry about our environmental future.

Pumped storage, of course, is a method of producing power within a system by using excess capacity at times of low demand to pump water uphill to a holding reservoir. Then at times of peak demand, some of the energy is reclaimed by allowing the water to fall from the reservoir through generating turbines. In some cases, it is a practical generating method.

The EPA's comments on the Dickey-Lincoln project, and news reports which followed their release, both pointed to a pumped storage site near Caratunk, above the Kennebec River.

EPA, and the press demanded to know why this site had not received more study. After all, they claimed, the site would produce more peaking power than Dickey-Lincoln for what they were certain would be less environmental cost.

In the first place, it has been studied, first in the early 1960's when Dickey-Lincoln was first seriously considered. In the draft environmental impact statement on Dickey-Lincoln, a section of appendix I is devoted to analyzing pumped storage, including the Caratunk site.

Let me for a moment merely mention the fact that the water level of the upper reservoir would fluctuate every day by 90 to 100 feet, and by as much as 140 feet. Let me only mention that the lower reservoir, Wyman Lake, would fluctuate every day by 6 feet. Let me only mention that the Federal Government never has been in the business of building pumped storage facilities for private utility companies.

The key objection, conveniently and dishonestly ignored in recent reports, is this: there is no power in New England to store. Building a pumped storage facility would mean building a new base load power plant, fired by coal, oil or nuclear power. Now where is the environmental benefit of pumped storage?

In fact, the Army Corps has estimated it would require one third of the total power generation of a new nuclear plant to run a storage facility at Caratunk. Why so much? Because you only get back two-thirds of the power that you use in a pumped storage facility. So the Caratunk facility, which would produce more power than Dickey-Lincoln, would actually cost us 2.5 billion kilowatt hours a year to generate 1.7 billion kilowatt hours of energy for peak demand. And it would only cost us $300 million, if the Government were interested in the first place.

Now where is the power benefit from that?

Dickey-Lincoln combines peaking power, intermediate power and pumped storage to produce its energy. In addition, regulating the water flow of the St. John River would increase energy production downstream. We could reclaim part in the pumped storage feature of the project. And the entire argument ignores the crucial flood control aspect of the Dickey-Lincoln Dam. The floods will not go away, even if Dickey-Lincoln does.

Mr. President, one aspect of the pumped storage argument being advanced by environmentalists is particularly disturbing. I have devoted a substantial portion of my life and my energy to promoting the cause of a clean, healthy environment. Those of us committed to environmental protection have succeeded because we never attempted to hide the truth. We always described the consequences of our proposals. We have succeeded in part because we forced others who would harm the environment to describe the consequences of their proposals. Collectively we made a judgment on the facts.

It is a disservice to the cause of environmental protection, and a sad reflection on those who advance the argument, to pretend that what is advanced here is any more than a Christmas ghost which will disappear like a wisp of smoke under the howling wind of environmental objections should Dickey-Lincoln not survive.

I further believe it is irresponsible for those who would call themselves environmentalists to proclaim pumped storage as an environmental savior in the Maine case when it was environmental opposition which killed what some considered to be the most environmentally responsible pumped storage proposal in history — the Storm King project on the Hudson River.

The story of how the project was killed, and by whom, was eloquently told by William Tucker in the November 1977, issue of Harper's magazine.

I ask unanimous consent that his analysis be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the analysis was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

ENVIRONMENTALISM AND THE LEISURE CLASS

(By William Tucker)

Four years ago, while I was working at the Bergen Record, a suburban newspaper in Hackensack, New Jersey, a press release crossed my desk from the Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference, a small group with headquarters on Madison Avenue which, by its own advertisement, had been working for more than ten years to "save Storm King Mountain."

Although I had grown up in the New York area, I hadn't been living there much during the 1960s, and my memory of the whole Storm King incident was hazy. The most I could recall was the image of a majestic, looming mountain somewhere along the Hudson, a threat by Consolidated Edison of New York to do something terrible to it, and the recollection of protesters and entertainers strumming their guitars and parading in boats until the apparition had somehow been exorcized.

I doubt if I could have identified the Con Edison proposal as a pumped storage plant. If I had been asked, I probably would have said it was a nuclear plant. I did not know at the time how many other people, including some of the principals of the controversy, would have responded in the same way.

Yet I was getting awfully suspicious about environmentalists. Their solutions to problems had an inordinate amount of impracticality about them, more than they would have tolerated in their own lives. The environmentalists in any given area seemed very easy to identify. They were, quite simply, members of the local aristocracy, often living at the end of long, winding country roads. They had learned the lessons of conspicuous consumption and had allowed a certain amount of genteel rusticity to enter their lives. Instead of imitating Greeks and Romans, they seemed to be patterning themselves after the English gentry.

The environmentalists knew the language of energy and ecology, and could describe a future filled with windmills and with bright sunshine radiating "inexhaustible energy," Yet one never got the impression that these people were planning to be part of it. The "soft energy" of the future was a vision offered to persuade people to forgo the nastier, more vulgar realities of the "hard energies" of the present. I knew this was mostly a lot of nonsense. Solar electrical generating stations would be massive installations, hiding acres upon acres from the sunlight, Storage problems could prove insurmountable. Solar heating on a large scale could mean rebuilding half the homes in America, When I questioned the environmentalists closely, I found these details rarely intruded upon their vision. "Have faith" was the rejoinder, while economics and matters of sheer quantity were dismissed, "We certainly can't go on the way we're going now" was the comment I heard over and over again. It was difficult to tell just which, if any, of these people really knew what they were talking about.

There was another thing that disturbed me about environmentalism. That was the way it always seemed to favor the status quo. For people who found the present circumstances to their liking, it offered the extraordinary opportunity to combine the qualities of virtue and selfishness. When the first environmentalists were showing up at town meetings arguing against new apartment houses, shopping centers, or whatever, it seemed obvious that they were acting out of the universal human impulse which makes people respond to incursions on their surroundings by saying, "Put it somewhere else." Like everyone, the environmentalists wanted to be left with the illusion that they lived alone in nature without the assistance of other people. They had simply refined their arguments with talk about "ecosystems," "rare, endangered species," and "carrying capacities."

That was before everyone else began catching on to the possibilities of environmentalism. From 1972 to 1974, "protecting the environment" became the favorite argument in the endless debates over new development in the suburban area of Rockland County, New York, where I was reporting. People who would starve to death if they couldn't drive their cars to the supermarket were opposing new road construction because "fossil fuels are disappearing" and "we aren't going to be using cars anymore."

And really, there was nothing in it that was logically inconsistent with the tales of the original environmentalists. Nothing these first country prophets had said ever had much to do with sacrifice or self-restraint. If tweedy people living at the end of country roads with fireplaces in their living rooms could protect their "environments," why couldn't tacky people living in pink and gray houses at the end of cul-de-sacs do so as well? "Environmentalism" always seemed to work in favor of the people who were already established in "the environment." I didn't realize how true this was until I learned that a group of middle-class whites in Newark had been able to block a highly controversial low income housing project by bringing a long series of challenges to the project's environmental impact statements.

In the course of about six months, I saw several garbage recycling projects and an experiment in pollution free burning of coal blocked by local residents who were "protecting their environment." It was easy to see that people who talked about "environmentalism" were not terribly concerned with things like recycling, conservation, and biology.

With all this in mind, I decided it might be worth taking a long look at the incident which is considered the "birthplace of the environmental movement," the Storm King Mountain controversy. I admit I started my investigation with certain anticipations. I expected to find a project that had been opposed by a small but determined group of wealthy people. This turned out to be correct. What I didn't expect to find was the degree to which the opponents of the project had managed to commandeer public opinion and win supporters among people whose best interests might have been served by supporting the plant. Among these was the entire government of the city of New York.

What is most astonishing is that the whole issue is still alive, miraculously embalmed in the deepfreeze storage of the court system. The crowds have departed, the newspapers have stopped covering the story, and no more than a few people can remember even the sketchiest details of the issue. Only Con Edison and its little band of determined opponents remain in deadlock, struggling far into the night.

The chronicle as it comes to us now is really a historical saga. The written record would probably fill a wall of bookcases. I have read the New York Times file on the subject, the Bergen Record file (which includes most AP dispatches), and several books relating to the subject; I have visited the Storm King area many times, and interviewed close to forty people who played major roles in the controversy. Yet most of the testimony from the fifteen years of court cases and Federal Power Commission hearings is known to me only through excerpts and newspaper reports.

Nevertheless, there is a consistent pattern in the Storm King Mountain controversy, one which, I think, offers an answer to the big question — why has this particular plant stirred up so much opposition?

The question has long tantalized nearly all the participants. One can see editorial writers, utility executives, residents of the Storm King area who favored the plant, and even the environmentalists themselves reaching for an answer over and over again. I wasn't able to make more than a few vain stabs at it until this year, when I went back and finished a book I should have read in college, Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. There, in a slim fourteen-page chapter called "Industrial Exemption and Conservatism," I found an explanation of "environmental" behavior which I believe goes far beyond the issues at Storm King Mountain. It bears most specifically upon our present industrial crisis — the prospect of fossil fuel shortages, the conversion to new technologies, the support for "no-growth" economics, and the general future of the industrial system.

