The citizens of New Carlisle recently organized a brilliant campaign to stop Joe Tondu, a power plant developer with a dubious history, from constructing a power plant in their community. Michiana Quality of Life, an on-going organization created by New Carlisle citizens as a result of the Tondu campaign to promote sustainable development in the area, was the lead organization in the effort. CAC asked Jack Daly, a local resident, to recount his and his community's experience. The following is his story.

The Tondu Campaign
Or
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
(with a little help from my friends)
by Jack Daly

I remember the first time I came across the word “Tondu” in the South Bend Tribune. It was a small article in an early spring edition of our local paper that spoke of how an outfit called the Tondu Corporation had expressed an interest in taking over the Allegheny site just east of us in New Carlisle for the purpose of constructing what was called a “coal gasification” plant. Allegheny Energy held title to the property on which they’d tried to build their own natural gas-powered generation plant, but the Enron fiasco and a rise in the cost of natural gas had put a stop to their plans. The Tondu Corp. hoped to use the construction on-site, already one- third completed, as a leg up on building their coal-powered plant. I remember remarking to my wife how “some Japanese power company” was eyeing the property east of us to put a power plant on. We’d only been living in New Carlisle a little less than a year and neither of us was too thrilled at this piece of news. We agreed we’d have to keep our eyes and ears open for any further developments. We didn’t have to wait too long.

A few weeks time brought news coverage of the Tondu Corporation’s demand that the local labor unions waive their prevailing wage regulations as a requirement for Tondu’s continued consideration of St. Joseph County as a site for their proposed power plant. Local businessmen and the labor unions, held hostage to hard times, apparently were hungry enough for the jobs they thought this project would bring into the area that they went ahead and waived the protections that union folks had fought so hard to win for the working man and woman. This piece of union-busting news, combined with the idea of a toxin belching coal powered generating plant less than a mile from my front door set the alarm bells to ringing in my head.

Despite a decided lack of publicity, it came to my attention that the Tondu Corp. would be giving a presentation to the New Carlisle Town Council at our Town Hall, to explain the coal gasification process and all the benefits their project would bring into our area. I made sure I attended that meeting on the evening of June 13th, 2005. That night, a Mr. Ford, the Tondu representative, gave a short slide show assuring us of America’s need for coal-powered energy, and how their new approach to this fuel would be worry-free. He went on to speak of how the jobs the Tondu project would create for local construction laborers and the increase in business that would be enjoyed by the local suppliers would be a boon to the local economy. Tondu, he told us, was a “good corporate neighbor” and would do their part to improve life in our town. It was when Mr. Ford opened the evening up to questions from the small group of 20 or so people in attendance that his self-assuredness began to unravel around the edges. Steve Ross, a St. Joseph County Commissioner, was the first to question the Tondu rep, getting right to the meat of the matter. His questions were focused sharply on the nature of the emissions such a power plant would release, as well as, what was going on with the lawsuit he’d been hearing about that the Tondu Corp. was bringing against the small town of Manistee, Michigan. It seems the town of Manistee was involved with the Tondu Corp. in developing a coal-based generation plant but had changed their minds when the project proved not to be all the Tondu Corp. had cracked it up to be. The town caught wind of Tondu’s attempts to avoid the tax payments it had promised the town. Tondu was also seeking permission to use chunks of old tires as fuel for the generating plant, after having assured Manistee it would only be burning coal. The use of discarded tires for fuel would have gained Tondu Corp. further tax breaks. Manistee decided it could no longer trust Tondu Corp. and sought to dissolve their partnership. In return, Tondu Corp. was suing the little town of Manistee for the loss of the profits they had hoped to reap from the project to the tune of millions of dollars.

Mr. Ford attempted to minimize any sense of concern over emissions, citing favorable comparisons to the emissions levels of more conventional power generating methods. When confronted with the fact that their gasification process would generate mercury and other carcinogens as well as the release of some 3 million tons of CO2 into our local environment, which hardly qualified their coal gasification process as a “better” process, the Tondu rep said that if the industry invented a way to control the CO2, they would add it to their process…if it was deemed economically feasible.

