Aug 5, 2002 By Liz Sidoti Associated Press Writer 9 min read

CHESHIRE, Ohio (AP) – The modest white frame house that Beulah “Boots” Hern and her husband, Charlie, built in 1954 sits along the Ohio River where the couple often spent summer days in their speedboat. Down the road is the grassy spot where she met him after moving here in 1938 and the front yard where she asked him to marry her eight years later.

And on a hill just outside town is the cemetery where he is buried.

“There’s a lot of memories here. There’s 64 years. This is where I want to live,” says Hern, who at 82 is wrinkled and worn but sassy.

She is one of the dozen or so holdouts who haven’t agreed to leave Cheshire by year’s end, when most of the 221 villagers expect to be gone.

The rest say they will leave the town, backdrop of their lives and witness to their milestones, having made informal agreements to sell their property to American Electric Power.

The company is the owner of a coal-fired electric generation plant that residents say has polluted the area – and part of its deal to buy the town is that sellers agree not to file health claims against American Electric Power.

“This is not a health issue. It’s not an environmental issue,” says company spokesman Pat Hemlepp, adding that the plant’s emissions are far below federal and state guidelines.

“It’s a real estate deal.”

The terms: The Columbus-based utility would pay $20 million for the village’s 90 residences and 200 parcels of land, which could later be used to expand the plant.

Companies have purchased houses and plots for environmental reasons or expansion, but such a large property purchase is unusual.

AEP’s offer has pitted town leaders against the holdouts, and villagers against those not offered the buyout- people who live outside town and business owners.

“There’s so much confusion and anger. It’s tearing lifelong friendships apart,” says Rhea Hopkins, 42, a co-owner of Expectations Hair and Tanning who lives outside town. “It’s already ruined our community.”

Still, others feel it’s the best deal they could get – both for health and financial reasons.

“It’s hard to say no to this,” says Robert Nay, 72, a former plant worker who retired in 1992. “The money, what they’re offering, is more than fair.”

Cheshire, 90 miles southeast of Columbus, would look like any other sleepy Ohio River town, if not for the hulking Gen. James M. Gavin plant.

The humming of the plant and the crackling of power lines that crisscross the sky have become normal, as has the swirling plume from the twin 830-foot stacks. Sometimes the stacks spew black flakes onto property; occasionally, they have emitted a blue sulfuric acid.

Below the towers, fields of chest-high corn and rolls of hay abut barren parcels cordoned off by barbed-wire fences along roads called Switchyard Avenue and Connector Street.

On residential streets, frame houses and doublewide trailers have meticulously kept lawns, flower gardens, bird feeders, swing sets and inflatable pools.

The village hall, a pizza shop, social service center, bait shop, the beauty salon, a gas station-grocery, and two churches – one Methodist and one Baptist – cluster near the center of the one-stoplight town.

The Gallia County Historical and Genealogical Society plans to take video and still photographs of every building and property before AEP takes over the land.

“It’s so sad. We’re losing the history,” says Mary Lee Marchi, the society’s director.

The village saw its first settlers in the mid-1800s, mainly farmers, coal miners and rail yard workers. Into the 1900s, Cheshire was a booming community that held festivals and offered the area’s main hardware store, flour mill, blacksmith’s shop, cotton vendor and post office.

When the plant was built in 1974, the town welcomed its 310-plus jobs and saw its noise and dust as no more than a nuisance.

“There was never any real concern about health,” recalls postmaster Randy “Buck” Mulford from his perch at the service window at the brick post office. Locals stop by to gather mail, gossip and, these days, check the bulletin board for fliers advertising homes in nearby communities.

It wasn’t until two years ago that villagers started to consider the plant a possible health hazard. They heard that AEP planned to install six 60,000-gallon tanks to hold anhydrous ammonia for cleaning a federally-mandated pollution control system.

Learning that they would have only six minutes to evacuate if a tank burst, residents persuaded the company to use a safer form of ammonia.

However, a new problem emerged once the $175 million system began operating last year. More than a dozen times last summer chemicals created the sulfuric acid haze.

Townspeople reported burning eyes, headaches, sore throats and white-colored burns on their lips, tongues and mouths.

The company says it fixed the problem. A federal report found that the emissions were not life-threatening but could aggravate health problems, such as asthma.

