... it was Marty Davidson's 60th birthday. Also, the Secretary of State issued a far-reaching decision to stop the plant, and the Hudson aldermen voted to reject the company’s “community host agreement” which Rick Scalera tried to railroad through the Council for a third time. Five days later, SLC abandoned the fight. As I said in a Rural Intelligence interview last year,
Randy Daniel’s ruling was far more sweeping than we expected. He went beyond saying, “You are not going to build your giant cement plant here,” he gave specific recommendations for how Hudson should rezone its waterfront. He recognized that compromise—a mix of recreation and heavy industry— would not work. And he had fourteen thousand signatures to convince him that the public favored conservation and recreation. He stated clearly that the waterfront should be for the people’s enjoyment, for ecological rebirth, and for sensible economic development.
Six years on, the City still has not followed those "immediate" instructions...
Now that we're almost as far removed from that date as the fight itself took, this may be the last such reminiscence until the 10th anniversary. But there's still many great memories of that long struggle, and lots left to do to preserve and protect this area from such threats.
Pictured above, from that evening’s events at City Hall and subsequent celebrations: Bob Blechman, Dorothy Lynn, Alan Skerritt, Ardal Powell, Monica & Bob Mechling, Peter Jung, Moisha Blechman, Alan Hamilton, Claire Oravec, Wilson McLean, Carole Osterink, Sarah Sterling, Sven Huseby, Byrne Fone, Ian Nitschke, Roy Volkmann, Peter Meyer, Sam Pratt, Barbara Ettinger, Ellen Thurston, Nora Hancock-Snead, and Julia Doyle.