Mr.Ford went on to say that Americans, with their alarmist fears about global warming, were out of step with the rest of world opinion on the matter and ought not to be so concerned. As for the Manistee lawsuit, he closed off conversation on that topic by stating that he wasn’t at liberty to discuss it since it was still in the courts.

I was the next questioner from the audience. When I asked him if Tondu had done any studies of the health effects a similar type of coal-powered generating plant down near Terre Haute might be having on the folks living near it, he told me they hadn’t looked into that question and that if I was really that interested in it, perhaps I should go down there and investigate it on my own. I didn’t feel that his response to my inquiry was one I would expect from a “good corporate neighbor” and told him that perhaps I would do just that. After the third member of the audience questioned him as to whether it would be Indiana coal that would power the Tondu facility (it would not), Mr. Ford could see that things were not going as swimmingly as he’d hoped and he quickly drew the session to a close and headed for the exit.

I went home and wrote a letter describing the meeting and my own impressions of the Tondu outfit’s proposal and submitted it to the South Bend Tribune’s letters- to- the- editor. More than a month passed and still it had not been printed, so I sent it out again -this time to the New Carlisle News, our hometown paper. It was published in their next edition.

Very soon thereafter, I received a call from a member of the local news media telling me of an afternoon session of the Zoning Board of Appeals to be held August 3rd at the St. Joe County-City Building in South Bend. They’d be discussing the Tondu application to go ahead with their project using the existing Allegheny permit for the property. I took time off from my job and joined a dozen or so local citizens in expressing our concerns about the Tondu plan to the Zoning Board members. We asked the Zoning Board to further investigate Tondu’s corporate behavior as well as the ins and outs of the coal gasification process before any approvals were granted.

We asked that the Tondu Corp. be made to apply for a special use permit for the Allegheny site since coal-gasification was a decidedly different mode of power generation from the Allegheny plan, which was to use a cleaner natural gas-fueled method.

The majority of the Zoning Board members, along with a small number of local businessmen and the president of the New Carlisle Town Council, while admitting they knew very little about coal-gasification technology or its potential for negative environmental effects on the area, stated that they did not think this was reason enough to prevent passing the Tondu permit application on up to the St.Joseph County Council for approval…and that’s just what they did by a vote of 5-to-2, with a recommendation for approval.

My first contact with the core group of local citizens, who went on to form the Michiana Quality of Life (MQL) group, came shortly after that vote and was a result of the letter I’d written to the New Carlisle News. A woman from my neighborhood came by one afternoon to tell me that she’d read my letter and asked if I’d be willing to attend a meeting of like-minded townspeople at her home for the purpose of formulating a response to the Tondu proposal. Most of the folks at that meeting were members of the New Carlisle Citizens for Community Planning (NCCP), a loose ad hoc group of 10 or 15 people who had organized to deal with development issues much tamer in comparison to this power plant project. It seemed our sleepy little town was quickly coming awake.

Speaking with the others at this first organizational meeting, it became evident that many folks had heard nothing about the Tondu Corp.’s intentions. Those outside our town who had heard of it felt it would not have much of an impact on them personally. Tondu’s efforts to characterize the power plant as strictly a “New Carlisle issue” were having some success, thus far. Outreach and education would become our first priority.

Even though our own research into the coal gasification process and into Tondu’s past behavior was only in its infancy, we soon came to know that the effects of a power production scheme on the scale which Tondu proposed would reach the eastern parts of St. Joseph County and beyond. Right from the start, our flyering campaigns urged citizen participation and attendance at the Town Council meetings as well as at the informational meeting our group was putting together in an attempt to present some of the risk versus benefit considerations that our research was uncovering. The group felt compelled to find the answers to questions about this proposed development that most politicians and planning board members were not asking. We wanted to give the Tondu representatives a chance to meet with the community and present their project in a properly publicized manner. Door-to-door flyering proved to be quite effective and attendance at the August 9th Town Council meeting was Standing-Room-Only. Many folks, from our town and other parts of the county, voiced their concerns over the Tondu Corporation and its proposed power plant. More flyers were passed out at the door, listing the contact info for the St. Joe County Council members and the three St. Joe County Commissioners, while once again urging citizens to attend the informational meeting planned for August 16th at the New Carlisle Public Library.

