by Jill DeWitt
Threats of winds of up to 260 miles an hour didn’t seem to prevent a crowd of Sierra Club activists and Concerned Citizens of Platte County from turning out in force for a pot luck picnic concert featuring Connie Dover at The Red Barn in Weston on May 21.
Your cowardly reporter waited to drive north until tornado warnings ended, not wishing to add funnel cloud transit to her list of harrowing transportation experiences. She arrived to find a crowd calmly transfixed by Dover’s clear voice. Beyond Dover, through the Red Barn’s open doors were quiet orchards and the unparalleled expanse of Platte County’s gently rolling hills.
Dover ended her 45-minute concert with an ethereal ‘Shenandoah’. The crowd mingled, children played. These were citizens with a common bond: the desire for clean air, clean water and clean soil; the desire to protect this land from the threat of pollution from additional coal-burning electrical generating plants planned for the area. These were farmers, ranchers, journalists, physicians, educators, scientists—Platte County families and neighbors from the Kansas City area south of the river—bound by the courage to work for clean skies, clean soil and water—now and for future generations. Further information on this issue and a petition calling for formal hearings and an Environmental Impact Statement can be found on the web at www.tellkcplno.org.