I believe the Storm King Mountain controversy contains a story that has never been adequately told but has enormous bearing on the future of our economic system. It is offered here in the hope that, once understood, it will not have to be repeated on a large scale.

THE CHRISTMAS LIGHT DEMAND

The leisure class is in great measure sheltered from the stress of those economic exigencies which prevail in any modern, highly organized industrial community. The exigencies of the struggle for the means of life are less exacting for this class than for any other; and as a consequence of this privileged position we should expect to find it one of the least responsive of the classes of society to the demands which the situation makes for a further growth of institutions and a readjustment to an altered industrial situation. The leisure class is the conservative class.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN,

The Theory of the Leisure Class. In 1962 Consolidated Edison Company, the sole supplier of electricity to New York, was the giant of the industry. The company had some of the most skilled and innovative engineers in the business, and was generally regarded as the most progressive utility in the country. This was hardly a matter of chance, because whatever problems occurred in the utility industry were sure to happen first in New York City.

In the 1950s Con Ed had experienced almost nothing but major changes. The capital-short years of the depression and the diversion of resources during World War II had left the utility almost a generation behind in construction of new generating plants. In 1952 the company had eleven power stations, all of them in New York City and all but three built before 1933. They could produce a peak output to meet a demand of 3.3 million kilowatts.

But the arrival of new energy consuming technologies — particularly air conditioning — was changing the entire pattern of electrical consumption in New York City. Throughout the history of the utilities industry, peak demands always occurred at night. Right through 1957, the biggest strain on Con Ed's system occurred when midwinter lighting and heating demands were at their highest. Old timers in Con Ed's control command could fondly remember a time when the annual peak usage occurred on Christmas Eve, when tree lights and toy trains put the largest demand on Con Ed's generators.

But by the early 1950s it was obvious that the city's systems were on the verge of enormous changes. Daytime peaks, particularly during the summer air conditioning season, were growing in gigantic leaps and would soon be overtaking winter nighttime demands. Carrying summer loads was soon going to be the utility's biggest challenge.

Con Edison responded with actions that can only be called appropriate. In the late Fifties the company contracted with the Allis-Chalmers Corporation to build a 1 million kilowatt coal burning plant — later to be nicknamed "Big Allis" — that would be more than twice the size of an existing plant, yet would hold off the rising peak demands for only four years.

At the same time, Con Ed ignored the conservatism of other utilities and began developing a nuclear technology. The only atomic generating stations had been built by the U.S. government, and other utilities were avoiding the risks of pioneering in the field. But Con Ed did not have time for such caution. The company bought an abandoned riverside park at Indian Point in upper Westchester County and contracted with General Electric to build, for $140 million, the first privately owned nuclear station in the world. Indian Point would provide only 237,000 kilowatts — less than the next year's projected increases in demand — but would open the way for larger efforts in nuclear technology.

On June 26, 1957, with both Big Allis and Indian Point One still in construction, the company passed a watershed. During the mid-afternoon of an extraordinarily hot day, Con Ed's demand rose to 3.5 million kilowatts. It was the first time a daytime peak had surpassed the annual nighttime peak, and it also put Con Ed over its own capacity. Electricity had to be imported from Long Island and New Jersey over lines that were originally built so Con Ed could sell power to neighboring utilities. All during the long afternoon, Con Ed executives sweated it out at the Manhattan control center, praying that the improvised system would work. Over the next three years, demand would grow at an average rate of 300,000 kilowatts per year.

Big Allis and Indian Point One came on line as scheduled, but the exasperating situation of "peak demands" was leaving Con Edison and other utilities playing a losing hand. New generating capacity was going to have to be added almost continually, yet this capacity would remain idle during most of the year. It was like building an extra wing on a house to accommodate a guest who visited only at Christmas. There were extraordinary inefficiencies in building and maintaining generators whose average "load demand" over the entire year was only about 55 percent of their full capacity.

The problem is that electricity must be used as it is generated. It cannot be stored in normal generating systems. The only proven method of storage — then and now — is "pumped storage," a system whereby water is pumped from a lower to an upper reservoir during off peak hours and released during peak hours to create hydroelectric power.

A few utilities had built pumped storage plants during the 1940s, and 50s, but they were clumsy, costly affairs. Two separate water tunnels were required — one for pumping, the other for generation. Then, in 1960, engineers perfected a reversible turbine that could serve as both pump and generator. One tunnel could be used for both purposes, cutting construction costs nearly in half.

Several utility companies in areas where mountains and rivers would make pumped storage systems feasible started exploring the new techniques. Con Ed did not make a deliberate investigation, but in 1961 one of its executives received a call from a manager at Central Hudson Gas and Electric in Newburgh, who said his company had been investigating what appeared to be two excellent pumped storage sites on opposite sides of the Hudson River within five miles of Newburgh. The first, below Breakneck Ridge on the east bank, would suit Central Hudson, but the second, just south of Storm King Mountain, was too large for the Newburgh utility. It might, however, be on a scale required by the New York City company.

Con Ed made its own investigation of the Storm King site and found it was highly suitable for pumped storage. The generating plant could be tucked into a small inlet in the Palisades Interstate Park just south of Storm King. An upper reservoir for drinking supplies had already been developed about two miles behind the mountain. It belonged to the village of Cornwall, which lay just north of Storm King. The village would probably be happy to have the reservoir put on the tax rolls, and could be furnished with new wells by the company for about $3 million.

Working covertly to avoid land speculation, the utility acquired most of the property around the upper reservoir during the spring and summer of 1962. Then, in July, Con Ed broke the news to political officials in Cornwall. Mayor Michael Donahue was delighted — almost overwhelmed — at the idea of having the huge enlargement of the upper reservoir on the tax rolls. The benefits to the community would be enormous.

On September 27, 1962, village officials and Con Ed made a joint public announcement of the new plant, which they predicted would win quick approval from village residents and from the Federal Power Commission, the licensing agent. In his first interview with the press, Mayor Donahue, a Cornell-educated veterinarian who had grown up in Cornwall noted, "There's no chance that the building will reduce the aesthetic qualities of the area" because it would be located "on the waterfront, not on the hills."

Five miles downstream however, a part time resident on the east bank looked out the front window of his mountain retreat, one of many luxurious second homes in the area, and found a different view of the matter. William Osborn, an engineer whose family owned 2,000 acres and a mountainside castle, and who served as president of the Hudson River Conservation Society, realized that he would have a clear view of the transmission lines that Con Ed was planning to string across the river to connect the Storm King plant to its circuits in Putnam and Westchester Counties. Osborn called a few of his neighbors in similar mountaintop hideaways and found that they too were upset about the plant, which would be visible from several lookouts on the east side of the river. Osborn, whose brother Frederick was a commissioner of the Palisades Interstate Park, was soon on the phone to Con Ed to see if it couldn't be persuaded to make a few slight changes in the layout of the plant.

At the time, "ecology" was an obscure discipline found only in a few biology textbooks, "conservation" was a movement whose main impetus had occurred around the turn of the century, and "environmentalism" was a word that didn't even appear in the dictionary. But most people familiar with the history of the Storm King Mountain controversy rightly consider William Osborn's phone calls to his mountaintop neighbors as the birth of the environmental movement.

HUDSON RIVER VISTAS

The scenery along the Hudson River's 130 mile length from New York to Albany can hardly be characterized in a few simple phrases. Nor can its long history. Both are notable for their diversity.

The Hudson's scenery ranges from the rocky columns of the Palisades at the lower end to the dreamlike vista of the Catskills along its upper reaches; from the beauty of mountainside farms to the leaden industrial shores of Haverstraw and Newburgh Bays. The latter are two of the larger industrial centers that sprang to life during the early nineteenth century, when the Hudson became the main thoroughfare for most of the new nation's commerce.

Between them lies a stretch that has remained largely untouched. These are the Hudson Highlands. Here, for a length of fifteen miles, the mountains rise straight from the water's edge like the burly shoulders of huge animals. The stretch is the point where water from a pre-glacial lake broke through on its way to the Atlantic. It is the only breach in the Appalachian Chain, and thus forms a natural pathway from the Eastern coastline to the hinterland of the American continent, making the Hudson the nation's first main highway.

The highlands offered few footholds for commercial and industrial settlement, however; they served instead as a retreat for the wealthy. During the Revolution, they housed the biggest concentration of Tories in the thirteen colonies. As New York City prospered in the early 1800s, some of the area's most successful citizens began trekking up the Hudson to find solace on river front properties. The east bank of the river had been "estate country" ever since the Dutch made their first land grants along its shores while the west bank remained "Indian country," and was first settled only by small farmers who were willing to risk confrontations. As the nineteenth century progressed, the distinction remained. The Astors, the Goulds, the Vanderbilts, the Roosevelts, and the Rockefellers all took up residence on the east bank, while the western shore remained in the hands of small farmers except for the large holdings of the Harriman family in Orange and Rockland County utilities.

The highlands were the scene of some of the more elaborate attempts to mimic European nobility. A succession of wealthy stockbrokers and businessmen built mountainside castles in the region. Some proved drafty and uninhabitable, and were succeeded by less ambitious but still impressive second homes. Eventually, many of the great estates became unmanageable and were sold to charitable institutions. But the little colony of wealth in the highlands persisted. A group of artists and admirers of the past clustered around it, and an aristocratic, inward looking community was formed, with the hamlet of Garrison as its center.