It seemed the Tondu Corporation had, in fact, sent a rep to attend that Town Council meeting, who chose not to announce his presence until the meeting was nearly over. He said that Tondu hadn’t heard about the Town Council meeting until that morning but announced Tondu’s intention to hold its own informational meeting “as soon as possible”.

The next day’s South Bend Tribune saw the coverage of the power plant issue grow from small puff pieces touting the project’s many benefits into front page news showing concerned citizens demanding more information.

The MQL knew that our methods and behavior would be watched very closely. In our flyering campaigns, we stressed respect for the law (no flyers were to be put in mail boxes) and for the property and opinions of others. Throughout the Tondu campaign, members of the local media as well as local government figures remarked that our group was impressively calm and courteous in the midst of carrying our message to the public.

Once again, we divided the county into zones and flyered everyone we could, inviting their participation in this process. These efforts bore fruit. Upwards of 300 locals and folks from other parts of the county filled the room to hear presentations from Steve Ross, St. Joe County Commissioner, as well as from Brian Wright, Coal Policy Director of the Hoosier Environmental Council, and from Dave Menzer, Utility Campaign Organizer for the Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana. The panel did not, however, include any representatives of the Tondu Corp., although Michiana Quality Of Life had made a point to invite their participation. A part of our group’s plan throughout this process was the conscious effort to include the Tondu Corporation in our public meetings and allow them the opportunity to make their case with the people of the county. The Tondu Corp. said that all their representatives were busy elsewhere that evening.

Tondu’s corporate behavior, the environmental hazards involved in the use of coal for fueling power production, and alternatives to energy over-consumption and waste were a few of the topics discussed by the panel of speakers.

Word of the rumblings out in western St. Joe County had reached local TV stations and the presence outside the Public Library of the Fox News remote truck was the first showing of what would become intense media coverage throughout this experience. It was at this meeting at the Library that the existence of the Michiana Quality Of Life group was formally announced, the name reflecting the growing realization that this was an issue of the utmost importance to all of St. Joe County despite Tondu’s attempts to portray it as only of interest to a small portion of the population.

The Library meeting proved to be quite a lively event and produced a number of positive results. Number One was the awareness that a large number of New Carlisle residents felt the same way about the Tondu proposal as the MQL people. The tables set up at the exits with petitions to sign were bustling with activity. Seeing the depth of feeling this issue was generating in his constituency, Mr.Hora, President of the New Carlisle Town Council, switched from his original statement of support for the Tondu project and now professed unity with those in opposition to the power plant.

Another very important result of this meeting, as it turned out, came about from the display of the Tondu site plan, which an MQL member had obtained and hung on the wall of the meeting room. This provided Pat Cummings, New Carlisle Head of Public Works and the man in charge of protecting the area water supply, with his first opportunity to see this map. Certain aspects of the project that were indicated on this plot plan caused him grave concern. Water would become a pivotal issue in the struggle to stop the Tondu power project.

The MQL group now swung into a full court press strategy. In the short time since the Town Council meetings and the info session at New Carlisle Public Library, the membership had grown by leaps and bounds and now included folks from every corner of the county. Educators, economists, energy industry experts, physicians, farmers, local labor, mothers, fathers, grandparents, and more than a few local high school students were now actively involved in protecting the place where they lived.

The MQL list serve and Web site immediately became the single most useful tool in their arsenal. It provided an open forum for the membership to dispense new information and air their opinions, successes and frustrations. The use of the internet streamlined the group’s organizing and mobilization efforts and even engendered an article in the South Bend Tribune on their use of the information highway in their struggle to stop Tondu.

