The Cultural Value of Land

Miriam Silverman provides readers with a thorough history of the six-year debate that occurred over the St. Lawrence Cement Company’s (SLC) application to build a plant on the banks of the Hudson River in Greenport, New York. Silverman’s scholarship is impressive because she does not express bias towards the arguments made by SLC supporters or the company’s opponents in her book, Stopping the Plant. By not siding with SLC or the opposition, Silverman reveals how subjective environmentalism and capitalism were during the SLC controversy, as well as the degree to which modern society’s “sense of place” has changed in the face of technological growth, capitalism, and globalization. Silverman dispels the common misconception that SLC supporters were nothing more than cutthroat capitalists during the controversy that unfolded between 1999 and 2005. By the same token, Silverman shows that SLC opponents fought the construction plan for reasons beyond its environmental risks. The controversy in Greenport, according to Silverman, did not pit environmentalism versus capitalism. Rather, this controversy was unique, and its legacy explains so much about the human race’s sense of place because SLC proponents and opponents alike were both environmentalists and capitalists.
Although SLC wished to increase production and profit by opening a new plant in Greenport, SLC was green-minded because their new, “state of the art” plant would have been more environmentally friendly than their existing plant in Catskill, New York, which SLC promised to close if the Greenport plans were approved. Therefore, SLC supporters should have been considered environmentalists in their own right because they attempted to improve the air quality of the Hudson Valley by lobbying for the construction of a “greener” plant. Similarly, SLC opposition was motivated by both economic and environmental concerns. Plant opponents were obviously environmentally conscious; they rallied against the plant’s potential pollution levels, and they believed the plant’s proposed size, design, and location would detract too much from the area’s notable natural beauty. However, plant opponents also disliked the idea of a multinational corporation reaffirming its presence within their local economy. The opposition saw the SLC as an outside giant and a remnant of industrialism that was unwelcome in Greenport’s contemporary, rural community. Thus, Silverman’s most important observation is that supporters and opponents were actually concerned with the same communal values (environment, economy, etc.), but “merely articulated these values in different ways” (114). That supporters and opponents read the same evidence but then interpreted and defended it in such different ways illustrates how humans define themselves through the areas that they inhabit. Therefore, Silverman shows readers just how far people will go to defend their own cultural values by articulating how and why the face of their land changes.