In the cities to the north and south, the story was different. Commerce declined, and industries deteriorated or departed. A wave of urban renewal projects in the 1950s sent displaced blacks moving from city to city along the river looking for homes.

In the period of 1955-61, two striking incidents occurred within ten miles of each other on either side of Storm King. A group of wealthy activists moved an eighteenth century mansion piece by piece all the way from Peekskill to Garrison after the federal government threatened to tear it down. It became the Boscobel Restoration, a minor tourist attraction. On the other side of the river, Newburgh was also briefly in the news. Exasperated by the number of welfare recipients moving into the community, the city manager, Joseph Mitchell, announced that all able-bodied welfare clients would have to perform city jobs to receive their payments. The directive was quickly overturned in the courts, but city officials said it had highlighted the community's economic plight.

Less than a year later, Consolidated Edison of New York arrived on the scene with a proposal to spend $115 million to build a pumped storage plant at the base of Storm King Mountain.

"An advance in technical methods, in population, or in industrial organization will require at least some of the members of the community to change their habits of life ...; and in doing so they will be unable to live up to the received notions as to what are the right and beautiful habits of life."—The Theory of the Leisure Class

Right from the beginning, Con Edison was willing to compromise. It may have been their biggest mistake.

When Osborn made his objections known to Con Ed, the utility quickly agreed to move the plant around to the north side of the mountain, so that, instead of lying within the narrow gorge of the highlands, the plant would be facing the dilapidated scenery of Newburgh Bay, and sitting almost atop the burned-out ruins of Cornwall's abandoned waterfront. The company also agreed to run the power lines through an underwater cable beneath the Hudson. The relocation of the plant would mean a slightly longer tunnel, but it would also put the generating station within the village of Cornwall, which would make local residents even more willing to welcome the project. The additional expense would raise the total post to only $121 million. Osborn registered his satisfaction, Cornwall was even happier about the plant, and the matter seemed settled. But not quite.

Other owners of weekend homes and small estates on the east bank of the highlands were unhappy about the transmission lines, which, in some cases, would run near to or over their properties. If Con Ed was submerging its cables under the river, why couldn't it bury the lines near their properties as well? Con Ed executives replied that burying all the wires would run the costs far beyond acceptable levels for its New York City and Westchester customers. The estate owners were not satisfied.

As they voiced their complaints, they heard that they had counterparts across the river In a little colony of about twenty-five families of wealthy New York City businessmen and attorneys with summer and weekend homes behind Storm King. These "weekenders" and "mountain people," as they were known in Cornwall, lived around a private compound developed in the 1880s by James Stillman, the president of National City Bank and one of the organizers of the Consolidated Gas Company, the forerunner of Con Ed. Stillman had been regarded as a nouveau riche when he tried to gain entrance to Tuxedo Park, the exclusive community at the other end of Orange County. Rebuffed, he expanded his family holdings at Storm King and started his own private community. Many of the current residents are descendants of the original families, although one of the reigning patriarchs, Chauncey Devereux Stillman, had moved further north, to Columbia County, where he kept a set of four-in-hand coaches and raised peacocks on his property.

The "mountain people" were also unhappy about the new plant. A parade of bulldozers and construction workers threatened havoc for their quiet weekend retreats. Some would lose property holdings around the upper reservoir. In addition, the plant would mark a kind of symbolic invasion of their privacy.

The "estate country" people made contact with the "mountain people," and together they talked about the possibilities of blocking the plant. One of the Cornwall people, Stephen Duggan, was a senior partner in the blue chip Wall Street law firm of Simpson, Thatcher and Bartlett. Duggan felt that if the group could harass Con Ed for a while, the economics would change and the company might give up the project. The Cornwall Stillmans polled their relatives and found they were nearly all opposed to the plant. Benjamin Frazier, a Garrison antique dealer who had led protest marches in front of the Boscobel mansion when the federal government had wanted to tear it down, felt the same technique might work at Storm King. Alexander Saunders, a Garrison resident, felt a case could be made for keeping industry out of the area, even though in 1964 he would move his own family business, a small tool-and-die factory, from Yonkers to the highlands. The group found its ranks joined by another activist, Leopold Rothschild (not a real Rothschild) , a well-connected New York City attorney who liked to hike in the Storm King area and had been active in conservation groups since an attempt to oppose construction of the George Washington Bridge in 1927.

They decided to attend Cornwall Village meetings and express their views, but soon found themselves facing almost unanimous public hostility. There were even few threatening phone calls. Mayor Donahue, although quietly appalled that the "mountain people" might try to block the plant, made several efforts to mediate. Years later, when I visited his home, he told me of the time when he was invited "up the mountain" to a cocktail party where the Storm King project was to be discussed. "Nobody said much during the entire afternoon," he recalled, "but toward the end a retired West Point general took me aside and said, 'Look, we've got it nice and peaceful up here, why do you want to spoil it?' I bit my tongue and didn't say anything, but what I wanted to say was 'What about all the little people down there in the village who need this plant? Did you ever think about them?' "

Things did not look promising for the fledgling opponents during the early months of discussion, but in April 1963 Con Ed made a bad mistake. In its annual report, the utility printed on artistic rendering of the proposed pumped storage plant. In an effort to highlight the technical aspects, the artist drew the plant larger than its actual size. As one writer would later describe it. the drawing showed "a portion of Storm King mountain missing, like a slice removed from a tub of cheese." Rothschild wrote letters of protest to both Governor Rockefeller and John B. Oakes, the editorial page editor of the New York Times.

Rockefeller, an aristocrat among aristocrats, made the half-serious suggestion that if the group didn't want the plant they should buy the mountain. (His brother, Laurance Rockefeller, was later to use the family money to buy the Breakneck Ridge site from Central Hudson.) Oakes, however, was more responsive. On May 29, 1963, the Times ran its first editorial on Storm King, asserting that "it is almost as bad to plunk down a couple of power installations right in the heart of one of the most stunning natural regions in the Eastern United States, Storm King Mountain" as it would be to put a power plant in the middle of Central Park. The paper had proudly taken its stand. It has not wavered one iota from its original position over the succeeding fifteen years.

Duggan, Rothschild, Saunders, and their associates spent the rest of the summer looking for checkpoints where the plant could be temporarily delayed. The village had waived a referendum on selling the upper reservoir, so they asked that the vote be held. The result was a 49-925 defeat in 1964.

The only other possibility was the Federal Power Commission, which would be licensing the plan under its authority to regulate all hydroelectric projects. The little group of opponents discovered the deadline for filing for appearance at the FPC hearings had already passed, but through Rothschild's connections they were put in touch with Dale Doty, a Washington, D.C., attorney who had sat on the FPC during the 1950s and had once persuaded it to reject a dam proposed in Wisconsin because it would ruin recreation for the area. Doty was eager to argue a case before the FPC in which scenic and conservation values would be an issue. On the evening of November 8, 1963, Rothschild met with representatives from four national conservation groups in the living room of the Westchester home of Carl Carmer, a popular historian who had written a book on the Hudson. Together they set up the Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference, an alliance of conservation groups that would devote itself to the Storm King case. Carmer was named honorary chairman, and Rothschild was elected president.

Through a combination of Doty's influence and the FTC's desire not to ignore any of the issues, Scenic Hudson was granted permission to appear at the license hearings even though the deadline had passed. Doty felt that a case could be made on the basis of the FPC's responsibilities to consider the total impact of the plant. He felt scenic values should play a part. For Rothschild, Saunders, Carmer, and Duggan, it was chiefly a matter of keeping the plant from going ahead on schedule. When the FPC hearings opened in Washington on February 25, 1964, they and their little band of followers from Garrison and Cornwall were waiting to speak in their turn.

"As population increases, and as man's knowledge and skill in directing the forces of nature widen ... the habitual methods of carrying on the life process of the group as a whole, no longer give the same result as before. If the scheme according to which the life process was carried on under the earlier condition gave approximately the highest attainable result ... in the way of efficiency or facility ... then the same scheme of life unaltered will not yield the highest result attainable . . . under the altered conditions."— The Theory of the Leisure Class

Con Ed officials believed that the huge, 2 million kilowatt pumped storage plant at Storm King would offer three major advantages to its electrical system.

First, it would solve the problem of peaking power at bargain rates. For an investment of only $121 million, Con Ed would be able to increase its current capacity of 5.5 million kilowatts by more than 33 percent, enough to carry it through to 1969. Building the same capacity with fossil fuel or nuclear plants would cost more than $200 million.

Second, the Storm King plant would create greater efficiencies in Con Ed's existing systems. Instead of adding new generating capacity, it would use existing capacity more efficiently. Coal and oil burning plants could be operated at higher levels and would consume less fuel per kilowatt, just as cars burn gas more efficiently at fifty-five miles per hour. Con Ed would be able to retire four of its oldest, least efficient plants. This would be doubly important, since the oldest plants were the worst contributors to air pollution, a growing public concern.

The third advantage was reliability, an increasingly important concern among utilities in the early 1960s. As generating plants became bigger and as transmission lines stretched longer, the possibility of widespread power failures was increasing. Ordinary steamdriven plants could not cope with emergencies because it took from fifteen to thirty minutes to stoke them up to higher capacities. But a pumped storage plant, with enormous quantities of water sitting behind simple sluice devices, would be a godsend in an emergency. The Storm King plant could go from zero to 2 million kilowatts of power in less than a minute. The manmade waterfall could be used to restart other generators after a widespread power failure. The plant could prevent some blackouts and limit the effects of others.