Our sights were now set on the meeting of the St. Joseph County Council at which the Tondu Corp. would be given an opportunity to make their case in front of a committee of Council members to be held on the evening of August 18th. The MQL group held brainstorming sessions and it was at these evenings spent discussing various strategies that the idea for the use of a’?’ (question mark) as a symbol for the Tondu campaign came into being.

Although our research had convinced us by this point that the Tondu project posed a serious threat to the health and wellbeing of the people of St. Joe County, we would not try to tell people what to think on the subject. We would stress the lack of information available at this point and warn against further approvals until factual data could be made public. We felt confident that once the people of the county had the necessary information, they would arrive at the same conclusions as ourselves.

Choosing the ‘?’ as our symbol, T-shirts were made up in the bright yellow-and-black of a highway warning sign. These proved to be such hot items that more than one run was necessary to meet the demand before the night of Tondu’s presentation to the Council Committee.

The MQL also began an intense letter writing and email campaign. Each of us in turn dashed off facts and figures to the various County Council members and County Commissioners, reminding them of their responsibilities to their constituents and the need for “due diligence” on their part, to insure an educated decision was made on this extremely vital issue.

When the evening of Thursday, August 18th arrived, the committee meeting drew so many folks that the session had to be moved from its usual location in the council conference room to the much larger County- City Building Council chambers. Even then, attendance was so great that many stood along the walls of the hall throughout the session. The audience was a sea of ‘?’ signs and yellow-and-black T-shirts.

This was not to be a ‘public’ meeting. The public was allowed to attend but they were allowed no input into the proceedings. No one in the packed audience was allowed to ask a single question. The overflow crowd listened politely to Mr. Joe Tondu’s presentation, only having to be reprimanded a time or two when the energy man’s comments drew their laughter.

Although Committee member Mark Catanzarite requested a delay in the final vote on the issue, stating there were too many unanswered questions that needed clarification, Mr.Tondu pleaded his necessity for a speedy approval. He told the committee that even one day’s delay could have a critical impact on his company’s eligibility to receive federal tax credits. The committee decided to go ahead with bringing the power plant question in front of the entire County Council for a vote as scheduled but wanted Joe Tondu’s assurance that he would hold his own informational meeting for the public and that he would hold it at a location centrally located in the county. Mr.Tondu assured the committee that he would do just that as soon as arrangements could be made.

The MQL did not sit idly by, waiting for Mr.Tondu to make good on his assurances to the committee members. Emails continued to flood the office of the County Council. It seemed as if the Tondu issue held space in the South Bend Tribune almost every day, whether in a letter to the editor or in a longer Michiana Point Of View opinion piece. The grassroots organization gathered a panel of experts, tapping the talents of Bruce Marshall, well known utility consultant for major power companies, as well as Marty Wolfson, noted economics professor from Notre Dame University and a member of the Saint Joe Valley Project. Nancy Pemberton, member of the New Carlisle Town Council, guided a resolution through the Town Council stating the Council’s unanimous opposition to the Tondu project. Press releases were given to the TV stations in the area as well as interviews on local radio. Posters urging citizen attendance and participation were posted in local places of business throughout the county.

Although the editorial board of the south Bend Tribune came out with a recommendation for approving the Tondu proposal, with its affiliated TV station, WSBT, insisting on calling the project the “New Carlisle Power Plant”, no longer was it possible to deem this an issue restricted to a small part of the county. With as little fanfare as they could engineer and at a location quite a fair piece from central St. Joe County, the Tondu Corp. did eventually hold its own informational session at the Ambrosia Banquet Hall, just outside of downtown New Carlisle on the evening of Thursday, August 25th.

The line of people waiting to gain entry to the hall wound out the door and around the building and on into the packed parking lot. It included all three of the County Commissioners and eight or nine County Council members and probably close to 450 or more citizens from throughout the Michiana area, despite the newspaper’s now-characteristic underestimate of 300 people. All available seating was filled in the large banquet facility and people lined every available bit of wall space.

