Ithacating in Cornell Heights

Let’s play a word association game. Think of a stereotypical resident of Ithaca. Now think of five words or behaviors that you would use to describe them.

I’m suspecting that most readers may have used “hippie”, “eco-friendly”, “green”, “environmentalist” for at least one of their five.

Back in the early 1970s, when the environmental movement was really taking off post-Rachel Carson, the state of New York, along with certain large power companies, was looking to build a few power plants, technologically-advanced nuclear facilities. A few of these plants were commissioned – Fitzgerald and Nine Mile Point, for instance.  I bring up these two facilities because I grew up in their geographic shadow. Certainly, the locals are glad for the hundreds of job provided; but there’s also the implicit acceptance that if something really major gets fouled up, you and all of your neighbors are screwed, and you’re reminded of this when the postings for iodine pill distribution are sent out. For anyone living in the span from Oswego down to Syracuse, you know they are there, you know they are dangerous, but you shrug it off and accept them for the economic benefits. Maybe not the best attitude, but that is what it is.

Well, the attitude was more cavalier in the swinging ’60s. The state was considering sites, and thought it would be great to place one near Ithaca – in Lansing, to be exact. In 1968, NYSEG announced their intention to build the “Bell Station Nuclear Power Plant” on the shores of Cayuga Lake, in the northwest corner of Lansing, about twenty minutes’ drive north of Cornell. The facility would have been just to the north of the Milliken Station coal plant. The Tompkins County Board of Supervisors approved the project.

Well, the public reaction was not as effusive. A grassroots group, “Trumansburg United to Save Cayuga Lake”, was formed, with the express purpose of derailing the project (it was claimed that thermal pollution from the plant would destroy the ecological habitat of the lake). Dozens of professors and environmental scientists at Cornell and IC spoke out against the project. The sour public opinion caused the proposal/approval to drag on for years (yet, the negativity was not as widespread as the local editorials made it seem). The Trumansburg folks probably would not have stopped the Ward Center Nuclear Reactor at Cornell, which was smaller and built several years earlier, because initially the concern was the lakeside location, not nuclear power. But by 1973, as the dangers of nuclear activity moved into the scrutiny of the public eye, the negative attention turned towards plants themselves.

On June 15, 1973, NYSEG decided to give up on the Lansing location, the public sentiment against the project being a major factor in their decision. As a result, they pursued a location in the town of Somerset, in Niagara County. In the early stages of construction, it was discovered that a fault line lay 40 miles away, which would have made retrofitting necessary, and the nuclear plant infeasible. So the facility was changed to a coal power plant, and this opened as the Kintigh Generating Station in 1984.

As for the land the plant was to be built on in Lansing, the state leased some of it out to neighboring farms, and the other half remained undeveloped woodlands. Recently, the town has been considering taking over management of the site, with a proposal being considered that would turn its 490 acres into a lakeside wildlife and recreational area.