Fifteen years later, New York City public officials would have done well to remember the reliability promised by the Storm King plant The city had suffered two major blackouts in twelve years, the second leading to widespread looting and costing the city more than $1 billion. But by 1977 hardly any political officials could recall more than a few sketchy details of what Storm King had been all about. And none could remember that the city itself had been the major opponent of the project for nearly ten years.

A CONFLICT OF INTERESTS

The FPC hearings added many novel aspects to what had formerly been a staid and pro forma proceeding. The members of Scenic Hudson presented their arguments under Doty's examination. Rothschild warned that the transmission lines running down the east bank of the highlands would cut a "raw scar"into the landscape. Saunders went even further. "This historic area will be permanently defaced," he warned. The plant would "set a precedent for other projects," while "crisscrossing the area with overhead power transmission lines would destroy many beautiful views."

Carmer made the most eloquent summation of Scenic Hudson's position:

"We believe that ugliness begets ugliness and that nature's beauty, once destroyed, may never be restored by the artifice of man ...We would offer the peace and healing our river gives, as it has always given, to those who seek its water for respite from the tension of their lives ... The real question is whether the river's national importance shall be sacrificed to these enterprises which would change the shoreline, lower high peaks [sic], destroy groves of trees ... The Hudson answers a spiritual need more necessary to the nation's health than all the commercial products it can provide, than all the money it can earn."

Carmer's interpretation of Hudson River history was a limited one. It ignored the river's combined role as the first highway of the nation's commerce, the birthplace of the steamboat, the home of one of the nation's first railroads, and the breeding ground for many of its first industries. The suggestion was that the river would now serve only as "respite from the tension of [the] lives" of people who presumably made their living elsewhere. The same kind of reinterpretation of history was taking place along the river, where the interest arising from the Storm King case was bringing suggestions from conservation groups that power boats be banned on the river and no house worth less than $50,000 be built on its shorelines.

The hearing officer, Edward B. Marsh, took their testimony into account, and in June 1964 recommended to the full five member commission that the plant be granted a license. Con Ed had proposed to turn the rotting waterfront area into a park, and Marsh noted that recreation in the area would actually be improved. He said the plant would not affect the scenery of Newburgh Bay, but found sympathy with the argument that the transmission lines would despoil scenery in the highlands. He told Con Ed to find an alternative route that would take the lines behind the mountains at Breakneck Ridge. Marsh called the project "an exceptionally fine pumped storage site" and suggested that Con Ed might even consider enlarging the reservoir to 12 billion gallons for storage of 3 million kilowatts of electricity.

By the time Marsh was issuing his recommendation, it was obvious that the approval of the Storm King plant was not going to be a routine matter. The New York newspapers had discovered the issue and already, on the pages of every city newspaper (there were then seven), the "Storm over Storm King" was brewing.

"The fact that the usage, actions, and views of the well-to-do leisure class acquire the character of a prescriptive canon of conduct for the rest of society gives added weight and reach to the conservative influence of that class. It makes it incumbent upon all reputable people to follow their lead." —The Theory of the Leisure Class

As soon as the New York newspapers woke up to the controversy in the early months of 1964, they lined up almost unanimously against the plant. Con Ed, after all, did not have a glowing reputation in New York City. For one thing, the utility made the mistake of charging people for the amount of electricity they used, whereas the other utility, the New York City Water Department, charged according to fixed "frontage" charges that allow residential customers to consume unlimited amounts of water while extra costs were hidden on the tax rolls. Then, too, Con Ed was constantly digging up the streets to get at its hard-to-service underground lines. Its slogan was "Dig We Must for a Growing New York," and in 1965 Fortune magazine was to label it "the company you love to hate." So the discovery that Con Edison was planning to "destroy" a beautiful historic mountain somewhere up the Hudson certainly came as no surprise.

The issue was particularly suited to the practices of editorials. Reporters who visit the scene of a controversy are often forced to trim their sails and adjust their preconceptions. Finding, for example, that an entire village of 3,000 people — indeed, almost an entire county of 200,000 people — was in favor of the project was bound to give some pause. Over the years many extremely balanced stories question the "scenic" objections to the plant were filed from Cornwall. But editorial writers are under no such constraints. They can proceed without too much attention to details. In the case of Storm King, two fundamental misconceptions emerged: that Newburgh Bay was virgin territory rather than a declining industrial area, and that it was the highlands themselves that were threatened. What is interesting to note is that there was never any question about the economic advantages of the plant.

"Beauty over Electricity," proclaimed the Herald Tribune in a May 10, 1964, editorial which stated:

The Hudson Highlands are a great scenic asset for all the people. And despite the great virtues of Con Edison's cheaper power, the fact remains that this industrial project (for all the intended landscaping works) will detract from nature's beauty. It is well and good that Con Ed wants to bestow so many benefits ... But an undefiled Storm King Mountain is worth more than cheap electricity.

The Times offered its own summation on May 23, 1964:

We do not dispute Con Ed's experts to the effect that this is probably the most economic and efficient means of supplying the next increment of power to meet New York City's constantly growing needs. If the required power plant is not erected at Cornwall but at some other place of less notable scenic and historic interest, doubtless the consumers of New York will have to pay more than they would otherwise pay for their power. We think this choice should be faced frankly; and we also think that in the present instance, preservation is worth the price.

The possibility of there being other sites for the pumped storage plant was occurring in other people's minds, and at one point a reporter asked Rothschild if he was making any attempt to help the utility find a difference location. Rothschild wasn't: "That's their problem," he said.

HOLDING ACTION

A complete review of the examiner's report would ordinarily take the full FPC about four months, but the mounting pressure of public debate was having its effect. The FPC did not issue its final decision until March 1965, nine months after the original recommendation. By then Scenic Hudson had changed its tactics and was mounting a many-sided campaign. The editorials in the New York newspapers had given the opponents of the project a strong indication that there was fertile territory to be mined among the city's celebrity conscious media. Pete Seeger composed a ballad in honor of the mountain. James Cagney and Aaron Copland went on record against the plant.

In August 1964 the conservationists, as they were being called, hired Selvage, Lee, and Howard, a small Fifth Avenue public relations firm that had just finished trying to persuade the American public to take a more tolerant view of Portuguese colonial policies in Angola. James Cope, one of the more ambitious account managers, found himself immediately attracted to Rothschild and his group.

Cope arranged a favorable story for publication in Reader's Digest. He also hit upon the idea of a "sail-in" around Storm King. On September 7, 1984, all seven New York newspapers carried broad coverage of the "waterborne picket line" protesting the plant. The Times noted that "fifty yachts, led by the Westerly, flagship of the New York Yacht Club," paraded from the Highlands Yacht Club in Garrison to Storm King, with "Commodore Chauncey Devereux Stillman, whose family gave the Black Rock Forest [behind Storm King] to Harvard in the 1920s," in command.

Aboard the Westerly were Rep. Robert R. Barry of Westchester and State Sen. R. Watson Pomeroy of Dutchess County. "Opponents say the power plant will leave an enormous gash up Storm King and will set a precedent for defilement of the historic valley," noted the Times. The sail-in made Newsweek, and within weeks forty conservation organizations were offering assistance. The fight to "save Storm King" was becoming a national issue.

Senator Pomeroy was soon able to create an even more favorable publicity platform for the opponents of the plant. He offered his New York Legislature Committee on Natural Resources as a forum for Scenic Hudson. The pretext was legislation on the development of the Hudson, but a reporter at the scene noted that "it became obvious that [the] purpose was to give those people opposed to the ... project an opportunity to express their views for the national press."

The Pomeroy Committee hearings inaugurated a pattern which was to succeed over and over again as a delaying tactic for Scenic Hudson. Initiated after the official FPC hearings had been closed, their aim was to petition the commission to "reopen" the hearings to permit the presentation of "new evidence," which was placed on the record under highly favorable circumstances. Con Ed's attorneys, of course, were not allowed to cross-examine witnesses before the Pomeroy Committee. When the "new evidence" was later subjected to stiff scrutiny, much of it proved to be fraudulent or nonsensical. But after the hearings had been closed yet again Scenic Hudson would return with more "new evidence" and ask for further reopenings.

The Storm King project has never at any time been disapproved or rejected by any court or licensing agency in the federal or state government. It has simply been delayed and delayed over and over again by agency and court decisions to reopen the hearings in order to consider "new evidence." In the entire fifteen years of the controversy, through literally tens of thousands of pages of transcript, the Federal Power Commission has never finished hearing all the evidence.

The star witness at the Pomeroy hearings was Alexander Lurkis, a recently retired chief engineer with the New York City Bureau of Gas and Electricity. Although the papers never mentioned it, Lurkis had been hired several months before as a paid consultant for Scenic Hudson on technical matters. He became Scenic Hudson's mouthpiece on "alternative"forms of generating electricity.

Lurkis shocked the hearings by testifying that Con Ed could produce adequate peaking power through "gas turbines," actually jet engines driven by the hot exhaust gases which Lurkis said could be run with Con Ed's "surplus natural gas."