Mr. Ford and Mr. Tondu apologized for their failure to predict or prepare room for the evening’s impressive turnout. They also had to make apologies for the inadequacy of their slide presentation, basically a repeat of the one given at New Carlisle Town Hall and nearly invisible to many of the members of the evening’s large audience.

Once again, when their presentation was complete and the floor opened for Q&A, the Tondu men were met with a continuous barrage of pointedly uncomfortable questions about their corporate behavior in the Manistee lawsuit as well as serious doubt about minimizing the dangers of their plant’s expected emissions levels. Mr. Tondu showed grace under this intense pressure from the gathered citizenry, to give him his due, but in the final analysis he failed to win over the crowd. When a young woman from a farming family in the area ended the evening with a request that he take his power project back to Houston, Mr. Tondu was forced to admit that he had strong opposition to contend with.

Now within two or three weeks of when the County Council would meet to decide the fate of the Tondu proposal, both sides of the issue spared no amount of energy bringing their opposing views before the public. The Tondu Corp. used the South Bend Tribune as their soapbox. Large scale ads listing what they touted were coal-gasification’s ‘improved’ emissions rates greeted the local readership. Mr. Tondu’s opinions gained treatment as news articles. Supporters from the energy industry and from governmental agencies downstate also weighed in with pro-Tondu pieces.

Meanwhile, the MQL core group held meetings with various Council members as well as some of the County Commissioners. An attempt at a round table discussion at the offices of Project Future, the county’s economic development organization responsible for bringing the Tondu project into the area, proved largely ineffectual. The discussion was held to a short time schedule and did very little in the way of changing any of the participants’ opinions on the project.

One meeting between the MQL group and St. Joe County Commissioner Cindy Bodle proved educational for all involved. At this meeting was Mr. Pat Cummings, member of the area’s Water Resources Board and New Carlisle Head of Public works. It was at this meeting that Mr. Cummings got his chance to weigh in and express his own grave misgivings about the siting of this coal-powered generating plant right on top of the area’s aquifer. He told Ms. Bodle of the extreme danger this would pose to the drinking water for the entire area, and of the permeability of the soil underlying the site and how vulnerable that aquifer was to surface contamination at this location. With intended on-site storage of millions of tons of coal, not even the best of currently available safety measures could insure the integrity of the water supply. Debate global warming as you will, the issue of Wellhead Protection was not going away.

As the evening of the County Council vote neared, Mr. Tondu took the gloves off. He was interviewed on television and given an opportunity to label the MQL opposition as a “fringe element” and where he talked about being screamed at by members of MQL and characterized us as uneducated and ill-informed about the coal gasification process. Apparently, speaking down to us at his informational meeting as unable to grasp complicated technological concepts and otherwise ignoring us hadn’t been working for him as he’d expected it to.

Even those county figures diametrically opposed to the MQL knew that we carried ourselves in a strictly polite manner. To characterize university professors and local experts and people in the fields of medicine and public health as uneducated and too dull to grasp complicated concepts was not going to work for Mr. Tondu either. The night of the vote was just around the corner when the Saint Joe Valley Project arranged for an open forum to be held at Little Flower Church in South Bend to provide an opportunity for both sides of the issue to come together and debate the pros and cons in a more centralized location in the county. Attendance at the afternoon session peaked at a little over 100 people, including members of the St. Joe County Council as well as local union members and business people, energy industry consultants, educators, and local citizens.

Once again, the Tondu Corporation declined to send a representative to what was to be their last chance to debate the issue before the final vote occurred. Voices were raised for both sides but the proof of the pudding would be September 13th’s vote.

Feelings ran high, as once again, an overflow crowd filled the County-City Building’s Council chambers on Sept.13th for what was to be the final vote on the Tondu permit application. Signs were not allowed into the chambers this time and piled up outside the entry to the building. Seats had to be set up in the hallways outside the Council chambers to deal with an audience too large for the room, despite the line of attendees along the walls.

