Hudson & the SLC Afterschock
by Andrew Rieser
By now, you have probably heard the news. In April, the State of New York issued a key ruling against St. Lawrence Cement, and the company was forced to end its six-year campaign to build a giant cement plant near the city limits of Hudson. The decision came as a pleasant surprise to the environmental groups that had formed to oppose the plant, and it dismayed SLC's longtime supporters in the community. Regardless of one's position on the issue, SLC's departure dispelled the dark cloud of uncertainty that had been hanging over the city. For better or for worse, an active cement plant will never again be on the horizon.
The defeat of SLC settles some important questions about the area's economy and ecology. But the political consequences could be just as important. The debate was never just about a cement plant, but pitted against each other two groups with very different fears and hopes about the valley's future. More than once, those fears found expression in the political arena.
The first test of politics in the post-cement era will come in a few months, and it will start a few miles from the epicenter of the proposed plant. SLC's departure came at an especially bad time for incumbent Hudson Mayor Richard E. Scalera. Mr. Scalera has been facing an anti-plant insurgency in his own party, which mushroomed in 2003 during the mayoral campaign of anti-plant candidate Linda Mussman. With that branch of the Democratic Party now emboldened by SLC's defeat, Mr. Scalera has decided to step down and will not be running again in November. He has thrown his support to long-time city youth coordinator Dan Grandinetti. Because the anti-plant Democrats took control of the party committee--the aforementioned Ms. Mussman is now its chairperson--Mr. Grandinetti will be running as a Republican. (Such back-and-forth is not unusual in local politics, where personal loyalties trump party affiliation.)
Facing off against Mr. Grandinetti is another former youth activities coordinator, Richard Tracy. Mr. Tracy is running at the head of a slate of anti-plant Democratic candidates called the Bottom Line Party--ironically, brought into existence by SLC itself. Several of the Bottom Line members are supporters of the Friends of Hudson, an organization formed to fight the plant, and which now exists to promote a more robust and sustainable economy in the Hudson River Valley.
The election season has barely begun, and already the barbs have begun to fly. Mayor Scalera, objecting to the early appearance of election signs, suggested that the city enforce an old rule barring election signs until a month before the election--a suggestion that prompted calls to the ACLU and a hasty retreat. Each side has accused the other of kowtowing to special interests, although the charge seems redundant--competing interests, of course, are what local elections are all about. For the local Democratic Party, in particular, local issues like the plant debate appear to be providing a sense of purpose that has been lacking on the national scene since the presidential defeats of 2000 and 2004.
The SLC plant proposal has been dead for months. And yet, the battlelines drawn during that long struggle are profoundly shaping the fall election in Hudson. Whether Hudson's experience foretells anything about the future of politics elsewhere in the state in 2006--a year that will see gubernatorial and senatorial elections--only time will tell.
