Power From the Valley: Nuclear and Coal in the Postwar U.S. Dissertation Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Megan Lenore Chew, M.A. Graduate Program in History The Ohio State University 2014 Dissertation Committee: Steven Conn, Advisor Randolph Roth David Steigerwald Copyright by Megan Lenore Chew 2014 Abstract In the years after World War II, small towns, villages, and cities in the Ohio River Valley region of Ohio and Indiana experienced a high level of industrialization not seen since the region’s commercial peak in the mid-19th century. The development of industries related to nuclear and coal technologies—including nuclear energy, uranium enrichment, and coal-fired energy—changed the social and physical environments of the Ohio Valley at the time. This industrial growth was part of a movement to decentralize industry from major cities after World War II, involved the efforts of private corporations to sell “free enterprise” in the 1950s, was in some cases related to U.S. national defense in the Cold War, and brought some of the largest industrial complexes in the U.S. to sparsely populated places in the Ohio Valley. In these small cities and villages— including Madison, Indiana, Cheshire, Ohio, Piketon, Ohio, and Waverly, Ohio—the changes brought by nuclear and coal meant modern, enormous industry was taking the place of farms and cornfields. These places had been left behind by the growth seen in major metropolitan areas, and they saw the potential for economic growth in these power plants and related industries. Some locals argued that this type of industrial development hurt the environment. They organized into anti-nuclear, anti-plant, environmental movements, and as consequences of both nuclear and coal technologies became increasingly clear in the later decades of the 20th century, environmentalists gained power in guiding the futures of these industries. The failure of the coal and nuclear industries to ii adapt to growing environmental regulations and increased costs in the 1970s and onward affected the communities of the Ohio River Valley. In these Ohio River Valley cities, villages, and towns, the local environment, local economic development, and local social values were influenced by federal regulations and the often pro-industry efforts of state politicians. The story of U.S. industrial development in the postwar era to the present can best be told through the actions and experiences of people who lived in these places, small towns in the U.S., far away from centers of economic and political power. Grassroots movements bubbled up in these Midwestern and rural areas, and demonstrated the strength of environmentalism in small towns far from urban centers. But, politicians, workers, and others concerned with losing industry countered environmentalists in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The story of the Ohio Valley in the post-World War II era provides a counter-narrative to discussions of deindustrialization in the Midwestern U.S. focused on loss of industry in the 1950s and beyond, and provides an important local social and environmental context for understanding how people negotiated the economic benefits of industrial development and the potential consequences of pollution. This narrative demonstrates the difficulties of maintaining small town environments when they faced increased pollution, acid rain, economic decline, and major industrial transformation. iii Dedication Dedicated to my family. iv Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge the assistance of a number of people and institutions in completing the research and writing of this dissertation. First, thank you to my dissertation committee members for their helpful responses to my ideas, chapters, and writing. I am grateful to my fellow graduate students who have responded to parts of this draft in seminars, as well as faculty at Ohio State who have provided feedback. I would like to thank graduate students, faculty and staff, past and present, in the Department of History and the administrative staff and students I have worked with on the Appalachian Project and in the Literacy in Appalachia GradGroup for their academic and personal support. In addition, I extend thanks to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, the Washington County Historical Society (Ohio), the Jefferson County Historical Society (Madison, Indiana), the Madison-Jefferson County Public Library, the Ohio Congressional Archives, and Hanover College’s Duggan Library, among the number of archives and libraries that have provided me sources and guidance. Thank you to those who provided helpful feedback to part of this dissertation at the American Society for Environmental History conference in Madison, Wisconsin in 2012 