This was a public meeting. Each person speaking for or against the Tondu proposal would be given a few minutes to state their case before the Council members would vote on the issue. The Council members knew from the numbers lining up to have their say that this would be a long night. Time limits on testimony would be strictly enforced.

The Tondu proponents were given first shot. Mr.Tondu was joined by representatives from IDEM (Indiana Department of Environmental Management ), a member of the Notre Dame Engineering Department faculty, local businessmen, and even Governor Mitch Daniels weighed in via his senior energy advisor, Mr. John Clark. However, the great majority of those in attendance were opposed to Mr. Tondu’s project.

When it came time for the opposition to have their say, the first to the microphone was Indiana House Minority Leader B. Patrick Bauer ( D-Soouth Bend). Behind him came County Commissioner Steve Ross, Water Resources Board member Pat Cummings, and a whole line-up of educators, physicians, members of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, as well as, members of the MQL and of the local band of the Cherokee Nation.

When the evening wore on towards midnight, the County Council decided to postpone their decision on the issue. They set up a special meeting to vote on it for September 22nd, in order to allow for more time to review the project and for the Tondu Corporation officials to put their commitments to the project into writing. The time between the ‘final’ vote and the final-final vote September 22nd was one of interesting developments. The MQL caught wind of the behind-the-scenes communications going on between the New Carlisle Town Council president, the Tondu Corp., and Pat McMahon of Project Future, regarding under what circumstances the people of New Carlisle could be convinced to accept the Tondu proposal. The fact that the Council president sent this communication after he had pledged unanimity with the rest of the Town Council had the other Council members seeing red.

Governor Daniels weighed in as well. His personal endorsement read like a news article in the South Bend Tribune, throwing his support behind the Tondu project and touting Indiana’s need for such a power scheme. IDEM officials as well as the former director of the Indiana Utility Forecasting Group, Tom Sparrow, were given space in the Tribune to plead Tondu’s case.

The MQL and many others seriously doubted that Mr. Tondu and his partners could compose a legally binding document that enumerated his commitments to the people of the county in a matter of a couple of days as much as they doubted sufficient time was given for the County Council to give such a document the close scrutiny it would call for.

The Council decided to call an eleventh-hour session, an open forum that would be the first time that Joe Tondu and his partners would sit across the table from the opposition and debate his power plant proposal.

Seated in an elongated circle, experts from both sides traded questions and barbs back and forth on September 20th in Council chambers in South Bend’s St. Joe County-City Building. Once again, although the public could attend, public comment would not be taken. It was the task of the Michiana Quality Of Life group and the panel of experts they had assembled to be the voice for the public’s concerns. Fact and opinion flew back and forth between the Tondu proponents and their opponents. The forum lasted nearly four hours and all that could be drawn from it conclusively was that it was up to the members of the County Council and their vote that next Thursday night to tell the tale.

During this final week before the vote, MQL made arrangements for a series of radio spots to be aired on the major local stations throughout the days leading up to the County Council’s decision. One final flyering push on the weekend preceding the vote covered the county, with special emphasis on the neighborhoods where the County Council members lived.

Nancy Pemberton and the members of the New Carlisle Town Council did manage to throw in one final unanimous resolution in opposition to the Tondu project the Wednesday before the vote, to bring any doubt as to how the town felt about the gasification issue to a close.

The media was out in full force the night of the vote. As they’d grown to expect, the crowd filled the Council chambers and spilled into the surrounding hallway. After what seemed an interminable period of “business as usual”, the moment of truth arrived and the Tondu permit application was put to a vote.

I didn’t think I knew so many people who could hold their breath for so long. In the end, the County Council voted to deny the Tondu permit application by a vote of 7-to-2.

“I think the vote spoke for itself”, said County Council President Rafael Morton, D-District D. Morton voted against the project, as well as, Council members Randy Przybysz,D-District A; Joe Baldoni, D-District H; Mike Kruk D-District E; Mark Catanzarite, D-District G; Dennis Schafer, R-District F;and Mark Root, R-District I.

Voting in favor of the Tondu proposal were Council members Dale Devon, R-District C; and Andy Kostielney, R-District B.