Frustrated residents and officials hired lawyers to explore filing a lawsuit.

Instead, with the blessing of Mayor Tom Reese and the village council, the lawyers proposed that the utility, which has annual revenue of $61 billion, buy the village.

Each homeowner would receive roughly three times the value of his or her buildings and land; renters would receive $5,000 for each year they have lived in Cheshire.

All but six to 12 villagers have signed informal sale agreements, says Ed Cochran, a Cleveland attorney for the residents. He hopes a final agreement is completed within the next few weeks. The village council has talked about dismantling the town government.

Besides getting villagers’ guarantees that they won’t sue in the future for ailments the emissions may have caused, the company would obtain space to expand its unloading facilities for river barges carrying coal.

Some say that will not end the power plant’s problems or liability.

“This is not going to be a panacea for AEP, because you’re still going have the pollution, you’re still going to have impacted communities, either host or those downwind,” said Patricio Silva of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental group.

County school district officials are talking with AEP about possibly buying out two schools near the plant, and separately a group of residents outside town formed Citizens Against Pollution.

“It doesn’t make any difference how much land AEP buys, the pollution is still pouring out of that pipe,” says Paul Stinson, an organizer of the group. A West Virginia lawyer is investigating possible effects of emissions floating across the Ohio River.

Still, village residents who blame the plant for health problems say they’re relieved that they now can afford to move away.

“I’m not going to leave my family here to breathe this stuff,” says Ron Hammond, 39, a village councilman.

His 8-year-old daughter, Abby, who can talk about sulfuric acid the way her peers can talk about Barbies, has had trouble breathing since she was a baby.

Last summer, she couldn’t play outside on the days the blue haze appeared. Once she had to be taken to the hospital emergency room. Her sister, Emily, 10, got sores in her nose from the sulfur.

Their mother, Lori Hammond, 34, who has lived here since she was 6, worries for their safety. “I’m willing to move on to give them better memories.”

The family has picked out a house in Rio Grande, about 15 miles away.

Jennifer and Steve Harrison’s neat little gray house with red shutters lies in the plant’s shadow.

“Our property values are so low that we could never have sold this place. Now, we’ll get more than it’s worth,” says Jennifer Harrison, the town’s clerk. “I want to go where the plume is out of sight. I don’t want to get up every morning and have to see that.”

The couple moved here in 1980 to raise their children, Megan, now 18, and Laura, now 17, because Cheshire was halfway between the grandparents’ homes.

Friendships may suffer with the move, Jennifer Harrison acknowledges. “We probably won’t see people as often as we do now. It’s really very sad.”

Some homeowners feel they don’t have any option but to sell.

As he does often on summer afternoons, Chuck Reynolds sits in his wooden rocker on the Astroturf-covered porch of his spacious house, awaiting customers at his Reel-Em In Bait & Tackle Shop next door.

He’ll miss this, says Reynolds, a 57-year-old retired police officer.

“You can stay, but why would you want to? At some point they’ll take everyone’s land,” he says.

In 1999, Reynolds and his wife, Teresa, bought their retirement oasis a few blocks from the plant: the white-columned house with its magnificent view of the river; a bungalow where his mother now stays; and the warehouse for the shop next door.

Vibrant flower gardens with wooden benches and stone cherubs decorate the lawn between the porch and the cliff above the river. Ramshackle stairs lead to a dock and Reynolds’ pontoon boat.

“It’s $400,000 for me to shut my mouth and get out of town now,” he says, noting that fighting the company with a lawsuit could take years.

Some, however, are holding out for better deals.

Boots Hern says she was offered $242,700 but believes $1.5 million is fair for her nearly two riverfront acres.

She blames the pollution for her constant headache and a white sore on her lip that she covers with bright pink lipstick.

Still, she has picked out a house in South Point, near relatives, about 60 miles downriver.

“I’m fighting it,” she says, picking up Blackie, one of her three dogs. “But I know in my heart I’m going to have to move.”

When that time comes, there’s one part she dreads the most.

“Leaving Charlie behind,” she says softly, tears welling in her eyes.

—

On the Net:

American Electric Power: http://www.aep.com

The Gallia County Historical and Genealogical Society http://www.zoomnet.net/ 7/8histsoc/