As it happened, Con Ed had no "surplus" natural gas. Federal price controls were already upsetting natural gas distribution, and utilities were being rationed by the FPC. Con Ed had recently lost an appeal for more gas rations before the U.S. Supreme Court.

But there was another problem. Although gas turbines are very good for restarting downed generators, they would not be as useful as Storm King in supplying emergency power. Con Ed board chairman Harland C. Forbes wrote the New York Times: "Mr. Lurkis ...completely ignored the value of the Cornwall project's ability to provide immediately available operating reserve which cannot be furnished by jet engine equipment — a matter of extreme importance in maintaining reliability of our electric service to the people of New York City."

In fact, Lurkis' testimony proved so full of holes that Scenic Hudson eventually withdrew it after Lurkis had been cross-examined by Con Ed's attorneys before the FPC two years later. But the testimony led to a reopening of the hearings, and that was probably its main purpose.

The second issue raised at the Pomeroy hearings involved fish kills. Con Ed was already installing screening devices at Indian Point after encountering large fish kills there, but witnesses before the Pomeroy Committee said the problem at Storm King would be different. They noted that eggs and larvae from spawning fish would escape any kind of screening devices, and be sucked into the plant. It was a good point, and Con Ed quickly offered to spend $175,000 to study the problem. But within days the newspapers were carrying statements about how "the Atlantic striped bass population which spawns in the Hudson will be destroyed for all time."

Robert Boyle, an editor of Sports Illustrated, became a participant, forming the Hudson River Fishermen's Association, consisting of the two dozen or so commercial fishermen who still made a part time living from the river, with "sports fishermen" like Boyle to handle the public relations aspects. There was a certain irony here, since sports fishermen had long since destroyed major stocks in almost every river and stream in the Northeast, and the federal and state governments were annually spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for restocking so that they could continue their pastime. Con Ed also made an offer to restock the river if there was any significant damage to fish life. The opponents again were not satisfied.

But the Hudson River Fishermen soon found themselves facing a formidable obstacle which might be called "nature." Although it was not widely known, scientists were aware that there were tremendous mortality rates in the river, and killing large amounts of eggs and larvae would not necessarily mean disaster for the population. A single female striped bass lays up to 5 million eggs — enough to renew the river's entire stock. Only one egg in 1,000 ever survives to maturity. But such sophisticated understanding of nature's ways didn't tone down the opposition to the plant.

On March 9, 1965, the FPC approved the license for the Storm King plant in a 3 to1 vote. Despite the acrimony, the impression remained that the conservationists had made important contributions in the hearings and that the utility was making every effort to accommodate them. If compromise had been the goal, there would have been enormous achievement. But the conservationists' purposes were quite different, and their success was to take a much different form.

"The exigencies of the general economic situation ...do not readily produce, in the members of [the leisure] class, that degree of uneasiness with the existing order which alone can lead any body of men to give up views and methods of life that have become habitual to them. The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent."— Thorstein Veblen, "The Theory of the Leisure Class."

Scenic Hudson immediately filed an appeal with the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, arguing that the FPC should reopen the hearings for more testimony on scenic values, fish life, and alternative sources of energy. Con Ed officials responded by charging that the opponents had "given up trying to defeat the plant on its merits" and were "trying to drag the project into a long war of attrition in the courts."

In any case, the FPC review had already taken far longer than expected, and, with the court case still pending, it was obvious that Storm King was not going to be on line in time to meet the growing power needs. So in November 1965 the utility announced that it would move up plans for a second nuclear plant at Indian Point. The project would cost $90 million but would generate only 800,000 kilowatts — less than half the capacity of Storm King. For New Yorkers, electricity was going to be more expensive.

The dramatic power failure in the Northeast on November 9, 1965, illustrated the dangers of widespread blackouts. Con Ed officials said that Storm King could have shortened the blackout by restarting other generators, but the incident stirred little support for the plant.

Scenic Hudson, for its part, was taking the final step into the big leagues of public relations by hiring Rod Vandivert, a Long Island advertising salesman, as its full time public relations director. Vandivert started going after Con Ed executives with a mixture of scorn and sarcasm that was to characterize the conservationist attack for many years. This year I visited Vandivert at his oceanfront home in a small, exclusive community on Fire Island. A big, shambling man with a firm handshake, he wore baggy dungarees and had a patch over his right eye when I saw him.

"We engaged in a technique you might call 'overstatement'," Vandivert explained. "We learned how to do things like calling in stories to the newspapers on deadline so they couldn't get Con Ed's reaction until the next day, or several days later. The newspapers were very responsive. I remember dictating editorials over the phone to them dozens of times. All along, I think Con Ed was really the underdog in this thing."

I asked Vandivert if he ever thought that Scenic Hudson could simply drag the project on and on through continual rehearings and court delays so that Con Ed would finally give up. "Oh, I'd say we thought it about every third day," he said cheerfully.

The Court of Appeals took only until December 29, 1965, to throw out the first FPC license as "incomplete" and order a reopening of the hearings. The decisions, still regarded as the original landmark of environmental law, ruled that scenic and environmental issues must be considered in large projects, and that Scenic Hudson could intervene on behalf of the "public interest," even though its members had no economic standing in the case. Vandivert, for one, was willing to believe that the publicity campaign had played a part. "Court decisions aren'tmade in a vacuum," he told me. "Judges read newspapers."

FOUR YEARS OF HEARINGS

The second round of FPC hearings lasted for almost four years. When they began on November 14, 1966, Lyndon Johnson was President and the country was just entering the full scale conflict in Vietnam. By the time the FPC issued its final decision on August 19, 1970, the Kent State shooting had already occurred, and Richard Nixon had been President for nineteen months. Yet this decision was also eventually remanded for further hearings by the Court of Appeals.

I will not attempt to go into anything more than an outline of the proceedings, but it must be noted that the FPC examiner and the commission itself took extraordinary pains to compile an exhaustive record on every aspect of the case. Scenic concerns, the threat to fish life, alternative forms of energy, and aesthetics of the Hudson were all discussed almost to the point of irrelevancy. At one point, the hearing examiner, Ewen G. Simpson, had to decide whether the upper reservoir would disrupt a scenic vista from a point twenty miles away. By the time the hearings were over, Con Ed had spent $15 million on studies and attorneys' fees, while Scenic Hudson had spent $1 million (the organization had managed to tap a foundation supported by the estate of Andrew Mellon.)

Before the hearings began, Con Ed announced that it could bury the entire plant on the Cornwall waterfront, raising the cost to $169 million. They said that would solve the scenic problems; although Scenic Hudson continued to argue against a visitors' booth on the site. But the new plan created other problems. The Catskill Aqueduct, which carries 40 percent of New York City's water supply, runs under the mountain, and Scenic Hudson immediately claimed that it would be endangered. Con Ed offered to pay the entire cost of relocating the aqueduct 400 feet below the plant, but nothing definite was settled and negotiations dragged on between the city and the utility.

Throughout the hearings, reporters from the Times (now one of only three remaining newspapers) gave accurate and unbiased coverage, but the editorial page remained heavily confused on the issues. At one point, it was "discharges from the tail race tunnels" that endangered fish life. At another, it was "thermal pollution." And despite the plans for an underground plant, the facility remained "on" Storm King Mountain, and wouldn't move to "near" Storm King Mountain until 1969.

The issue of air pollution also became a point of contention at the hearings. Scenic Hudson claimed that Storm King would actually produce more air pollution because they said the power to pump the water up the mountain at Storm King would have to come from fossil fuel plants within New York City. They said the one-third loss of energy in the pumped storage process would mean a 50 percent increase in fuel burning. Con Ed had long noted that it could buy off peak power from neighboring utilities, and that in the long run Storm King would be pumped by nuclear plants. But the notion that Storm King would produce "more air pollution" slowly started to become an accepted fact.

The New York City government had also become involved in air pollution before the FPC hearings, and in early 1966, Mayor John V. Lindsay set up a special Task Force on Air Pollution to negotiate with Con Ed. After several months of studying the problem, the task force decided that Con Ed was correct in its contention that Storm King would mean less air pollution. It signed a memorandum of understanding with the utility, agreeing to back construction of Storm King and help the company appeal to the FPC for more natural gas. In exchange, Con Ed would spend millions of dollars in cleaning up stack emissions, and would promise not to build any more fossil fuel burning plants in the city.

The city thought it had struck a good bargain, but the Times, in a May 19, 1966, editorial, remained unhappy:

We deplore the unwarranted concession ... to [support] a giant hydroelectric plant on Storm King Mountain. Some experts believe that this would increase rather than decrease air pollution here ... Why should New York City for the first time inject itself into the controversy now, particularly when the Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference promised to present expert engineering testimony of the availability of ample other power sources?

The "experts" on air pollution, of course, were also Scenic Hudson.

On May 23, 1967, Simpson closed the hearings after listening to over 5,000 pages of testimony. They did not stay closed for long.

First, Scenic Hudson wanted to "correct" Lurkis's "expert" testimony, which had been refuted by Con Ed's cross-examination. Scenic Hudson petitioned to present another "alternative" plan, and its request was granted.

Its proposal, presented through attorney David Sive, representing the Sierra Club in the case, was that Con Ed should build a third nuclear generator of about 1 million kilowatts. It didn't say where. The remaining 1 million kilowatts needed in Con Ed's system would be supplied by turbines burning kerosene. There was nothing unusual at the time in conservationists proposing nuclear plants as the solution for energy problems. During the 1960s, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups supported nuclear energy as the best form of power generation.