I cannot describe the sense of relief that went through the crowd there at the County-City Building as the final vote was tallied. For many of us, it was the first easy breath we’d taken since learning of the Tondu Corp.’s designs on that piece of property just outside New Carlisle. The only word I can come up with that does any justice to our feelings is thunderstruck. Right up to the final moments none of us would have professed certainty as to the outcome; but, in the end, we all knew that what had occurred there that night was something very special. This was Participatory Democracy at its finest hour….and I, for one, felt extremely privileged to have been a part of it.

The Tondu Campaign: An After Word
Just short of one month after the County Council members voted to reject Mr. Tondu’s application for a permit, MQL began to hear rumblings about an attempt to bring the matter before the Council again at the next month’s session. Council members were receiving phone messages urging them to “vote Yes on Tondu”. Word of this development spread very rapidly through the MQL grapevine and County Council chambers were once again filled with people opposed to the Tondu project.

The rumor was evidently well-founded as Andy Kostielney, R-District B, under the heading of new business, made a motion to waive the required waiting period in the case of the Tondu application and allow Mr. Tondu to re-submit his proposal to the Council before the customary six months were up. His motion was soundly defeated.

Okay. There’s the story….. A small group of businessmen have a plan, their plan for the future of St. Joe County. The outfit involved may be small but its proposal is of major proportions. They want permission from the county to start a project that they say will bring good jobs into the area, that will be a shot in the arm for the local economy while introducing a new approach to an industry already familiar to the St. Joe County people. In these times of soaring costs of living and money shortages, their proposal sounds good….until you take a closer look.

As it turns out, the site for the proposed project is situated right on top of highly permeable soils, where the water table runs just below the surface. The run-off and various emissions that will be a part of this project pose serious threat to the local water supply. Odors from the site and the heavy traffic in and out of the facility will negatively impact the property values of the project’s neighbors. These neighbors are worried about what will happen to their quality of life should such a project gain approval to move forward. They fear that not only will it ruin the quality of life in their neighborhood but that the negative repercussions will be felt throughout the rest of St. Joe County, and beyond.

Sound familiar?
As I sat up in the bleachers at LaVille Jr/Sr High School last week and listened to the people of Lakeville and surrounding areas voice their concerns about a proposed CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation- basically, a dairy factory) with its sights set on their section of St. Joseph County, something became very clear to me. The history of the Tondu Campaign is not a nostalgic look back at an isolated instance where David took on Goliath and slew the giant and everyone lived happily ever after.

Yes, a small group of motivated citizens did educate themselves and, more importantly, ACTIVATE themselves and with focus and a prodigious expenditure of energy, organized enough of their fellow citizens to stop the Tondu Corp.’s ill-advised power scheme and carry the day….. but only the day.

The assaults on our homes and our lands and our way of life don’t stop. Big business continues to think that waving illusory promises of a quick buck before our eyes will blind us to the potential damage their schemes may do. Government agencies like IDEM will continue to send their spin-meisters and to behave more like industry spokespeople than protectors of the citizens of St .Joe County, promising close scrutiny of these projects while relaxing their already minimal regulations. The Tondu Corp. and the people behind the CAFO down in Lakeville have both been involved in previous projects similar to the ones they propose and, in both cases, those previous efforts yielded less-than-stellar results. The promised jobs turn out to be few in number and low on the pay scale. In fact, the two examples are so similar in dynamic that it gives one a distinct sense of déjà vu…..with one big difference.

The people down in Lakeville have the Tondu victory to serve as an example, as proof that their efforts to protect their homes and livelihoods can succeed. Perhaps, when that next ill-conceived project comes over the county’s horizon, a Lakeville success story will stand alongside ours to bolster the efforts of the folks who’ll take on that fight…and I’m afraid that day will most certainly come.

It is for that reason I have set down this history of our struggle to stop the Tondu Corporation and its behind-the-scenes collaborators from bringing harm to the people of our area in the name of economic development.