Sarah Lloyd, Cambrians for Thoughtful Development

Sarah Lloyd is a member of Cambrians for Thoughtful Development, a citizens group concerned about a proposed ethanol plant in Cambria, Wis. She also works at the Aldo Leopold Foundation and tends to a large garden from which she eats and sells vegetables locally.

The residents of Cambria, Wis., and surrounding towns were caught a bit off guard last November, when Didion Milling announced that it was going to expand its existing milling operation into an ethanol plant. Just a couple of weeks earlier, a group of farmers and business people, the United Wisconsin Grain Producers, had announced plans for another ethanol plant, to be located two miles northeast of Cambria. Suddenly, plans for two ethanol plants within two miles of each other were on the table.

The citizen action protesting these ethanol developments have focused on the Didion plant in Cambria, because the proposed Didion site is in a population center and adjacent to a school. The UWGP plant, meanwhile, is located in a township with no zoning, meaning there is no local process by which citizens can become involved. We have all learned a lot about government, democracy, and zoning through our activism -- and there will certainly be many more lessons before all is said and done.

The group Cambrians for Thoughtful Development arose out of the need for citizens' voices to be heard. The Cambria Village board president has started almost every public meeting with a 10-minute monologue about the glories of ethanol and how excited he is about this project. Back in November, when the Didion ethanol plant was first announced, a few citizens (including myself) came together to raise questions. Our numbers have grown since then.

Our first action was to put out a flier asking what an ethanol plant in Cambria, next to the school, would mean for our health and the health of our children. What were the environmental considerations? What would be the cost to the village in road maintenance, water and sewer facilities, and so forth? What would an increase of 112 trucks passing through Cambria per day mean in terms of diesel emissions, safety, and quality of life? Could the promises of higher corn prices for farmers and more jobs for the area be guaranteed?

Fliers were delivered door to door. As the number of active CTD members has grown, so has the speed at which we are able to distribute information. We have now released four fliers over the past three months. (Two of the fliers are now online.) The subject of the fliers depends on the question of the day. It is an interesting task to try to figure out what information is resonating with people at a given time and in what form they can digest it. One comment we heard back from our first flier (which asked a lot of questions about the ethanol project) was, "well, your organization doesn't seem to know anything, all it does is ask questions." Subsequent fliers have tried to call attention to the different zoning and ordinances issues the village board should consider in its decision-making process.

In addition to distributing fliers, we've all been attending a lot of meetings. The once-lonely meetings of the Cambria village board have, in many instances, become standing room only. Village board members have also been under scrutiny through open-records requests. These requests, governed by Wisconsin law, have helped citizens stay on top of correspondence between the board and the applicant, Didion. A string of email was released that showed Didion instructing the village board president on how to conduct the public hearing on the company's zoning-permit application. Instructions included "having a uniformed officer present to ensure an orderly meeting." Another board member has also been exchanging email with Didion talking about "our cause" of getting the ethanol plant approved.

There will be a big push from both sides now before the April 1 election, which has the potential to install a new village board president and three new trustees. (Three other trustees will continue to serve and are up for election next year). The ballot will also contain the question, "Should Didion Milling Inc. be allowed to expand with an ethanol plant in or near the Village of Cambria?" Tonight, the chamber of commerce, which has taken an aggressive pro-ethanol stance, will hold a "Meet the Candidates Night" in the school gym. Should be interesting, since most of the candidates have declined to attend because of the very biased way in which the chamber powers-that-be have been operating. Look for a report on this circus tomorrow.