On August 7, 1968, almost a year after the closing arguments had been presented, Simpson issued the first of three favorable reports on the plant. He said there was no alternative for equally reliable power for New York, and that the hazards to fish life would be minimal. While acknowledging that the mountain was "a surpassing scene," he noted that "it must be said that Storm King does not exist in an environment of untouched natural beauty as in the idyllic past, but rather is all but irrevocably associated with the present realities."

Responding quickly, the Times said: "[The] findings on the scenic effects are at odds with the virtually unanimous opinion among conservationists and nature lovers, who have no economic interest other than the preservation of a majestic national heritage." The paper found the conclusions on fish life suspect because Simpson said the plant should be monitored after it was constructed.

One week later, Con Ed officials announced they might have to consider putting a nuclear plant in Long Island Sound, on an island near New Rochelle. The Times said that proposal must also be regarded "with great reserve" because of fish kills and radioactive wastes. Where New York City's power was coming from was obviously someone else's problem.

"Even in cases where one recognizes the substantial merits of the case for which the innovator is spokesman ... still one cannot but be sensible of the fact that the innovator is a person with whom it is at least distasteful to be associated, and from whose social contact one must shrink. Innovation is bad form."— The Theory of the Leisure Class.

Less than two months later, New York City became the major opponent of the plant. On October 28, 1968, Deputy Water Resources Commissioner Robert Clark petitioned for a reopening of the hearings, saying that the negotiations over the water tunnel "had not been fruitful." It is difficult to assess exactly what happened, but it is interesting to note that when the New York City Democratic boss Carmine DeSapio was convicted on corruption charges in 1970, he was found guilty of attempting to extract bribes from Con Ed officials in exchange for permission to build over city water lines.

While the city was joining the ranks of the "nature lovers" opposed to the plant, the economic scenery around New York City was taking a turn for the worse.

In 1962, when Storm King was proposed, Con Ed officials said they thought they would have to provide 7.15 million kilowatts of power by the summer of 1969. The entire increase in demand could be met through Storm King. As the summer months of 1969 rolled around, Con Ed's seven year old predictions were coming in right on the button. The city set a midsummer peak record of 7.26 million kilowatts — only 4 percent above Con Ed's original predictions.

The only trouble was, power wasn't there to meet it.

Indian Point Two was supposed to come on line by 1969, but the Westinghouse Corporation had failed to meet its deadline. (What with fish kills and environmental suits, the plant was not put into operation until 1974.) Con Ed contracted to buy 915,000 kilowatts of peak-time power from other utilities — the most expensive way to provide electricity — but was still left with only a 14 percent reserve margin; well under the industry standard of 20 percent.

On July 31, 1969, the troubles began. Big Allis fouled temporarily after the installers of a new turbine forgot to remove some insulating equipment. Under the increased strain, two older plants scheduled to be retired by Storm King also broke down. In a matter of hours, more than 20 percent of the utility's power was gone.

For the next two weeks, New Yorkers began to experience what quickly became known as the "power crisis."Air conditioners were turned off, manufacturing plants cut their schedules, businesses closed down. While people throughout the country were celebrating the first moon landing, New York City turned into a sweltering steam bath.

Charles F. Luce, a former Undersecretary of the Interior who had just taken over as board chairman of Con Ed, said the problems were due to "a feeling on the part of the public that even though a particular new power plant were not built, somehow the needed power would be provided." He asked for "a better general public understanding that there must be additional power and that ... we cannot provide it without some impact on the environment."

Vandivert, now being quoted regularly after every statement by Luce, almost as if Scenic Hudson had become Con Ed's alter ego, saw the problem differently, claiming that opposition to Storm King "is not a narrow conservation battle. It's really the public interest versus the big brother or big daddy approach of Con Edison, which assumes we should let it tell us what is good for the public." Scenic Hudson had obviously assumed the task of representing the public on power and energy as well as conservation.

By early 1970, Storm King was still far on the horizon, and Con Ed told the city it would have to build another oil burning plant in Astoria. City officials were livid. Robert N. Rickles, head of the Department of Air Resources, called air pollution "already an intolerable public health problem." Jerome Kretchmer, head of the Environmental Protection Administration, said the battle over the Astoria plant would be "much deeper than the struggle at Storm King." But it was obvious to some city officials that power plants had to go somewhere, and the Mayor's Interdepartmental Committee on Public Utilities voted 32 in favor of Astoria.

But while city officials were voting to accept more air pollution, the corporation counsel's office was throwing in the city's lot with the nature lovers of the Hudson. On February 12, 1970, after a previous rebuff, the city once again petitioned for another reopening of the hearings on a "non-quantifiable yet nonetheless real hazard to the aqueduct."

Was the city simply interested in protecting its aqueduct? It seems unlikely, for, when examiner Simpson allowed a second reopening of the hearings in May 1970, city attorneys quickly said that they were opposed to the plant, whether it endangered the aqueduct or not, because of scenic considerations. "The city's concern is for the environment as well as economics," corporation counsel J. Lee Rankin told the FPC. "When we speak of preserving the area, the city is not talking about a superficial or cosmetic job; rather it seeks assurance that an area of exceptional natural beauty be preserved for future generations just as it is."

The Times rejoiced, that "New York City thus joins the battle waged for years by Scenic Hudson Preservation Conservationists against utility incursions on the river." But, strangely enough, the Times had harsh words for Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz, who was trying to block the opening of Indian Point Two after trial runs produced kills of 120,000 fish a day in January and March. "The right answer, given the imperative role Indian Point now plays in meeting metropolitan power demands," said the same editorial, "is not to shut it off precipitously but to see that its plant deficiencies are corrected. Proper steps are already being taken by the Atomic Energy Commission."

Potential fish kills at Storm King were intolerable, but real fish kills at Indian Point, where the problems were complicated by thermal pollution, could be corrected. In addition, Indian Point Two, which was built in place of Storm King, was "imperative," while Storm King was unnecessary. It obviously took the skilled. eye of a conservationist to be able to make such distinctions.

THE POWER CRISIS

Things turned out to be much worse than anticipated during the power crisis of 1970. In May, Indian Point One was closed by a defective cooling pipe. Indian Point Two was still far from completion. Then, on July 21, Big Allis went down for extensive repairs immediately projected to last through midwinter. Con Ed had begun installing gas turbines over the winter as a substitute for Storm King; by mid-July one of the turbines had also failed, and Con Ed's total capacity was below the previous year's peak. The result was a summer in which voltage reductions and power failures became almost a daily occurrence. Even rush hour subways didn't have enough power.

In its scramble for power, Con Ed paid premium prices, importing electricity from as far away as Canada, New England, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Con Ed's profits, already at the lowest rates of any utility in the country, were getting lower. When another heat wave struck in September, voltage reductions were put into effect for the fifteenth time, and a blackout hit a sixty-five block area in Queens. The Wall Street Journal quoted a Canadian woman who was cutting short a visit to Forest Hills. "You can have New York City," she said. Apparently others agreed. The steady exodus of manufacturing firms and corporate offices was suddenly turning into a rout. From 1969 to 1976, the city, now widely regarded as "unlivable," was to lose 650,008 jobs. Other factors certainly contributed, but the shambles of Con Ed's power system and its soaring rates didn't help. Nothing ripples through an economy more completely than the costs of energy.

On August 19, 1970, the full five member FPC finally reached its decision to grant a second license for the pumped storage plant at Storm King. It was Con Ed's one note of optimism for the entire summer. Still, in the midst of the power crisis the Times took the trouble to be gravely disapproving. "Essentially nothing about the plan has changed in the seven years since Con Ed first proposed [it]," said the editorial, without considering that the whole plant would now be built underground. "We are glad that Scenic Hudson intends to carry on the fight in the courts."

Indeed, the possibilities of appeals seemed endless.

Six months after the 1970 power crisis, seven litigants were appealing the FPC's Storm King license to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. They were the Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the Izaak Walton League of America, the Audubon Society, the National Parks and Conservation Society — and New York City.

City attorneys must have been dazzled by the company, for, by March 1, 1971, they were telling the Court of Appeals that the project "would be worse from an air pollution standpoint than construction of additional plants in the city," and were calling the Hudson Highlands "a national treasure" where it would be unlawful to license any site unless there was "a mandate that the site chosen be exactly restored" to its natural state.

But on October 22, 1971, the Court of Appeals upheld the license by a 21 vote, and by June 19, 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court had refused to review the decision. A challenge in the state courts followed.

Finally, in August 1973, after more than ten years of effort, the project was suddenly completely free of license requirements and litigation. City officials were furious. Grasping at straws, they took the only possible remaining action and cancelled their ten year old agreement to allow the village of Cornwall to tap the aqueduct as part of the plan to replace the upper reservoir. That took another year to overturn in the courts.

Neither had Scenic Hudson run out of "new evidence." On the day of the final state court decision, Albert Butzel, its new attorney, made a solemn and foreboding statement. "New and revealing evidence has been uncovered which raises serious questions about the viability of this proposed plant and the citizens' need for it," said Butzel. "The evidence is so convincing that the Scenic Hudson group will petition the FPC to reopen the entire case." Butzel said the "new evidence" concerned "fuel cells" which were "just on the horizon."

