Petition for Those in Favor of GNEP

On May 15, 2007 EnergySolutions Inc., Gandy Marley Inc., and the Chaves County Development Foundation held a fancy lunch, from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm, for about 140 people representing Chaves County businesses at the Sally Port Inn.  Each table had copies of a petition for those in favor of GNEP to sign.  They held a public information meeting, from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm, in the same room.  I attended both of these meetings. I did not see a sign in sheet, at either of these meetings, like those that I signed at the public information meetings they held in late March 2007 at the Roswell  Convention and Civic Center. 

After the end of the May 15 meeting, my wife and I stayed a while talking to  people that represented EnergySolutions Inc. and Gandy Marley Inc.  After I left, one of them asked my wife if she wanted to sign the petition for those in favor of GNEP.  

My wife said, "No thanks."

My wife says that several of them laughed at her response, rudely.  She says, "This was cheap, but very effective  intimidation."  She asked them what it was that she signed on the way into the their public information meeting at the Convention Center.  She explained to them that she thought it had been just a sign in sheet .  She asked them if that was a petition at the convention center.  The man who asked her if she wanted to sign the petition (in favor of GNEP, at the Sally Port ), told her that what she had signed at the Convention Center was the petition in favor of GNEP.  She asked him if she could get her name off of the petition, and he said "No."   She says "There were 6 or 7 guys in the room that appeared to be GNEP guys, and all but one of them laughed at this with gusto.   This was very rude, low-down intimidation.  The only one who was not laughing was the EnergySolutions man who had just finished telling me that nuclear industry men conformed to a higher standard of professional ethics than chemical industry men." My wife says, "These 6 or 7 men appeared  to be with GNEP because they were tidying up and talking like they had just put on the meeting. "  

She wants to know if that was really a petition she signed at the Convention Center.  She regrets that she didn't read the heading more carefully. As she entered the meeting, there were distractions, and she didn't want to hold up the flow.   Sign-in sheets are typical at meetings.  Since government money was spent to invite the public to the public information meetings, a sign in sheet seemed appropriate to document the effectiveness of the advertising and event planning efforts.  If it was a petition, people need to know, and we need a way to get our names off of it.   If it was just a sign-up sheet we need to know.   I told my wife that these guys were probably joking with her.  But I agree with her in saying that we need to know whether or not EnergySolutions Inc. and Gandy Marley Inc. people that were at the Sally Port meeting were just joking with her. 

My wife says, "they may have done this in an effort to get us to waste our energy and discredit ourselves fussing over the sign-up sheet vs. petition question." 

My wife believes that they never would have been that rude if there were other members of the public there to witness it.    She says that wondering who was who raised another question:  After the meeting, but before the petition incident, one man (dressed to look like the Hollywood, American Gothic, version of a farmer) who had appeared during the meeting to be a member of the public, picked up the huge GNEP photo/information display boards and left with them.  That man had asked a technical question during the meeting about fuel rods as if he was a member of the public.   My wife had been too shy during the action-packed meeting to interrupt and ask the questions she wanted answers to.  Did GNEP have their own people sitting in the crowd (shills) asking scripted questions to kill time,  directing the discussion and giving the GNEP rep. the opportunity to blast the crowd with scripted, slick answers to give the impression that they had the technology and its effects figured out?   Also, was the young man in the back row with the red hair who sneered and laughed at the public's concerns actually a GNEP man?    She said " Those guys are really good at this! "  She says that she hopes she didn't sneer too much when information she didn't agree with was presented.    The GNEP information presenters had little condescending smiles for most of the time that the public was trying to ask questions.  She says, "This was very intimidating."  She hopes we can all be more mature as Roswell's future is decided.

I say, it is very important to follow up on this, because several hundred people (who actually oppose GNEP) signed in at the Convention Center public information meetings in late March 2007.

By the way, the man that my wife described as "one man (dressed to look like the Hollywood, American Gothic, version of a farmer) who had appeared during the meeting to be a member of the public..." is Dr. Alvin F. Mihalick Ph.D (nuclear physicist for EnergySolutions/Gandy Marley who claims to have a lot of experience doing secret stuff for the government).  This is how he introduced himself to me at the May 7, 2007 public library petition signing session.