Story Photos
 Photo by Dave Rubert Dick Holmes of Rainier gestures toward the Trojan cooling towner from the edge of his property off Jack Falls Road on Sunday. He says he'll miss the tower when it's demolished in May. |
Sorry to see it go: Trojan neighbors regret lost jobs, say they'll miss icon
Monday, January 9, 2006 3:36 PM PST
By Janine Manny
Printable version
E-mail this articlePRESCOTT --- Neighbors of the Trojan nuclear plant consider the 499-foot cooling tower more of an icon than an eyesore.
But they'll be happy to have a front-row seat for the May demolition, in which explosives will be used to collapse the tower in upon itself.
"It's a distinctive landmark," Prescott resident Jeff Sanders said. "But I still want to see the explosion."
Sanders lives in the first house on Graham Road, the only entrance to Prescott Island from Highway 30.The island is home to the small city of Prescott, population about 70, and the Trojan plant.
Even though the plant is in their back yard, Prescott residents can't see the plant from their homes.
"The island is a big mound. The houses are on the downhill slope on the west, and Trojan is on the downhill side to the east, and there are trees in between." said Sanders, a Prescott City Council member.
He does see it every day going to and coming from work.
"When I see the tower, I know exactly where I am," he said.
Sanders said it will be a short walk from his house to get a front-row seat on the day Controlled Demolition, Inc. implodes the tower for Portland General Electric.
"It’s going to be totally awesome," Sanders said. "I would like them to use the debris for fill to make an emergency exit along the railroad tracks. During the flood in 1996, Graham Road was under four feet of water. The only way off the island was to drive down the railroad tracks or take a boat."
A connecting road would also serve the large number of birdwatchers who turn onto Graham Road to view Swan Lake. Now, Sanders said, most of them turn around in his driveway.
Larry Wallace was the vice principal of Rainier High School when the nuclear plant was constructed in the early 1970s. He can see the cooling tower from his house on Jack Falls Road -- located on a bluff across Highway 30 from Trojan -- but only from the roof. He said the Trojan is a landmark on both Interstate 5 and Highway 30.
"When you try to tell people where Rainier is, they might not know," Wallace said. "But if you say you live near the nuclear tower, they’ll say, 'Oh, I know where that is.' "
If the tower has to go, fine, but "it’s a shame that we can’t utilize it for our community to help the economy," Wallace said. "If something could be done with it now, or with the area after the demolition, that would be a good step forward."
Wallace said the arrival of the nuclear plant was a boon to Rainier.
"The taxation and the money coming in helped us build the new high school at its present site at Briarcliff," he said. "The bottom dropped of our finances when the plant closed" in 1993.
Wallace said he never worried about safety, even while the nuclear reactor was operating.
"We didn’t even think about it," he said. "A part of me will really miss it. Traveling from either direction, when you see it you know you're not too far from home."
Dick Holmes, who lives at the end of Jack Falls Road with a clear view of the cooling tower, said there is one thing he won’t miss.
"Three or four years ago, they put different lights on the tower to make sure airplanes could see it. Those lights shine right into my bathroom window. I won’t miss going into the bathroom in the middle of the night and having strobe lights in there."
Homes said he and his wife, Mary Jo, never worried that the plant was built so close to their house.
"There was no concern. Of course, we have a nuclear engineer in the family," he said. "We didn’t worry about safety or the welfare of the family. We raised our children in the shadow of the nuclear tower."
What does upset Holmes is the way the plant was shut down in 1993.
PGE shut the plant down because it faced hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to repair cracked steam generator tubes, and the decision eventually put 1,000 people out of work. Holmes to this day is resentful of Trojan's critics.
"These were outsiders who didn’t have the foggiest idea what it means to make a living."
Holmes said he would miss the tower as a landmark -- but he thinks the implosion will be fun to watch.
"I've seen other implosions of industrial plants. There is a big 'poof,' and it’s gone. We’ve got three acres up here with a great view. We're going to invite everyone we know to come up and watch," Holmes said.
"It’s a big part of our history. I watched it being built, I watched it operate, and now I'll watch it disappear. You don't usually get to see all that in one lifetime."
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