Hermitage and isolation.  The question has been raised...self imposed?  Obviously!

 

 

The brick house stood on a small rise in the valley, looking on the Susquehanna and Smith Creek. Like red and white Herefords on fields of purple flowered alfalfa, it seemed out of place on a white February day.
 
Brick is incongruous to this land of hardwoods and Holstein-Friesians. This house was not as old as Ebenezer Dunham's place, the old sawmill on the Wappasenning. There hand-hewn timbers on a foundation of laid stones from the creek support the new sawn lumber from nearly two hundred years ago, the lumber that floored and roofed the brick house.

 

The story is the same as many dissertations written by young sociologists and anthropologists; "third world" exploitation of our own people.  But it is extremely topical as hundreds of communities across our nation are currently or about to suffer the consequences of the new "power" propaganda and politics.  These politics are especially poignant in the continuing struggle between Upstate and Downstate in New York, often thought by Upstaters as the tyranny of the masses. The games are incessant, our California brethern suffer their blackouts. The same threat was made here a couple of years ago, allowing the Governor to initialize an emergency power bill, which he did despite New York's 27% reserve capacity in power generation.

 

The Town of Nichols lay south of the Susquehanna.  It belongs more to the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania than to the Empire State, at least in the nature of its hill farm people.  Once the proud center of a farming community that covered nearly 400 square miles it has under gone the State's and Federal governments change in agricultural policy.  Its hay day was probably in the 1880's when over 4000 people lived and worked in its mills, creameries, and feed mills. At that time it was one of the largest communities in south central New York. It was still vibrant until the Eire Railroad closed in 1972 and the coming of the Southern Tier Expressway. During the last three decades it has eroded, a person, a farm, a business at a time.  At one time it was thought that as a bedroom community to an IBM plant in nearby Owego it would survive.  This census may find less than 2000 people in its town and village, its smallest population in 150 years.

 

The Town's boards are filled with well intentioned amateurs, most retired IBM folks who remember a better day.  They have made so many mistakes and the repercussions are so dire.  There is no way back.  They never have been able to feel the wind's direction. Perhaps the old mountains confuse the course.  Desperate for progress they have given away the heritage and values of the farmers.  And with reason, in Nichols your land taxes are more than most mortgages, and your mortgage will go away, taxes are forever.

 

It is all about geology, a continuation, a part of, Mitchner's Chesapeake. When the last ice age brought forth the great Susquehanna, and even before and beneath it when the great primordial river delta was formed, some 300 million years ago, Nichols fate was almost sealed.  All that remained to fulfill was time and a complacent population.

 

When Nichols was first settled the geology and geography played well in a symbiotic relation.  The fast moving creeks dropping over 700 feet to the river valley and forested hills were ideal for saw and gristmills.  In the mile and one half from the river to the State line the Wappasenning boasted 27 millponds in 1827. The upper Susquehanna and Delaware Valley's provided the lumber for a vastly expanding nation and the great rivers provided a way to get the resource to market.  In 1831 in nearby Owego, following on the success of the Eire Canal, the first commercial Railroad in the United States was formed, the New York and Eire, connecting Nichols in 1849.  Nichols boomed as a mill center until the great depressions of 1890's.

 

Each wave of German immigration added to the character of the town and changed it to a farming community. Not to say there weren't farmers in Nichols but until the Germans came not a farming community.  The collective spirit came with these new folks and their religions and their sense of purpose. Nichols too, had the advantage of "land for sale", which unlike some other communities in the nation, elevated the German farmer to land owner rather than hired hand, as far back as Lincoln's '49 ers. It may be Lincoln's victory that cast the Republican nature of the town.

 

The fact, that the famous now gone, shoe factories of Endicott-Johnson were near by, added to Nichols appeal.  The cry "which way EJ?" was heard not just heavily accented in Italian but in German as well, and in Nichols were German brothers and sisters, people of the homeland.  Today, there are no Germans, no English, just Americans and the occasional sighting of a lathered horse trailed by an Amish buggy.

 

It is not the county's false promise of an industrial park bringing hordes and money, nor the destruction of the aquifer and possibly the River by the proposed giant power plant, it is not brain cancers that may affect as many as one in ten of our children, nor the stupid 20 year battle with solid waste that may now cost every man woman and child as much as $5000; it is land mining that will finally disrupt this little community into oblivion.  It is the dynamic between the Town fathers and Frank Lopke that brought down Haner's old brick farmhouse.  But like so many communities across not just the nation, but the world, it is power politics that hopefully will catapult Nichols into the spot light.

 

But coal is no longer king.  Decried as environmentally damaging, dirty and difficult to handle, despite technologies to "clean" it up; it is being replaced as the primary generating force, first the "nukes", now natural gas.  The real difficulty with coal may well be economic, supply and demand, and market manipulation.  Coal production and coal usage are fairly stable and can be projected years in advance.  Coal no longer heats the residential market, in fact, "retail" coal sales are almost non-existent.  Coal sales and distribution are controlled by long term contracts years in length.

 

What's at stake is far deeper though and is the reason for the push to build more unnecessary central power generation facilities and control the natural gas market, now!  Again, it is simple economics.  Central power generation is an antiquated technology, current technology would be distributed generation, truly "clean", truly efficient.  Can you imagine, no power lines with deep scars through our mountains and forests, no giant chimneys and exhaust plumes over power plants, no pollution of our rivers and lakes from "waste heat" from these monster gas eating facilities?  But scariest to these behemoth corporations; no electric bills, no oil deliveries, and gross energy usage dropped to perhaps one third of current levels.

 

For less money than is projected for power plant building in New York nearly every home in New York could be equipped with a safe, non-polluting, natural gas fuel cell.  There would be no transmission loss using 1/3 of electric production, no 3%-4% generation loss, almost no heat loss as these units recapture heat for hot water and domestic heating, and usage is totally demand based no production to "fill" a pool. A scary future for some. But it is not some pie- in-the-sky "Buck Rogers" stuff, it is tried and tested technology that  is here today.

 

Such a revolution, that only benefits the people can't be allowed to occur.  The implications of such enormous shifts in power, politics, and economics can and will be avoided.

 

Tiny Nichols is about to become more than a "pawn" in these global power politics, more a "rook". About 5000 feet below the surface is a gas bearing rock, a very special rock.  Most of the existing gas has been removed but this rock is suitable for storing natural gas. Storing under pressure many times the amount of gas removed.  Little Nichols is the most northern and eastern location so far discovered of a suitable formation for gas storage that utilizes a technique far more advantageous than salt dome storage.