But in truth the arguments about "alternative sources of power" were wearing a bit thin, particularly since Con Ed was so strapped for power that it was using its peak load gas turbines for base load generation, burning fuel at about half its normal efficiency. And so, Scenic Hudson decided to concentrate its best efforts on the fish study that had been made by Con Ed from 1985 to1968 at a cost of $450,000.

The report, supervised by a panel of high officials from the New York State Department of Conservation, the New Jersey Fish and Game Division, and the Bureau of Sports Fisheries and Wildlife and Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, both divisions of the U.S. Department of the Interior, had found that the plant would draw in no more than 3 to 4 percent of the total number of eggs and larvae that drifted past during the May-July spawning season. Hydrological studies showed that the plant would suck in 4 percent of all the water that passed by the plant each day. Assuming an even distribution of eggs in the river would mean that about 4 percent of the eggs passing each day would be taken into the plant. Assuming that all those eggs would be killed (there was plenty to suggest they wouldn't be) meant that 4 percent of all the eggs that passed the plant would be killed. A fair percentage of eggs was spawned below Storm King and never passed the plant, so the final estimate was a 3.6 percent mortality rate of all eggs and larvae. Since 99.9 percent of all eggs and larvae died before maturity under natural conditions, the conclusion was that the plant would have no effect on the total fish populations.

Scenic Hudson, however, wasn't satisfied. They decided there was a "fatal flaw" in the analysis. The "flaw" was the panel of scientists and federal and state officials had "forgotten" that the river was tidal. The group said that the eggs and larvae would be "washing back and forth"in front of the plant and would have "more chance of being caught." The Scenic Hudson members found a hydrologist who said that the river sometimes washed back and forth ten times in front of certain places in New York Harbor. They decided to multiply 3.6 percent by ten, arriving at a mortality rate of 36 percent.

The whole argument, of course, was a lot of sophisticated nonsense. The study had considered all the tidal movements and arrived at an average figure for the net downstream flow of the river. Once the average was known, it wouldn't matter if the river washed back and forth 10, 50, or 100 times, as long as the net flow had been determined correctly. The point was that the plant could take in only so much water per day.

It is easy to imagine the problem causing some consternation in a fifth-grade math class, but it is difficult to see this logic finding acceptance before such bodies as the Atomic Energy Commission and the U.S. Court of Appeals. Nevertheless, it did.

Scenic Hudson had its "rebuttal" to the fish study. The problem was to get it on the record. But with their multiplying contacts in government and uncritical treatment in the press, this was a relatively simple matter. The target became Dr. Philip Goodyear, a marine biologist in the AEC who was strongly sympathetic to Scenic Hudson's cause and had been a guest speaker at a fund raising dinner of the Striped Bass Fund, the financial arm of the Hudson River Fisherman's Association. Dr. Goodyear believed — undoubtedly with sincerity — that the three projected Indian Point plants, plus Storm King, would have significant effects on the river's fish life. Whether Goodyear acted with scientific integrity in the Storm King affair will have to be judged from the record.

Scenic Hudson's connection to Goodyear was Sen. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, also sympathetic to its cause. (Since Connecticut was getting many of the corporate headquarters leaving New York City, he certainly had no reason not to be.) In October 1973 Ribicoff delivered the FPC fish study, plus Scenic Hudson's critique, to the AEC and asked for an evaluation "within two months." Dixy Lee Ray, chairman of the AEC, said it would take at least six months, but, as arranged before hand, the report arrived on Goodyear's desk at Oak Ridge Laboratories after only two. "It was a situation where they knew what pitch was coming to them and we knew what hit was coming back at us," Vandivert explained to me.

By mid-December, a "preliminary report" was back in Ribicoff's hands. Dr. Goodyear confirmed that the report was "in error" by ignoring the tidal movement, but did some fast footwork to show that "compensating errors" made the figures correct anyway. He then went on to make his own monumental error by deciding that the entire annual kill of 3 percent of all the eggs and larvae in the river would occur each day the plant was in operation.

"If [the estimated removal of 3 percent of eggs and larvae] is applied over a period as short as ten days, nearly 25 percent of the larvae population would be withdrawn,"he reported. "If the daily removal estimate [is applied] over the entire seven week [spawning] period ... then approximately 75 percent of the annual hatch might be destroyed." The "daily" estimate, of course, was actually an annual estimate.

Ray attached a letter that was as long as the report itself, warning Ribicoff to "use caution in drawing conclusions" because of "the probable absence of completely adequate data." After reviewing the report, she added sardonically that she continued to believe that "a critical analysis of this problem would take a minimum of six months." But the cat was already out of the bag, and so by December 1973 Scenic Hudson was back in business. Within days, a letter was printed in the New York Times stating that "the Atomic Energy Commission has reported that the Storm King hydroelectric power project might destroy 75 percent of the annual hatch of striped bass in the Hudson River." Sen. Edward Kennedy asked the FPC for a "brief and worthwhile delay" because of the impending "destruction of 75 percent of the striped bass" off the coast of Cape Cod. Ribicoff sponsored an "information meeting" on the report, and a Congressional hearing was eventually arranged. The testimony was inconclusive, but the environmentalists simply declared themselves the winner and carried the "new evidence" back to the Court of Appeals.

The court ordered the FPC once again to reopen the hearings for a new study on fish life in the Hudson.

VICTORY OF ATTRITION

The "brief and worthwhile" delay has cost Con Ed $20 million — one-sixth the original cost of the plant. The money was spent for a third major fish study which took four years to complete, involved seven major universities and scientific institutions, and came to essentially the same conclusion reached by Con Ed's lone scientists more than ten years before — that about 4 to 5 percent of the eggs and larvae would be entrained by the plant, and that the total fish population would not be affected.

Two observations show that there may be something to the utility's side of the story. The three Indian Point plants now take in more water than the Storm King plant would, yet after nearly three years of operation AEC scientists admit that there is no evidence that any portion of the river's fish population has been affected. (The amount of fish scraped off the screening devices each day would fill an average bucket.) There are other pumped storage plants in operation, and they have fish problems of a different sort. At the Muddy Run plant in Philadelphia, the problem is that eggs and larvae drawn into the plant quickly produce sizable fish populations in the upper reservoir. Their numbers can get to be a problem, and Philadelphia Electric allows fishing on the upper reservoir to keep them under control.

All this hardly matters now. The "long war of attrition" predicted by Con Ed executives in 1965 has been fought and lost. Con Ed's finances fell apart in early 1974 — a direct result of the high costs of buying outside power, the utility's enormous tax burden (25 percent of its revenue from customer billings goes to taxes), the overwhelming expenses of having to buy low sulfur oil for city generation, and the resistance to rate increases. The quarterly dividend was cut, and Con Ed's stock — already known as a "widows and orphans" holding (median shareholder, a fifty-year old woman) — dropped to the floor. "We wanted them to go into receiverships so that even we could buy them out — then they would be a true public utility," said Vandivert. But instead the New York State Power Authority authorized the purchase of two uncompleted plants, and Con Ed managed to avoid bankruptcy.

The Storm King plant, of course, could probably have prevented the July 13 blackout. John B. Oakes, now senior editor of the New York Times; Walter Brown, director of the National Electric Reliability Council; and Rod Vandivert all agree on that. After all, that was what the plan was designed to do. City officials investigating the power failure said they were amazed to learn that "the generating capacity was available, they just couldn't bring it up in time." Con Ed, of course, had been saying that for fifteen years. The city investigation found that the crucial loss of power didn't occur until the last two lines from the north failed because they became overloaded carrying 2 million kilowatts. The lines from Storm King, which were to run along the same corridor, were to be designed to carry 2 million kilowatts.

But there is hardly a political official in New York who even remembers what the whole Storm King controversy was about. Ed Koch, the leading candidate for mayor, said the problem at Storm King had been "thermal pollution," and didn't know the city is still the major opponent, nor did Paul O'Dwyer, who has now been City Council president for four years. He said the plant hadn't been built because "Pete Seeger and the environmentalists all over the country didn't want it." (He is undoubtedly right.) State Assemblyman Andrew Stein, who has made a political career out of attacking Con Ed, said about Storm King: "I'm against nuclear plants. I think we should keep the ones we have, but I don't think we should build any more." Stanley Steingut, the Brooklyn Assemblyman who is Speaker of the State Assembly, also told me that Storm King was "a nuclear plant."

What is most remarkable is that Scenic Hudson itself now appears to be the city's expert on the matter. When I called Dr. Carolyn Broncato, staff director of the Mayor's Special Committee on Inquiry into Energy Failures, she admitted she remembered nothing about Storm King, but said, "If you want to know more about Storm King, call Al Butzel." When I talked with Carol Bellamy, who will probably succeed O'Dwyer as president of the City Council, she said that "the person to see on that would be Dave Sive" (the Sierra Club attorney).

Even Norman Cousins, the editor of Saturday Review, who voted in favor of Storm King as chairman of the Mayor's Special Task Force on Air Pollution, remembered vaguely that the problems had something to do with "radiation." When I asked him what he remembered best about the environmental opponents, he had one clear recollection: "They had a lot of lovely ladies working for them."