and at the Graduate Student Writing Workshop in Toronto, Canada in 2013, and at the Appalachian Studies Association conference in Boone, North Carolina in 2013. I would like to thank the Department of History at Ohio State University for funding opportunities and scholarship grants to complete this dissertation, as well as the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library v Association for grant funds to complete research in Iowa. Thank you also to the friends and family who have provided support, feedback, and patience through the years. vi Vita Biographical Information: June 2002……………………………………………………………….Perry High School June 2006………………………………..B.A. History, B.S. Journalism, Ohio University December 2009………………………………………M.A. History, Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: History vii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii Dedication……………………………………………………………………………..… iv Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………..……. v Vita…………………………………………………………………………….……….. vii List of Maps…………...……………………………………………………………..….. x List of Photos……………………………………………………………………...……..xi Introduction: Making the River Useful: Power, Connection, and the Small Town in The Ohio River Valley………………………………………………………………..…….… 1 Chapter One: Power of Connection: Coal, Electricity, and the Ohio Valley after World War II………………………………………………………………………………….... 30 Chapter Two: Power for Defense and Development: Free Enterprise, National Security, and the Atomic Energy Commission--Ohio Valley Electric Corporation Project, 1950- 1965…………………………………………………………………………………...… 54 Chapter Three: Smokestacks Over Main Street: Historic Preservation, Environmentalism, and the Threat of a Power Plant “Concentration” on the Ohio River, 1957-1981…….... 84 Chapter Four: Marble Hill and the Failure of a Nuclear Alternative in the Ohio Valley, 1970-1991……………………………………………………………………….…….. 119 Chapter Five: Smoke On the Water: The Future of Nuclear in the Ohio Valley……… 154 Chapter Six: Acid Indiscretions: High Sulfur Coal, Environmental Policy, and Negotiating Coal’s Future, 1980-present……………………………………...………. 180 viii Conclusion: The Twenty-first Century Comes to the 19th Century Town……………. 209 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………... 221 Appendix A.: Power Plants developed in Ohio Valley adjacent to Ohio and Indiana 1944- 1965. ……………………………………………………………………………………243 Appendix B: Power Plants developed in Ohio Valley adjacent to Ohio and Indiana 1965- 1991.……….………………………………………………………………………….. .245 ix List of Maps Map 1. Map of Marietta and surrounding area……………………….………...………. 36 Map 2. Map of Waverly and surrounding area………………….……...…………….. ...54 Map 3. Map of Cincinnati to Louisville area…………………………......…………….. 84 Map 4. Map of Madison and surrounding area…………………...………...…………. 119 Map 5. Map of Clermont County and surrounding area………………...…………….. 154 x List of Photos Photo 1. Image of Shrewsbury-Windle House, Madison……………………...…...…..100 Photo 2. Image of Downtown Madison, Indiana…………………………..………….. 210 Photo 3. Image of Clifty Creek Power Plant……………………………………..……. 212 Photo 4. Image of Cheshire Baptist Church with James Gavin Power Plant……….… 214 Photo 5. Image of Clifty Creek Power Plant from Madison Riverfront………….…… 220 xi Introduction: Making the River Useful: Power, Connection, and the Small Town in The Ohio River Valley I. Towns, Villages, and Small Cities of the Ohio River Valley and Power Growth Sitting on a bench next to the Ohio River watching the barges float by is a common pastime in Madison, Indiana. The barges glide along the Ohio River, with mountains of coal stacked and pushed by tugboats, and birds appear small flying over the river. It is a peaceful scene, fitting of the name Ohio, which is an adaption of an “Iroquois term, ‘O-Y-O,’ which means ‘the great river.’”1 The Ohio River and the lovely riverside cities that line it, like Madison, have not always been peaceful or beautiful. The Ohio River’s purpose in the 20th century could not simply be a dramatic backdrop or a place to lose track of time. Rather, as the barges remind onlookers, this is a working river. Alongside the Ohio River sit a number of cities, villages, towns, and rural spaces. These places are often bypassed by travelers on the Interstates and are not as familiar as large river cities like Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. But these places helped transform the Ohio River into a center of power in the mid-20th century. In the early to mid 19th century, the Ohio River was a center of commerce, with industries including meat-packing, but by the mid-20th century it was a center of heavy industry and home to a number of steel mills, power plants, and chemical plants. A number of industrial cities were involved in this production,