"By virtue of its high position as the avatar of good form, the wealthier class comes to exert a retarding influence upon social development far in excess of that which the simple numerical strength of the class would assign it. Its prescriptive example acts to greatly stiffen the resistance of all other classes against any innovation, and to fix men's affections upon the good institutions handed down from an earlier generation."— The Theory of the Leisure Class.

And so we are brought to the point where we can legitimately ask, What in God's name has been going on in New York City for the past fifteen years?

The answer, I believe, can only be understood in terms of Veblen's analysis of leisure class behavior. It was obvious to anyone willing to look that the opposition was coming from the petty aristocrats of the Hudson Valley who were annoyed that their solitude was being invaded by the advancing society. There was nothing terribly new about this. The Hudson River Railroad laid its tracks right across the front lawns of Washington Irving, John J. Audubon, and William B. Astor in 1842. All were upset, but eventually agreed to yield in the name of the public good. Yet in the Storm King case this did not happen. The question is, Why?

Both critics and defendants of the plant have always assumed that anyone standing in the way of progress could only be acting out of financial self-interest, and that, once a money interest was disproved, the opponents would have to be accepted at face value. The Times expressed this so perfectly in defending the conservationists in its August 8, 1968, editorial that it is probably worth repeating: "[The FPC examiner's] findings on the scenic effects are at odds with the virtually universal opinion among conservationists and nature lovers, who have no economic stake other than the preservation of a majestic national heritage" (my emphasis).

Veblen, who found this interpretation of leisure class opposition to progress naive, wrote:

When an explanation of this class conservatism is offered, it is commonly the invidious one that the wealthy class opposes innovation because it has a vested interest, of an unworthy sort, in maintaining the present conditions. The explanation here put forward imputes no unworthy motive. The opposition of the class to changes in the cultural scheme is instinctive, and does not rest primarily on an interested calculation of material advantages; it is an instinctive revulsion at any departure from the accepted way of doing and of looking at things — a revulsion common to all men and only to be overcome by the stress of circumstances.

But what about the newspapers and the politicians, who are presumably responsible for informing the public and acting in its interest — why were they so completely taken in by sophistries and the publicity gestures of the "environmentalists"?

Here is Veblen's answer:

Since conservatism is a characteristic of the wealthier and therefore more reputable portion of the community, it has acquired a certain honorific or decorative value. It has become prescriptive to such an extent that it is imperatively incumbent on all who would lead a blameless life in point of social repute [to share these views]. Conservatism, being an upperclass characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower class phenomenon, is vulgar.

This is the puzzle that no one in the entire controversy was ever able to quite figure out. Voting to "save Storm King" gave each of the participants in the political arena the chance to participate in a noble cause, to share an aristocratic vision. It wasn't a matter of money, it was simply a question of good taste. The effort might require of a person that he gaze upon the litter of industrial ruins on Cornwall's waterfront and see "a landscape rich in beauty and history," but isn't selectivity the key to being an aristocrat anyway? It wasn't money that was being passed out aboard Commodore Chauncey Devereux Stillman's yacht as it passed Storm King Mountain on that September morning. It was respectability.

The environmental vision is an aristocratic one, conjured at the point where an idyllic past blends nicely with an imaginary future. It can only be sustained by people who have never had to worry much about their security. They are, in Veblen's term, "industrially exempt" from the normal fluctuations of the economic system.

Nuclear energy, for example, was part of that vision when it was a "bright promise" in the 1960s, but now that the realities are here it looks problematic. Tom Wicker writes in the New York Times:

"In three decades of experience with nuclear power, the radioactive waste disposal problem has yet to be resolved. Plant decommissioning costs and problems are not fully known. Nuclear power has grown vulnerable to shortages, breakdowns, and poor productivity; the Federal Power Commission reported 229 plant-months of delay for such reasons at 24 reactors in 1974. The amount of electricity actually produced have averaged, overall, only 55 to 57 percent of full potential."

The litany could easily be made about any new technology. Nothing in the industrial system is "fully known" until it has been done a few times. The "55 to 57 percent" figure is a familiar one, however — it is the average production for the entire electrical industry, due to the problems of peak load demands. In actual operation, nuclear plants have been slightly more reliable than fossil fuel plants.

But Wicker has a brighter vision:

"Solar energy, by contrast, is available everywhere, has no public opposition and offers no safety or environmental hazards. It is highly suitable for such low quality energy demands as space and hot water heating, while to use electricity produced by nuclear fission for such homely needs is an expensive form of overkill."

Solar energy, of course, has the advantage of not being a reality as yet. A small scale solar electrical station would be enough to scare the wits out of any environmentalist (one square mile of collectors for a town of 30,000 people with little hope for reducing its size through technological improvements. In any case, if all the country's heat and hot water were produced from solar energy, the demand for electricity would decrease by less than 5 percent.

But the message here is clear, and it should not be obscured by the facts. Nuclear energy is "hard" and "dirty" and involves nasty realities of life. Solar energy, on the other hand, is "soft" and "clean." It is most notable for the lack of effort it promises. The future will hold no more grubby realities such as digging coal out of the ground or drilling for oil — no more handling of dangerous materials. There will be nothing to do but sit back and watch the windmills revolve and the sun shine. The correct word for the environmental vision is not clean or soft. It is genteel.

It is also a vision that will call us to disaster.

Veblen's great fear was that, as innovation fell behind under the retarding influence of the leisure class, society would split into two extremes — the permanently wealthy and the permanently poor. Each would be even more resistant to change for its own reasons:

The abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance, are conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow; just as the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands today.

Veblen predicted that this polarization in society would lead to the loss of the entrepreneurial classes, which operate under what he called "the instinct of workmanship." The result would be permanent stagnation.

THE LIMITS TO "NO GROWTH"

There is no doubt that much of our response to the present industrial crisis is being formulated by the leisure class marching under the banner of "environmentalism." This is not to say that we do not face enormous and critical environmental problems and that there are not enormous numbers of people who are dedicated to trying to solve them. My quarrel is with the political "environmentalism" that offers no reasonable alternatives but proposes solutions which entail delaying or abandoning present, feasible, and proven technology and "waiting for" solutions that are "soft," "attractive," and "just on the horizon."

The leisure class environmentalists will be perfectly content to leave things the way they are, regardless of the economic consequences, since, as Veblen notes, "at any given time this class is in privileged position, and any departure from the existing order may be expected to work to the detriment of the class rather than the reverse. The attitude of the class [is] to leave well enough alone."

The fundamental environmentalist assumption is that we can "stop growth," at least until the "right" solution to our technological problems comes along. This is foolishness. "Stopping growth" simply means falling behind, with all the economic consequences. It is only the accumulation of social wealth from previously successful technologies that makes it possible to introduce new technologies. The people of New York City will find this out when they realize that they cannot easily turn the clock back and adopt pumped storage technology. In the 1960s the plant could have offered enormous savings. Now it would cost $1 billion; the people of New York City can hardly afford it.

The great misconception about "stopping growth," is the assumption that things will stay pretty much as they are. They will not. The stagnation of the industrial system will not keep the numbers of the poor from growing. On the contrary, the universal historical experience has been that people do not limit family size until they have achieved a measure of social security. The only way this can be achieved is by the continuing expansion of the industrial system. "No progress" doesn't mean "no growth," and those countries, such as China and India, that have spent the longest periods of their history struggling under the changeless mores of an entrenched leisure class are hardly noted for their achievements in population control.

The great appeal environmental solutions offer is that they can be worn like a badge of success. To say that one is an "environmentalist," or that one favors "no growth," is to say that one has achieved enough well being from the present system and that one is now content to let it remain as it is — or even retrogress a little — because one's material comfort under the present system has been more or less assured.

To quote Veblen:

"The institution of a leisure class, by force of class interest and instinct, and by precept and prescriptive example, makes for the perpetuation of the existing maladjustment of institutions, and even favors a reversion to a somewhat more archaic scheme of life."

Environmentalism has presented itself to us as a form of "science," but it only borrows the language of science to serve its purposes. It is not scientific, either in its origins or its methods. It could easily turn anti-scientific, and already has in many instances.

Yet there is no doubt that the environmental vision is winning widespread acceptance and is having an enormous effect on our economy. The Edison Electric Institute, the research arm of the utilities industry, is now warning that large portions of the country face widespread power shortages and blackouts within the next few years because the introduction of nuclear technology is not going ahead on schedule. Environmentalists' opposition and regulatory delays have brought new construction almost to a standstill. Power reserves will fall below 20 percent around the Great Lakes by 1979, and in the Southeast by 1981. By 1986 reserves will have dwindled to 14 percent in North Dakota, Minnesota, and Nebraska, to 3.2 percent in New England and New York State, and to 10.1 percent in Illinois, Missouri, and Wisconsin. The nuclear reactor industry says it is already facing "enormous erosion of skills" and "technological regression" simply because there is no work available in building new plants.

"We're going to see a crisis atmosphere," John O'Leary, deputy secretary of the new Department of Energy, said recently. "By the mid-1980s, we may have very severe economic consequences as a result of our improvident attitudes of the late 1970s."

Yet environmental opposition is now working to hinder not only nuclear plant construction, but also offshore oil drilling, importation of liquid natural gas, coal mining, gasification of coal, hydroelectric plants, and practically every conceivable form of producing energy.

Where is the power going to come from to meet the needs of the next decade and the next generation?

 

The environmentalists say there are alternative means available.